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CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs Qumulo comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 7, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

CTERA Enterprise File Servi...
Ranking in NAS
4th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (2nd), Cloud Migration (5th), Cloud Storage (5th), Cloud Backup (8th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (8th), Cloud Storage Gateways (1st), Content Collaboration Platforms (10th), AI Legal & Compliance (1st)
Qumulo
Ranking in NAS
11th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (21st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the NAS category, the mindshare of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is 3.2%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Qumulo is 5.4%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NAS Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform3.2%
Qumulo5.4%
Other91.4%
NAS
 

Featured Reviews

Tim M. - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Supports global file recovery and rapid data versioning across 80 nodes
When we implemented CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform early on, and we've been on the platform for three years, we have three different cloud portals. We have an EU portal, we have an Americas portal, and we have an APAC portal. It would be nice if we could combine that into one portal just for that global single pane of glass look. We've talked with them about that and they say it's challenging just because of some of the structure, but that would be something nice if we could get that. I integrated with Varonis, and because CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform didn't have initially a working relationship with that vendor, it would have been nice had that pre-existed us saying we need this. But that wasn't totally CTERA's fault. There was a lot of challenge working with the vendor to build out that interface. A single pane of glass for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform would be beneficial. Everything else works fairly well. We've never had a point where we couldn't get to something that caused us to have a serious outage, and that to me is the mark of a good software package. It's never really caused us serious issues. We have our issues, that's true, and every software package does. However, we've always been able to meet the needs of the business, and we drive hard on security, stability, and scalability. From the scalability standpoint, that's one of the most important things to us. We're on their capacity-based licensing, so if I need to ramp up another CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform NAS, if we have an M&A, I can easily and quickly spin up another NAS and start doing that data transition fairly quickly. The biggest maintenance issue with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is firmware upgrades. We've done a lot of transition from hardware solution to virtualized infrastructure in order to minimize that hardware lifecycle portion of it. We have to upgrade the firmware and sometimes that can be challenging in the nature of business of our size with 80 CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform nodes around the globe. The issue we've had with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform happened recently in a firmware upgrade where there was a major database back-end upgrade and that took some time. For our smaller sites, it would be an hour or two, and I can build that into a fairly easy change window. But in our larger sites where we may have hundreds of terabytes of data, that database update process took maybe a day or a day and a half. That becomes more challenging, especially in a manufacturing environment where people are wanting to access configuration files. We had to pin the data locally because the data would be available on the local edge filer, but the cloud sync, while it was updating the database, the cloud files weren't available. That would be the other thing I'd like to see an improvement on: some way to do those database upgrades either in a more segmented fashion or in some type of offline environment. I understand the logistics behind that sounds easy, but I'm sure it's not.
VinceVitro - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Storage Architect at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Useful data sharing, simple cluster scaling, and excellent support
One aspect of Qumulo that I hoped to see improved was its software upgrade process, which did see significant progress during my usage. Initially, upgrading the software resulted in several minutes of system downtime. However, by the time I departed last summer, the downtime had reduced to mere ten seconds. Although I am unsure if Qumulo has yet achieved a completely outage-free upgrade, I simply performed the upgrades early in the morning before the marketing department began its workday, so any downtime was inconsequential.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform helps us when they break something or lose things, and it makes people think I have my superhero cape on because they're thinking it's all lost, they're doomed, and we're able to quickly and effectively go back and say, 'Here you go,' and it's not hours, it's minutes."
"It makes people think I have my superhero cape on because they're thinking it's all lost, they're doomed, and we're able to quickly and effectively go back and say, 'Here you go,' and it's not hours, it's minutes."
"The solution provides data eviction, where unused data is evicted from the local file, freeing up space. It also allows data to be rehydrated from the cloud when needed."
"CTERA has out-of-the-box data protection capabilities."
"It is a three-in-one solution for us. It is a file-sharing platform, an archiving solution, and also a backup solution."
"The best feature is the migration tool within CTERA."
"Our main reason for going for this solution was the uncontrollable growth of file data. It was unsustainable on our previous platform or technology. We needed something scalable like CTERA, so it was the scalability that we required."
"The CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is a hybrid solution that supports both on-premises and cloud environments."
"The feature that I like most is the analytics part of the file system."
"It is a very stable product. I never faced any issues."
"The most valuable feature is real-time analytics."
"The data protection algorithm to protect the data between the nodes has been the most valuable feature. The integration with backup platforms such as Veeam and Veritas has also been valuable."
"The most valuable features of Qumulo are the ease of management and special permissions that are quick to enable. The overall performance of the solution is good."
"The ratio of total operational cost to complexity versus feature set is very good."
"The most valuable feature of Qumulo is the ability to share files and reliability."
"The most valuable features of Qumulo are its rolling updates and all-day availability."
 

