CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform Reviews

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform's main use case is SMB services. I use CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform for SMB services in my work to save and complete our work while storing files. For our main use case, I use CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform for saving as a NAS solution to store the files.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform offers excellent features with simple architecture. The platform includes cloud platforms, gateways, and portals that are straightforward for my organization to use.

The user interface of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is very simple to use. CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform has positively impacted my organization by being straightforward to use, and since its introduction five years ago, my team has experienced no downtimes.

The lack of downtime with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform has helped my organization by ensuring that each upgrade I perform does not affect the systems and the servers.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform can be improved, but I consider it to be good overall. The upgrades of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform could be somewhat more stable.

I have been using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform for 1.5 years.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is stable, as I am not experiencing many issues.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is really scalable.

The customer support for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is really good, and the engineers are highly qualified. They help me every time I face any issue.

I previously used SAN solutions, such as EMC, and I switched to CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform due to my use case for file services.

The learning curve for my employees with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform was really easy to implement, and it was very quick. The migration was also very smooth.

I have seen a return on investment with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, as the automation is very good, which reduces the headcount, saves money, and saves time.

My recovery time has improved by about 50% with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, as I can restore a deleted or modified file within a few seconds from the portal.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is that it is value for money and the setup is easy.

Before choosing CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, I checked many solutions, but CTERA was the best.

I recommend everyone to use CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform as it is really stable, versatile, and it does not have much downtime—it is perfect.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is really good, and I would suggest CTERA to every company that is looking for a similar solution. I gave this review a rating of 10.

We use CTERA as a global file share for several divisions within our organization.

We immediately realized the benefits of the CTERA platform. When we rolled this out, we had around five sites and noticed a significant drop in requests for restoration or storage space increases. On the backup side, we no longer had to back up Windows Servers. 

Using CTERA has freed up our IT resources from monitoring the old Windows file servers, adding space, cleaning up stuff, etc. 

Having backups has reduced the tasks administrators used to do, and now they can concentrate on other things.

We use CTERA for disaster recovery at sites in hurricane zones. Our DR nodes are located in the central US, and it has worked well for those disasters. We've also had appliances crash and recovered them faster than using a regular Windows file server. 

We've reduced our recovery point objectives to varying degrees. It depends on the site. We can typically have a system back up and serving users for small to medium sites in eight hours.

I like that the glass is always half full with CTERA file services. It keeps the data hot for users on location and then tiers off older data. If you need it, the stub is still there. You can click on it, and it's back on the device. 

The replication and versioning work great. Users can self-serve basic restorations of one or two gigabytes, but administrators need to handle bigger restores of several gigabytes. CTERA has out-of-the-box data protection capabilities. It sends the data to the cloud. 

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. We haven't used Ransom Protect, but we'll roll that out with the next firmware upgrade.

It would help to have a global single-pane-of-glass view of all my CTERA devices. We have different regions, and we must log in to each portal to see what's happening with those. It would be nice to have a single portal to see the health of the devices, versions, and firmware upgrades. Sometimes, we want to dive into something more complex, like investigating why CTERA storage usage grew from 2 terabytes to 4  terabytes in a week. That's a little challenging. It's something we would like to see on the road map.

It has a learning curve. They could make it easier for administrators to troubleshoot problems. We get alerts, and sometimes, those are false positives. Compared to where we started, they've made significant improvements in the last five years.

I have been using CTERA for five years.

I rate CTERA nine out of 10 for stability. It has been reliable for our needs.

I rate CTERA eight out of 10 for scalability with a qualification. It's scalable, but their licensing model is different on their devices. If we're running the system on our on-premise kit, the licensing should be per terabyte and not a limitation on CPU and memory. 

If we need to upgrade CPU and memory, we should be able to do that without a license upgrade. I get that we need to upgrade our storage space if we run out, but we should be able to scale up processing and memory based on the system's needs. 

