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CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs VMware Live Recovery comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 15, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
5.4
CTERA Platform cuts costs up to 80%, improves recovery time by 50%, and offers a return within two years.
Sentiment score
5.5
VMware Live Recovery offers strong ROI, reducing DR costs up to 50% and improving financial performance with effective resource planning.
Adding SSD storage to Windows file servers is expensive, and we no longer need to back up those devices.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
I am positive that CTERA has helped reduce the total cost of ownership by eliminating the need for manual storage management and reducing storage service processes.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a performing arts with 501-1,000 employees
CTERA has been a major improvement with a reduction in our storage and infrastructure cost, achieving up to eighty percent reduction in storage costs overall, which is significant.
S IT Era Administration And Implementation at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.7
CTERA's customer service excels in responsiveness, expertise, and timely issue resolution, earning top user ratings and satisfaction.
Sentiment score
4.1
VMware Live Recovery customer service is generally effective, but occasional delays and improvement suggestions exist, especially with third-party issues.
They swiftly address concerns and take ownership of the call, providing a very satisfactory support experience.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a performing arts with 501-1,000 employees
The quality and speed of support for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is some of the best in the industry.
Senior Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
For critical issues, we receive a call within 10 to 15 minutes of creating a request.
Senior Associate at Iron Mountain Incorporated
They are knowledgeable.
IT Infrastructure Manager at TMLI
Our team has dedicated personnel for support who engage with the supporting teams.
Integration Architect at App In Snap (Pvt) Ltd
The technical support from VMware is very good and operates based on a service level.
Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at Safaricom Ethiopia plc
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.0
CTERA's platform provides scalable file services globally, with flexible licensing for data sizes, though CPU/memory upgrade flexibility can improve.
Sentiment score
5.4
VMware Live Recovery is scalable, supports various environments, though licensing and upgrades may challenge some users.
If we need to upgrade CPU and memory, we should be able to do that without a license upgrade.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
The licensing supports various data sizes, such as EV16 supporting up to 16 terabytes, and if you exceed that, you move to EV32.
Senior Associate at Iron Mountain Incorporated
CTERA is a very scalable product, allowing us to grow.
Senior Manager of Global Support at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
CTERA's platform is stable and reliable, with minimal downtime and resolved issues enhancing user confidence and continuous performance.
Sentiment score
8.5
VMware Live Recovery is generally stable and reliable, though some users face issues during upgrades or high-capacity use.
It has been pretty stable since then.
System Administrator at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
We had things deployed for years, and we were suddenly getting cloud sync issues that were crashing our sites.
Senior Manager of Global Support at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
It is very stable and reliable.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a performing arts with 501-1,000 employees
For our test labs, dev labs, and production, it is very stable.
Integration Architect at App In Snap (Pvt) Ltd
 

Room For Improvement

CTERA should enhance usability, performance, monitoring, AI integration, and provide clear upgrade paths for improved user experience.
VMware Live Recovery needs better storage integration, automation, support, interface, documentation, pricing, cloud compatibility, and enhanced AI capabilities.
AI and automation features could enhance the platform, such as AI-powered search, predictive storage analytics, and intelligent alerts for proactive monitoring.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a performing arts with 501-1,000 employees
The main problem is that if two people are working on the same file, for example, one in the U.S. and one in Israel, they can overwrite each other’s work without any notification.
CEO at rtt.co
It would help to have a global single-pane-of-glass view of all my CTERA devices.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
It's important for the cost to be justified based on the features used in production.
Solution Architect at Lenovo
I would like to see improved integration services with other solutions, such as SIEM management or security monitoring.
IT Infrastructure Manager at TMLI
They follow their SOP, but they initially engage very low-level personnel who are not able to answer or resolve the issue, so they escalate or take a very long time to resolve the issue.
Integration Architect at App In Snap (Pvt) Ltd
 

Setup Cost

CTERA's flexible, cost-effective pricing competes well with EMC, offers infrastructure compatibility, but licensing may confuse some users.
VMware Live Recovery costs depend on VM count and protection plan, with pricing complexity increasing after the Broadcom acquisition.
Unlike other solutions that require hardware purchases, CTERA offers software licensing with flexibility across multiple infrastructure providers.
Business Development Manager at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
CTERA’s pricing should be more proportional and accessible so that cost is not the factor preventing customers from purchasing.
CEO at rtt.co
From what I heard from my seniors, a 50 TB capacity license would be around 55 to 60 lakhs in Indian rupees.
Graduate Engineering Trainee at HCLSoftware
Previously, when acquiring a license for Ethiopian drug supply chains, the price was significantly high, especially after Broadcom joined VMware.
Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at Safaricom Ethiopia plc
For cloud-based solutions, the cost seems quite pricey, so we stick to on-premises deployment.
IT Infrastructure Manager at TMLI
We mostly prefer to recommend this to customers due to ease of use, abundant features, and support.
Integration Architect at App In Snap (Pvt) Ltd
 

