CTERA Intelligent Data Platform

We use CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform to implement a cloud storage in the company and share data using NFS and SMB.

We use CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform for the simulation jobs. There are people working in different sites. We use CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform to share the metadata of their simulations to different sites around the world using the Wasabi Cloud.

All the file services for the company are going to be migrated to CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform infrastructure.

The best features CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform offers in my experience include the possibility to work with cache using only the metadata. That way we are saving space.

Users are able to work with multiple environments at the same time, including SMB and NFS, which has improved our data management significantly.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is improving the way we manage data in the company. The main idea of this is to save money.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform can be improved in the area of monitoring. Monitoring is complicated because they are offering only a secondary tool and we cannot monitor all of the settings in a centralized way.

Sometimes bugs appear when a new patch is released, which is another area that could make monitoring or management easier for our team.

Regarding CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform's AI capabilities, it has some features for security, and specifically cybersecurity, but it can be improved.

My impressions of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform's file replication and versioning are that it is useful. The versioning allows a way to recover data like a snapshot, and the file replication is not always the best depending on the Edge Filer location, but it is good and that is an area to improve.

We started the implementation of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform in January 2024.

We analyzed other options before choosing CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, particularly Nasuni.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is highly scalable. We can extend the metrics and the only needed thing is the license.

The customer support for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is rated 9 over 10.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate the customer support for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform as 9 over 10.

I have not used a solution CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform before; we were using old-fashioned file servers.

We have not used the disaster recovery option or feature for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform in this case.

We have assigned a couple of team members to use and deploy CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform tool and be the administrator. In this case, we have not improved other people's activities.

I don't know if we have seen a return on investment with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform. I would say that the people in the different locations are thinking less about on-premises devices. Everything is going to the cloud.

We analyzed Nasuni.

My advice to others looking into using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is that a TAM is needed when you are working on new features or when you have critical topics before they release the infrastructure on your environment.

For me, CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is 9 over 10, so we are happy with them. I would rate this review an 8.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is used primarily as cloud storage and data retention within the company.

For cloud storage and data retention in our organization using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, we have roughly 210 terabytes of data, a lot of that being in the US, across about 72 sites, with everything stored in the US cloud and Azure cloud storage for other international sites, and we utilize it for data redundancy, allowing us to fail back to a different filer if one fails. CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform securely stores everything in the cloud, which lets us spin up a filer quickly to ensure data access or move the shares, and since everything is stored in the cloud, it keeps our data safe through regular backups.

The best features that CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform offers include exceptional data resiliency, as when one of our filers goes down, we've had incidents where users can access their data within 15-20 minutes, minimizing downtime. If something goes down, we cut over some DFS and everything works well. Another feature I appreciate is the built-in ransomware detection, which has been really useful; we've tweaked the settings for our needs, and having alerts for potential threats has been beneficial for our security operations.

The ransomware detection feature is effective as it picks up on the number of files modified in a short period, and while we haven't had ransomware incidents, CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform has alerted us when someone modified a large number of files, blocking potentially harmful actions before any damage occurred, which is reassuring, especially with a user base of about 20,000.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform has positively impacted our organization primarily through improved data residency; utilizing Azure cloud storage has been beneficial, allowing us to recover quickly when filers or servers go down across locations, ensuring continuous access to data.

One area for improvement with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform involves the data metrics, as I think having deeper insights into usage at the folder level would be beneficial; understanding why certain sites use significant data amounts helps manage resources better. While they recently introduced Insights to assist with this, we are still setting up the feature within our government entity, where we require on-prem information.

We started setting it up in 2024, so it has been about two years.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is stable.

Our user experience is pretty good, and no one has voiced any complaints.

My experience with customer support has been excellent, as they consistently respond within a day, often within an hour.

Prior to CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, we primarily relied on Windows file shares, so I'm not sure I would classify that as a traditional solution.

Deploying CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform within our organization's firewall was super easy, thanks to our networking team who implemented it with minimal fuss, following the clear documentation provided by CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform.

We utilize CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform's RansomProtect, which features honeypot detection and blocking, ultimately freeing up our security staff by reducing the workload on monitoring excessive file usage; while we have not faced full ransomware attacks, it has alerted us during instances of unusually large file modifications.