I rate CTERA support eight out of 10. High-priority issues are handled promptly, while lower-priority concerns take longer to address. 

Positive

When we implemented the solution, CTERA didn't have any training, so we had to work with their engineers to learn the solution and get the portal set up. It was a little challenging, but they were there to answer questions and show us best practices for deployment.

It took us around a month to set up the portal and work through the pieces to deploy the edge services. Once you deploy the edge device, you need to copy the old systems' data. That takes a little bit longer. It took about two months to get it to a place where we were comfortable. The deployment team consisted of one CTERA engineer, me, and another system administrator.

After deployment, CTERA requires some maintenance, primarily firmware upgrades. CTERA coordinates with us when new versions come out, and we work with their engineers to deploy them. A technical account manager manages those software versions to ensure we're not on the bleeding edge and causing more problems in our environment. 

They do ESS upgrades on the hardware they deploy from and other care and feeding underneath the hood that we can't access. They have access to their gateways, which are locked down only for their admin use. We open tickets and work with them hand in hand to get things upgraded, tweaked, or troubleshooted.

We did not use any third parties; the deployment was handled by one CTERA engineer, myself, and another administrator.

We reduced our total ownership cost using CTERA. Adding SSD storage to Windows file servers is expensive, and we no longer need to back up those devices. The ability to store things in a back-end S3 bucket significantly reduces the cost. It's much cheaper per gig. 

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.

I rate CTERA Enterprise File Services nine out of 10. 

Before implementing CTERA, you must analyze the workload you're trying to put on the platform and test it. We're a big manufacturer doing a lot of automated testing where we're writing thousands of files. At a point, it doesn't stop you from writing files, but the directory lookups become a little slower. It's critical to understand your workload before you put it there. The regular stuff works great, like Excel, Word, etc., but you want to check if it will be appropriate for your purposes if you are doing automated manufacturing or engineering.

My main use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is that it serves as our primary file server.

A specific example of how I use CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform as my primary file server is that users map to it instead of a local onsite file server, and it backs the data up to the cloud for high availability and restorability.

The best features CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform offers are that it is easy for users to restore files, and I was able to restore a large number of files and identify them.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform has positively impacted my organization in that it works as a file server, and centralizing things makes managing them in one location simpler than managing them everywhere else.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform can be improved. I believe we have experienced some file server instability over the years working with this product, which seems to have gotten better, but unfortunately, we appear to be upgrading frequently to chase issues. At times, I do feel as though I am a beta tester.

The instability in CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform seems to be on the management side for the most part. Files have been accessible and the users themselves have not been impacted, but it does seem to take considerable effort to keep it updated and to chase upgrades and firmware. I do spend more time with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform than I have with other file servers.

I have been using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform for four years.

In my experience, CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is not stable. I would say we have experienced a large number of issues, some of which were on our network side and some of which are bugs in CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform systems.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform's scalability seems simple to add and scale out.

The support team that I have worked with is excellent. They are great in helping resolve problems and other issues, which has been very helpful. However, it would be nice if I talked to them less.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform's customer support is the best part of the product. The support group that I have worked with has been absolutely amazing. Every one of them deserves a perfect rating, and the issues that we faced are not their fault. They have been great in helping me work through the problems. My biggest complaint about reaching out to support is that you cannot call and get somebody. The people that answer the phone send you directly back to the web page to open a ticket and will not do it for you.

Positive

Previously, we used typical Windows file servers. A business decision was made to consolidate into a cloud-based file service.

I would assess my employees' learning curve for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform as ongoing. We are still onboarding things as we move forward. We just started an upgrade in October that we were able to finish this week, so it took us five months to upgrade the back end of this system, which seems lengthy.

My impressions of the data protection offered by CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform are that so far, we have not lost any data, which seems to be working well.

I would assess CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform's impact overall on my organization's security posture as having caused no change.

I am not saving time with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform.