Cons

"More monitoring from the platform would be good. There is some monitoring, but it is paid. It is a chargeable service. It would be good for that to be included in the base."
"The issue we've had with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform happened recently in a firmware upgrade where there was a major database back-end upgrade and that took some time."
"I am looking for a process where version upgrades do not impact the customers. There is no downtime."
"The issue we've had with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform happened recently in a firmware upgrade where there was a major database back-end upgrade and that took some time."
"One suggested improvement for the CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is the ability to distribute data across multiple active backend storage nodes rather than the current limitation of a single active node."
"The issue we've had with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform happened recently in a firmware upgrade where there was a major database back-end upgrade and that took some time."
"It has a learning curve."
"However, in some cases, they could improve performance."
"One aspect of Qumulo that I hoped to see improved was its software upgrade process, which did see significant progress during my usage. Initially, upgrading the software resulted in several minutes of system downtime. However, by the time I departed last summer, the downtime had reduced to mere ten seconds. Although I am unsure if Qumulo has yet achieved a completely outage-free upgrade, I simply performed the upgrades early in the morning before the marketing department began its workday, so any downtime was inconsequential."
"In the next release, I would like to see the ability to have more control at a terminal level of the file system."
"The support for iMac and protocols should be improved, not all features are available."
"The price of the software is a bit expensive, so a reduction in cost would make it more competitive."
"The solution could improve availability and improve data protection or data services such as compression of deduplication. In a future release, we'd like to have more cloud API integrations."
"In the future, I would like to see non-disruptive updates."
"Qumulo should continue to expand automation and orchestration capabilities."
"Some anti-theft permissions do not transfer well to Qumulo."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I find the pricing reasonable. They offered us deals that helped us. Especially with the upgrade to a bigger unit last year, they were helpful with the deal."
"I am not directly involved in the pricing aspects, but I understand that CTERA's pricing is competitive and within industry standards."
"It is fairly priced. I am not too involved in the pricing of what we used to pay, but it would have reduced the cost of ownership. I cannot give a figure, but the EMC solution was very expensive compared to CTERA."
"CTERA's pricing model is competitive compared to other companies that achieve the same thing. Their closest rival is Nasuni, and CTERA is significantly more affordable than Nasuni."
"CTERA's pricing seems to be on par with some of the other players, such as Nasuni and Azure. They all have benefits, but CTERA is competitive for its features."
"So far, pricing seems to be fine."
"It is hard to compare the costs if we want to retain the same model of a separate high-performance storage or certain things, but it is one of the cheapest solutions available in Israel."
"The price of Qumulo is reasonable."
"The price of the solution is in the middle range compared to others. We look at the price per terabyte."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
65%
Outsourcing Company
5%
Educational Organization
4%
Financial Services Firm
3%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise2
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
I believe CTERA could improve their pricing experience by customizing price lists per region. For example, there is a difference between what is sold to customers in Israel versus U.S. customers. I...
What needs improvement with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
When we implemented CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform early on, and we've been on the platform for three years, we have three different cloud portals. We have an EU portal, we have an America...
What is your primary use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
We have approximately 80 nodes around the world and we're using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform mostly for unstructured file storage.
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Interactive Demo

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

McDonald's, WPP, US Navy, Gore, Festo, Stryker, Bezeq, PERI
County of Riverside Sheriff Department, Hyundai Mobis Automotive North America, University of Arizona, UCSD - San Diego Supercomputer Center, Medical College of Wisconsin, Sinclair Oil, Royal Dutch Shell, Kaiser Permanente, Deluxe Creative, Vexcel Imaging, University of Florida, The Madison Square Garden Company, Arizona State University, Cinesite, San Diego Padres Baseball, Johns Hopkins University - School of Medicine, IHME, EllieMae, Washington State University.
Find out what your peers are saying about CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs. Qumulo and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
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