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CTERA Intelligent Data Platform vs EXAScaler comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2026

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 Intelligent Data Plat...
Ranking in File System Software
1st
Ranking in NAS
4th
Ranking in Cloud Storage
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (4th), Cloud Backup (7th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (5th), Cloud Storage Gateways (2nd), Content Collaboration Platforms (8th), AI Legal & Compliance (3rd)
EXAScaler
Ranking in File System Software
8th
Ranking in NAS
17th
Ranking in Cloud Storage
18th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.5
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Storage Performance (3rd), Cloud Master Data Management (MDM) (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the File System Software category, the mindshare of CTERA Intelligent Data Platform is 14.9%, up from 10.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of EXAScaler is 3.6%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
File System Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
CTERA Intelligent Data Platform14.9%
EXAScaler3.6%
Other81.5%
File System 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.
reviewer2544219 - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Architect at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Solution enables exceptional performance and immense scalability for AI cluster training
I am a system integrator, and my customers are using EXAScaler as the de facto parallel file system for Google Cloud. They primarily use it for large AI cluster training EXAScaler provides amazing performance in terms of sequential read and random access, and it has a significant scalability…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is a hybrid solution that supports both on-premises and cloud environments."
"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."
"CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform has positively impacted our organization as it has allowed us to shrink our on-premise file system footprint, moving out from data centers and adopting a cloud-first strategy, which brings cost savings."
"CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform has positively impacted my organization by making our data management better, giving us greater security in our use, and letting us work easier with all the file services we need."
"Centralized file access has made the biggest difference for our team, making it easier for people working from different locations to access the files they need without consistently requesting copies from colleagues."
"CTERA Intelligent Data Platform has freed up IT resources for other projects and tasks, saving around 30 to 40 hours per month due to centralized administration and simpler file recovery, reducing the time spent on backup and file server tools, handling tickets, and file restoration."
"CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform has helped reduce our total cost of ownership by streamlining our operations; we've eliminated several backup tools, greatly reducing software licensing needs and cutting down our overall footprint, although I don't have precise monetary figures."
"It is a three-in-one solution for us. It is a file-sharing platform, an archiving solution, and also a backup solution."
"EXAScaler provides amazing performance in terms of sequential read and random access, and it has a significant scalability advantage as it is scalable to petabytes."
"The customers who use DDN EXAScaler are happy, especially when using large AI clusters for training."
 

Cons

"The only challenge I faced with CTERA Intelligent Data Platform is with respect to monitoring, reporting, and troubleshooting."
"CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform could be improved by being a little faster in performance and having a timeline for new features and updates."
"There are two things about CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform that I think they can improve. The first one is the reporting or maybe the monitoring solution because they lack reporting about the shares that we have, the used space, the total space, the permissions, or other relevant metrics."
"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."
"CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform can be improved, but I consider it to be good overall."
"There needs to be improvements, particularly regarding real-time sync conflict resolution and cloud latency."
"There’s an issue with permissions, they aren’t always as transparent for customers as Microsoft’s, for example."
"AI and automation features could enhance the platform, such as AI-powered search, predictive storage analytics, and intelligent alerts for proactive monitoring. Predictive storage analytics will help with better capacity planning. There can be some sort of intelligent alerts for proactive monitoring."
"One challenge with EXAScaler is during upgrade time, as it can be problematic when upgrading node by node. Additionally, it is not multi-protocol by nature, requiring additional hardware to support various protocols like NFS or object storage."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I am not directly involved in the pricing aspects, but I understand that CTERA's pricing is competitive and within industry standards."
"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."
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
38%
Computer Software Company
25%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Manufacturing Company
4%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise31
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing, CTERA Intelligent Data Platform offers subscriptions and costs are associated with cloud storage integration and requests, compute, network connectivit...
What needs improvement with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
If CTERA Intelligent Data Platform focuses more on centralized monitoring and reporting, it would be very much helpful. Additionally, if they could slightly upgrade the troubleshooting platform for...
What is your primary use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
One common use case for CTERA Intelligent Data Platform is replacing separate file servers across offices with a centrally managed global file system. For example, when employees are at different s...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for EXAScaler?
EXAScaler is a bit expensive, particularly when comparing the total cost of ownership.
What needs improvement with EXAScaler?
One challenge with EXAScaler is during upgrade time, as it can be problematic when upgrading node by node. Additionally, it is not multi-protocol by nature, requiring additional hardware to support...
What is your primary use case for EXAScaler?
I am a system integrator, and my customers are using EXAScaler as the de facto parallel file system for Google Cloud. They primarily use it for large AI cluster training.
 

Interactive Demo

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

McDonald's, WPP, US Navy, Gore, Festo, Stryker, Bezeq, PERI
Information Not Available
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