We use CTERA in almost every site we use. It is the platform for every commercial site that we have in the world. We have around 198 of their devices locally, and we also have CTERA devices in our central locations for each region.

Even though we have added additional devices throughout the four years, we have been able to do that and cover it 24/7 throughout the world with four resources. CTERA can make it easier on your staff in that respect. When it is deployed and connected with proper Active Directory and bandwidth, and things are moving properly, you do not need to touch it. You do not need to do a lot. That is the nice part of CTERA.

The features I find most valuable are in the gateways themselves. They have done a great job over the years of providing insight into what is happening with our products, with the batches that come through that are scanned. I enjoy that part of it, and it is fairly easy to use from our standpoint once we get to know the product. 

For the technical side, they have done a very good job over the last couple of years. Joe, Mukesh, and Shannon have done a great job teaching our staff. Joe Scott comes across as almost like a professor when he is teaching. He is very good at it. Once you learn how the system works, it is fairly easy, but there are a lot of little things that can go wrong. There are a lot of moving parts within it, so a lot of things can happen. You can do all the right steps and follow the runbook that is provided by CTERA, but you still need CTERA to help you dig down deep when you find an issue because new ones happen all the time.

One of the bigger things that I would like to see is additional logging. There are logs in there. They provide us with the initial logs on what is happening on our CTERA device. I appreciate that, but they do not give us any further information. I would like to have more information on the logs themselves. For example, if we do identify an issue, where could we use those logs? We have to download a specific log that only goes to them for them to review. We have no insight into it even if it is something that is on our side or our issue. I would like to have more visibility into that.

File replication-wise, they do a good job, but I would like to see a little bit more on folders. If somebody has touched a folder and moved it, I would like a little bit more details on that. We have certain folders for specific sites. Some people have access to them, and suddenly, a folder disappears. It could be because operations deleted it or moved it, maybe accidentally within another folder. There should be logs that we could go back to and see when those file folders were moved or touched and have an idea. Right now, we do not have this information. It is a big search if we lose a file or the operations team deletes a folder with scanned images in it. We do not get a log that says that so and so in operations touched this and hit the delete button. Such information is essential for doing RCAs when we have issues like that.

It does a very good job with data protection, but I would like some additional logs. I would like some additional ability to see who touched the folders. We have to let operations be able to touch certain folders because of the way our system is developed. Unfortunately, within CTERA, we do not have those logs. I would love to have those logs. If we turned on additional logging, it would fill it up so quickly that we would not be able to maintain and have enough storage. That is our issue. I would like to see additional logging available that did not occupy so much of our storage space so that we could see when somebody touched a folder and moved it. That would give us the last little piece to ensure that our data security is optimal.

It would be nice if there was an intermediary between HC400s and going bigger, something that would allow additional storage or even add storage to the HC400s, which recurrently cannot do. We have smaller scanning sites that use a physical device. These physical devices have very limited storage, so we end up running out of storage at times. There is no real alternative without going to a larger scale in three-node Nutanix and blowing up the site, and it may not be ready for it. It would be nice if there was an intermediary between the HC400s and going bigger. We should be able to have additional storage or even add storage to the HC400s when we get to that point where we are low and we do not have much storage on that HC400. It is not a large device. There are only three and a half terabytes. Once that storage is gone, you cannot add any more unless you club another HC400 with it or go to a bigger device. Clubbing an HC400 is a lot more hassle than it is worth.

I have been using the solution for over four years.

Stability-wise, we just went through one issue that they addressed. We were having cloud sync issues. We had things deployed for years, and we were suddenly getting cloud sync issues that were crashing our sites. When it took the site down, we had to physically rebuild the actual disk and then download the data. It caused us a lot of pain from the standpoint of working through it. It required a lot of copying of images. It was a lot of work for us on our end. They worked through it. Shannon did a good job of keeping us abreast of what was going on and the steps they were taking to resolve. It took a little bit longer than what we wanted, and we had several more cloud sync issues, but, eventually, they came out with a new version to deploy. That seems to have taken care of the issue.