Valuable Features

CTERA excels in user-friendly interface, robust security, scalability, centralized control, and versatile integration, enhancing global file accessibility.
The solution provides automated disaster recovery, VMware integration, and seamless management for robust business continuity and operational efficiency.
As soon as something is written to the device, CTERA copies it to the cloud, where it's versioned with snapshots so we can recover it.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
A vital advantage of this platform is its instantaneous recovery capability, allowing seamless access to a secondary gateway if the primary one fails.
Business Development Manager at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
When it comes to data protection in CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, we have encryption methodologies and we also have ransomware protection, which is a wide variety of features offered along with the CTERA appliance and application.
Senior Associate at Iron Mountain Incorporated
It is used for data replication between data centers and allows for quick response in times of failure, ensuring data availability.
Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at Safaricom Ethiopia plc
If I talk about vCenter and the auto failover of the VMs, such as live migration, that is a very cool feature that we require in our environment because we have different data centers, and if some of the servers fail, they automatically failover and move the VM from one side to another.
Integration Architect at App In Snap (Pvt) Ltd
The capability and the functionality of the features are very helpful for us.
IT Infrastructure Manager at TMLI
 

Categories and Ranking

CTERA Enterprise File Servi...
Ranking in Disaster Recovery (DR) Software
7th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (1st), NAS (4th), Cloud Migration (4th), Cloud Storage (4th), Cloud Backup (7th), Cloud Storage Gateways (1st), Content Collaboration Platforms (7th), AI Legal & Compliance (3rd)
VMware Live Recovery
Ranking in Disaster Recovery (DR) Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
82
Ranking in other categories
Disaster Recovery as a Service (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Disaster Recovery (DR) Software category, the mindshare of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is 2.3%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Live Recovery is 7.0%, down from 8.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Disaster Recovery (DR) Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Live Recovery7.0%
CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform2.3%
Other90.7%
Disaster Recovery (DR) Software
 

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.
SuhailAkhtar - PeerSpot reviewer
Integration Architect at App In Snap (Pvt) Ltd
Has enabled seamless VM management and automated failover while support response needs improvement
For support issues, they help with the issue, but it takes a very long time. The reason is that they engage a very initial resource and then escalate to another level, and during these level escalations, our time is wasted. They do not understand the severity of the issue. They go through step-by-step and then go to the upper level. This may be their SOP, but we require instant support and instant resolution of the problem, so here VMware Live Recovery is lacking. They follow their SOP, but they initially engage very low-level personnel who are not able to answer or resolve the issue, so they escalate or take a very long time to resolve the issue. The main issue is to improve the approach of resolving solutions. I may not be able to suggest new features because in these recent months, I have not been very close to it as we are exploring different solutions.
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Comparison Review

it_user159711 - PeerSpot reviewer
Architect at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Nov 9, 2014
VMware SRM vs. Veeam vs. Zerto
Disaster recovery planning is something that seems challenging for all businesses. Virtualization in addition to its operational flexibility, and cost reduction benefits, has helped companies improve their DR posture. Virtualization has made it easier to move machines from production to…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
47%
Outsourcing Company
22%
Educational Organization
4%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business36
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise40
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
Our experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform was good; it was very manageable for getting started with the product.
What needs improvement with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
A wishlist item would be the ability to import shares from one device to another. I would rate CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform a nine out of ten because I think there are some shortcomings ...
What is your primary use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
Our main use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is that we use it as a cloud platform. We use it as an enterprise file system to access shares in our daily operations.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery?
We have been using VMware Live Recovery since 2015, and most of our effort relies on it. I personally feel that it is very easy to use, easy to manage, and provides many features compared to other ...
What needs improvement with VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery?
For support issues, they help with the issue, but it takes a very long time. The reason is that they engage a very initial resource and then escalate to another level, and during these level escala...
What is your primary use case for VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery?
We are the partner as well as the integrator, and we mostly work in the integration industry. Integration is our core business, but we also do partnership activities. Most of our projects are based...
 

Also Known As

No data available
VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery, Datrium DRaaS , VMware SRM
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

McDonald's, WPP, US Navy, Gore, Festo, Stryker, Bezeq, PERI
Certainty Home Loans, VPay, ZEON
Find out what your peers are saying about CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs. VMware Live Recovery and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.