They do a very good job with scalability. CTERA is a very scalable product, allowing us to grow. The smaller HC400 devices do not scale well if placed in a site on the cusp of needing a larger setup, but everything else that CTERA has product-wise does very well.

We use the ticketing system regularly, and it works well. It has gotten better over time. When I first started, we would contact them a lot by phone for P1s or severity ones. I found that to be very cumbersome and less reliable, but since then, we have been able to work through those issues. By having Joe, Mukesh, and Shannon, we have been able to resolve some of those issues. If we supply a ticket, they are able to find a way to help us. We sometimes do call. We can now also get on the calendar and schedule time. That is a nice feature. When we first started out, everything was on call, and those people we were calling did not have a clue of what they were doing. That has changed a lot over the last four years.

They have also done a good job recently from the training aspect. Joe, Mukesh, and Shannon have done a good job with the relationship and the relationship building. They have been able to work with us even when we look at licensing and the amount of licenses that we have to purchase for all these devices. They have worked with us even on that.

Positive

This is my first opportunity to use and work in this environment. I came from a different technology before, so this is my first introduction.

It is easy to deploy. We have a team that helps set up the system before it goes live, and they have really got it down to an art at this point.

For one site, we can probably get it stood up with servers and other things that are needed within about two weeks. It is fairly simple. It also depends on the download it takes and how much data that you want to use. There are a lot of variables in there, but it would take about two weeks.

They are always looking to upgrade their versions, which is great. Most recently, they upgraded their version to help with an issue that we were having in CTERA. That was good. However, when I first got here, we were on so many different versions of CTERA that we committed ourselves to only upgrading once a year. They may have several versions or two other versions coming out throughout the year, but we only upgrade once. We have so many sites and so many places that we have to touch. We can only do it during downtime, which makes it very difficult for us, so we deploy the version at the beginning of the year and do not touch it for the rest of the year.

We did not use any third-party integrator or consultant. We worked directly with Joe and the team.

Its benefits can be seen immediately. It is an edge filer that does well when it is operating at its most efficient. You can see its benefits immediately when the storage is correct, the latency is lower, and there is proper bandwidth and a good connection with Active Directory. You can go from a site that has no CTERA device and that was just sending over the wire because it was a smaller scanning site to begin with. After deploying a CTERA device, you can immediately get benefits from it.

There are so many moving parts of CTERA because you are connected not only to Active Directory; you have the network connections, routers, switches, etc. There are many things that it goes through to get to your central environment, including your overall bandwidth from the ISP. If everything is working and operating as it should, it is a good service. You do not need to touch it a lot. You need to have everything working, and that is no fault of CTERA. There are a lot of moving parts when you look at everything that goes into it.

I would rate it an eight out of ten. We have many third-party products that are not edge filers like CTERA. From a product standpoint, they compare well, but the support really lifts CTERA higher. The support aspect is very significant.

We are using the CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform in two areas. The first is as a platform for our customers, providing a modern infrastructure. The second, more sophisticated use case is for internal usage as our internal file server. We have a huge file system. Currently, it is used internally, but in the future, we might prepare the infrastructure or create applications that will be accessible via the Internet, beyond just internal use.

The most significant benefit is caching. I am providing high-performance NVMe devices for all file systems. Most of the data is stored on an internal S3 cloud, rather than an external one. This internal S3 infrastructure stores all copies of the data, with snapshots for versioning and disaster recovery. The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is excellent because we use high-performance storage for mission-critical data, while other data (including voice records and PDFs for customer billing) is stored on more cost-effective infrastructure.

Thanks to caching, after implementation, performance—especially for Citrix VDI access and profiles—improved by 20 to 30 seconds.

Another financial and technical benefit is that we no longer need to rely on external software for backup. We now use the CTERA portal for this. All the snapshots are stored on different S3 storage platform, eliminating the need to pay high licensing fees for tools like Rubrik or Commvault. These tools are also harder to implement and don't offer the convenience of versioning with a simple right-click. Versioning is a great feature, allowing me to restore files from the latest update, bypassing daily backups. Using S3 storage makes it economical and efficient.

Vault is another useful feature. For regulatory compliance, we must retain certain files for seven years, and Vault allows us to store these files without the need for incremental backups. Once a backup is placed in the vault, it is untouchable and cannot be deleted.

CTERA file sync (compressed and deduplicated) is excellent. Additionally, we have two disaster recovery methods: restoring the entire file system through the portal or using storage replication. We test the replication once a year, and we can establish a disaster recovery site in two to three minutes.

Both versioning and replication are critical for meeting our SLAs. Our CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is fully prepared for disaster recovery. As per our regulations, we must test disaster recovery at least once a year and demonstrate to management that we can establish new sites. The last test showed an RTO of two to three minutes. We haven’t experienced any actual disasters, but regular testing ensures readiness.

Prior to 2018, our infrastructure was unable to even test disaster recovery due to file limitations. For the last five years, we’ve maintained near-zero RTO or even RPO, operating almost asynchronously. Having a very low RTO is critical, and we can reestablish the infrastructure on the new filer in just a few minutes, which represents a substantial improvement.

We’ve also implemented and tested a new feature to prevent ransomware attacks. This is a significant advancement in the NAS world. We recently installed a new version and demonstrated to our CISO how a real ransomware attack could be stopped within seconds, showing that the affected client’s access to the file server was blocked. Fortunately, we haven't faced a real attack, but being able to showcase our protection to management is a significant benefit.

We started seeing benefits immediately after we migrated our Citrix profiles. We had about 2,000 users on our Citrix infrastructure and terminal servers. All login profiles were placed on CTERA. With the previous infrastructure, the login process took 45 seconds, including application startups. After moving the profiles to CTERA, we observed an improvement of at least 20 to 25 seconds.

Another benefit is storage reclamation. We use Dell NVMe PowerMax, which is extremely costly for a small portion of our data. With the CTERA platform, we gain excellent performance for files in the cache, while archived files on S3 are still easily accessible. This combination allowed us to observe improvements from day one. Additional benefits include ransomware protection, versioning, and reduced software costs for backups. We started with 30 to 50 terabytes, and now we manage nearly 300 terabytes.

Choosing CTERA in 2018 was risky, as it was just a startup at the time. However, from my perspective, it has proven to be an excellent decision.

First and foremost, flexibility is highly valuable. I can separate different workloads across various hardware platforms depending on the implementation, without being locked into a particular vendor’s hardware. For example, if I need a special filer for home directories to optimize performance or accessibility, we can create separate virtual machines. We also maintain a large archive because we need to store call recordings from our call center for seven years due to regulatory requirements. By using different virtual machines, we can separate data according to implementation needs and SLAs.

Managing the data is simple since the platform operates on a virtual machine. The interfaces are user-friendly, and after two to three hours of training, our support staff is capable of using the interface to assist customers with file restoration. Adding new infrastructure, servers, and virtual machines is straightforward.

The platform is releasing new features at a fast pace, which sometimes leads to version updates every three to six months. Although updates are generally not complex, it is challenging to stop the production environment during these updates, even if the downtime is just a few minutes. This is a common challenge across all NAS providers.
From my perspective, the most important area for improvement is developing a method to perform updates without affecting customer production environments. Additionally, there are some cache size limitations that might become problematic for future use cases, though they don’t impact current applications.

Collaboration for NFS and SMB protocols could also be enhanced. Although this issue isn't specific to CTERA, it is something we are working on together to improve.

The quality of the versions has improved, but occasional issues still arise. All solutions face this challenge, but we hope to see a continued reduction in the number of bugs. That said, we haven't had any major production problems in the last four years, and we appreciate how responsive CTERA is to our issues. We engage in brainstorming sessions together, and we value this relationship.

We started using CTERA for internal use in 2018. This is now our sixth year in full production. Over that time, we have accumulated about 260 terabytes of S3 storage, 10 virtual machines, and billions of files.

We have experienced no downtime over the last four years where customers couldn’t access data. Occasionally, we’ve encountered synchronization issues, but they have not impacted production.

We hold weekly sessions to review new features and discuss open tickets. I sometimes work directly with CTERA's engineering team when we need new developments. They value our input, and customers like us can provide different perspectives.

Their support team is highly accessible, and they can connect directly to our system. When we need immediate assistance, they provide it promptly.
I would rate them nine out of ten. One of CTERA’s best features is its support and engineering teams.

Positive

Our previous infrastructure was based on EMC’s VNX system. After six years with CTERA, we have no plans to replace it.

The transition project was handled by me and one other member of my team. We migrated approximately 100 million files and 50 terabytes of storage from VNX to CTERA.

CTERA is different from other systems. It is a global file system, whereas solutions like NetApp and Dell are more focused on the enterprise without being global. From my experience, many of the features and flexibility I have with CTERA cannot be achieved with NetApp or Dell, largely because CTERA is a software solution and not tied to specific hardware.

This flexibility allows me to separate storage across different network segments. Since we are a telecommunications company with sensitive external customer segments, centralizing everything would be inefficient. With CTERA, I can deploy small virtual machines in each segment and occasionally replicate changes to S3 for backup without additional costs. It’s more efficient, and I can use various types of storage.

Other reasons for the switch were improvements in DRP (Disaster Recovery Plan), financial savings, and performance enhancements.

Initially, the migration was manual. When we started using CTERA, the migration tools they now provide weren’t available. With the current version, customers can migrate from other solutions like NetApp or Dell using these new tools. However, in 2018, we had to follow a traditional manual process, without external assistance, relying solely on my team.

Setting up CTERA and handling the logical integration was challenging because it was a new solution. It took about six months. The concept was new to us, and we decided to proceed slowly, starting with certain folders and Citrix profiles, which were critical to the organization. After one year, we reached stability and began moving the rest of the infrastructure without disrupting the system. Our careful planning was the right approach.

The CTERA support team helped us create the first virtual machine and configure it. Today, they provide various tools, but at the time, everything was done manually. After setting up the first virtual machine and connecting to the portal, we handled the migration and access configurations. We also discovered some protection issues, such as instances where even administrators were unable to move certain files, which required critical manual intervention. That was the most difficult part of the process. The biggest obstacle to the project was copying files, not establishing the system. The interfaces were easy to understand, and today, the migration tools are available and much improved. You can now understand what’s happening with your old infrastructure and plan the best path forward for a smooth cutover.

I manage the storage team. Two team members handle all high-end storage, NAS storage, and object storage, while two others focus on Linux and Unix systems. Overall, three of us, including myself, work with a vast number of platforms.

CTERA management is incredibly smooth, and the experience is markedly different from other NAS infrastructures. Despite having a small team, we have managed to expand our CTERA use cases by at least 100% year over year. Starting with just two file servers, we have grown to ten servers in six years, without increasing headcount. This demonstrates how easy it is to expand and add new features using this solution.

We are planning to implement Vault due to regulatory requirements and are also introducing AI-based antivirus and other features. One of the new capabilities is the ability to create a new filer using the disaster recovery infrastructure in just one minute. This allows us to move all customers to the new filer and restore their files as needed. Last week, we created a new version of our public folder, which contains 50 million files and 35 terabytes.

It’s hard to compare CTERA to others. If, for any reason, my organization decided to replace it with a solution like NetApp, the project would be extremely expensive due to the hardware requirements and the sheer volume of data involved in the migration.

It’s also difficult to compare costs directly since replicating the same model with high-performance storage or other custom features would be extremely costly. However, in terms of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), CTERA is one of the best solutions available in Israel.

I recommend starting with a solid disaster recovery plan. For customers like us, who share two or three sites internally and not over the Internet, this is essential. Also, focus on ransomware protection early on. Test your recovery plan to ensure it works.

If you need an archive system for long-term data retention due to regulations (e.g., seven to ten years), build a separate vault feature rather than mixing it with mission-critical tasks like Citrix profiles, which require higher performance. Office files, by contrast, have different performance needs. CTERA is a great software solution, but ensure you plan your hardware solution accordingly.

For migration, take a step-by-step approach. While there are migration tools available, be prepared to deal with potential permission issues.

Overall, I would rate the CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform a nine out of ten due to the benefits we’ve achieved. We’ve reduced hardware and external software costs, and the solution has provided great value to the company. While there’s always room for improvement, it remains one of the best solutions on the market.

We use it as a hosted cloud solution. We had initially tried Azure File Sync, but that did not work. Due to certain security concerns, I was tasked with researching alternatives. I evaluated several options, including Cohesity and Nasuni, before finding the CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform to be the best fit for our needs. We performed a proof of concept with our applications director, and based on the positive results, I recommended the CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform to senior management.

The CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform's replication and versioning capabilities are reliable, and we have not encountered any major complaints in these areas. We have built-in high availability and disaster recovery support through our architecture, which includes three CTERA filers. One is on-prem on Apollo 4200. The second filer is a VMware virtual machine, and the third one is in Azure. In terms of the application servers, we have three application servers sitting in the Azure cloud, and we also have two database servers. We have a replication server between Database 1 and Database 2, which also sits in Azure. That is the primary architecture as far as CTERA is concerned. The replication works pretty well, and I did not find any major complaints regarding the replication aspect. We do get notifications if something does not happen or if there are any error messages, but that is in a normal stride.

The product has significantly contributed to reducing our recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO). That is what they promised. We have stub files on the filers that we use. It has been helpful in the reduction of storage, RTO, and RPO.

We were able to see its benefits immediately because that is how it has been structured. Once we migrate and upload the data to the cloud, we see all the magic happening almost immediately or within a couple of hours. Once we upload the data through the filer, it goes on the portal. From the portal, the metadata changes are made into the filer, and from the portal, it does a sync on all the other filers. It takes an hour to two to sync up all the devices within the infrastructure.

We never had any problems or any security concerns related to data protection. It has been good so far, so I believe they have something robust and secure out there. We do have a parent company that looks into any security concerns, and we have never received any complaint related to the CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform.

The best feature is the migration tool within CTERA.

It is easy to learn. I work as an infrastructure engineer, so I manage the storage. I manage the VMware infrastructure. I manage a little bit of cloud. I manage the compute as well, so for me, it was pretty easy. Once I understood the architecture, it was pretty easy. Currently, I am the primary engineer who provides all necessary support for all our users, and for me, it was pretty easy to understand. Once I understood the architecture, it was pretty easy to put all the pieces together and go about it.

One area for improvement is the migration tool, which at times does not work as designed, necessitating the use of alternative solutions like Robocopy.

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.

The reporting and analytics features could be improved for better customization and documentation capabilities. When we wanted to know the total amount of storage that we have put into Azure through CTERA during a specific period, we had to go about it in a roundabout way. It was not very easy. Customized reports and documentation will be helpful from a client's perspective.

Performance and scalability can be enhanced for faster operation. They could make it a little bit faster, but that probably requires fine-tuning from the infrastructure perspective.

We have been using the CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform for about two to three years.

It is very stable and reliable. We have not experienced any major problems from the platform side. Any issues were related to the hardware.

It offers good scalability options, including vertical and outward scalability. We can add resources as needed.

Their technical support is pretty good. They take ownership of the call, and I enjoy working with them. It is pretty easy.

They are excellent. They are available 24/7, and I have been able to contact them even at odd hours. They swiftly address concerns and take ownership of the call, providing a very satisfactory support experience.

Positive

We previously used Azure File Sync but encountered security concerns from Microsoft. We had to bring it down. 

It was not very easy or very complicated. We had an Azure engineer and CTERA  support to help us out, so it was pretty easy. Once we understood the concepts and defined what exactly we needed, such as how many filers and failover devices were required, it was very easy. After we had the image, we provisioned the servers in the cloud, and it was not very difficult. It was pretty easy.

It was implemented by my coworker, who has since left. It probably took a couple of weeks, but we were not working on it every day and all the time. It was done based on the availability of the engineers and the availability on the CTERA side as well. It was a big project because we have tons of application servers and file services. We also had a hardware issue. We had various phases, such as defining the architecture, migration, testing, etc. It was tested at every level, and then it was finally put up in production.

In terms of maintenance, for the CTERA filer that is on a physical server, I had to get in touch with CTERA engineers to upgrade the CTERA firmware. I also had to do the HPE hardware firmware upgrade. I had to upgrade the drivers on the NIC cards. Such maintenance has to be done. 

We worked with CTERA support as well as our own team including an Azure engineer. The implementation was facilitated by their guidance.

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. Previously, whenever we needed storage, I had to carve out a LUN presented through HPE OneView. It was a process. Now, I do not have to worry about storage. This has definitely saved a great deal for the organization.

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

We tried Nasuni and Cohesity, but CTERA stood out due to its ease of use and superior security features.

Overall, I would rate the CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform a nine out of ten. 

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.

The best features CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform offers include the ability to have a very small on-premise footprint while allowing cloud functionality. The ability to store all devices in the cloud and have them be protected stands out to us.

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.

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 in the performance of the gateway that could be improved, and I realize part of that is we are running an older version.

We have been using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform since 2018, so almost eight years now.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is stable.

The scalability of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is very good.

The customer support for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is great, and I appreciate the responsiveness.

We previously used a different solution before CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform; we used to have a NetApp and switched to a cloud-first platform to gain a smaller footprint on-premise.

My advice for others looking into using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is that it is easy to implement. Migration was straightforward, although share setup was a little tough and took some time, but we got that worked out.

We have not specifically calculated a return on investment, but we have definitely saved.

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.

We did evaluate other options before choosing CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, specifically looking at Panzura.

I would rate CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform a nine out of ten.

I primarily use CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform to replicate our marketing content to our regional offices. Marketing uses the Adobe application suite for creating and managing file content, and they replicate that content out to our regional locations where our regional graphical marketing people tailor that content to those regions.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is used not only for replication to regional branches, but also for the sharing features that we use to share content externally with clients and customers.

Our organization utilizes the most replication, file sharing, and sharing content using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform as well as the security features within the platform.

The best features of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform include replication, which has offered the biggest advantage for using the solution.

The replication workflows have replicated content to our branch offices and cached that content, which makes that content accessible to our regional offices around the globe and makes accessing that data much easier and much faster. In turn, turning around the changes to marketing files is much quicker.

The file services, SMB sharing, and replication have all positively contributed to CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, so much so that we are looking at moving our global file share services over to it.

Global file locking prompted our team to consider moving global shared services over to CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform. Once CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform announced that they now support global file locking, that was the missing component that was keeping us from going to CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform. Now that that feature is offered, the solution is whole.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform has complemented our security posture at the company. CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform has complemented my company's security posture with virus scanning, ransomware protection, and ACLs. My impressions of the enterprise class solutions being offered by CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform include ransomware protection, versioning, and virus scanning, all of which contribute to the security.

I cannot think of any areas at this time that could be improved. CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is a well-rounded platform.

I have been using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform for the last eight years.