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.

Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, I found CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform to have competitive pricing compared to options such as Nasuni and IBM, and we were satisfied with both setup costs and licensing terms.

Before settling on CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, we evaluated several alternatives including Nasuni, Dell, IBM, and Nutanix.

I would rate CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform a 10 overall, which represents an overall rating of 10 for this product.

I choose a rating of 10 because of the excellent support we receive, from the setup team to our account managers, who respond quickly and effectively, making the service fantastic.

Regarding CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform's AI capabilities, we haven't had too much involvement with them, but we are eager about what Insights can offer, even though we haven't experimented with it extensively yet.

From what we've seen, CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform's Insights demonstrate strong accuracy and reliability, which makes us enthusiastic to transition to utilizing it further, as it leverages AI capabilities to delve deeper into our data.

For others considering CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, I recommend ensuring to set up zones beforehand, especially if you're a multi-country operation with data residency regulations.

My main use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is that it's a file server. I can give you a quick specific example of how I use it as a file server in my organization: it's a standard file server with shares on CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform mapped to users, and they use it according to their function.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform has impacted my organization positively. It functions exactly as a Windows server, and users are just happy about it.

When I say users are happy, it's just the standard normal day-to-day usage without any hassles.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is perfectly fine for our use case. As far as file shares are concerned, it works exactly as our previous platform, and we are very happy with it.

In my opinion, the best features CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform offers are that it's very similar to the Windows file server that we used earlier. I think it needs a lot less maintenance, and it's a lot cheaper to use than Windows.

When I mention it has lower maintenance, it's more that we don't have to do the standard Windows updates every month or so.

I believe the current feature set of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform suffices all our requirements.

I have not seen anything I'd like to see improved with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform. We're very happy with the current feature set and functionality.

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

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is very stable.

I haven't really had the opportunity to scale the file servers, but in terms of scaling the cloud, it's very easy to purchase more cloud storage space from CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform.

Customer support is fantastic, and I would rate it ten out of ten.

I previously used a different solution. We used Windows file server and switched because CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform's solution was a lot cheaper than Windows and it provided the same feature set.

I assess my employees' learning curve for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform as almost zero. We were online within twenty-four hours.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that the pricing was very favorable. It was cheaper than our previous platform.

The setup costs were lower due to less hardware and faster deployment. We engaged CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform services for setting up, and their services have been great as they were able to deliver what they had promised in two days, migrating us from the old server to the new.

I have not seen a return on investment. Our use case is file shares, and it doesn't impact money or time.

The setup costs were lower due to less hardware and faster deployment. We engaged CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform services for setting up, and their services have been great as they were able to deliver what they had promised in two days, migrating us from the old server to the new.

Before choosing CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, I did evaluate other options. We evaluated Nasuni, Panzura, and a few more including Ignite.

My advice to others looking into using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is that if they are currently using Windows file server for presenting their file shares, they should be looking at CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform as a cheaper option to achieve the same purpose. I would rate this product ten out of ten.

The main use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is to ensure that employees working for the client I have been contracting with have access to all saved files. In my day-to-day work, I rely most on CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform to access files through the private cloud my client has been using.

A specific example of how my team uses CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform to access files is that instead of Microsoft, my client depends upon CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform. We have a private cloud where we save all the files, so if a person has a new workstation and wants to ensure they are accessing the files they generally have access to, CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform comes into view. CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is the platform we use to access the files in the cloud. To clarify, if a person is working for a certain agency, they will have a shared workgroup that everyone uses. Everybody saves files in the same workgroup, which we access using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform. Once the workstation is customized, if they experience issues with file synchronization or access problems, we step in and use CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform to resolve those issues for them.

There are many ways we use CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform for various functions, including fetching profiles, rebuilding profiles, restoring files, undeleting, or mass undeleting files. Essentially, everything revolves around file access, which is the main objective of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform.

I have been personally using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform for a long time, and I feel that the best feature is the ease at which we can provide services to the employees of the company, especially in rebuilding profiles or restoring or deleting necessary or unnecessary files. All of this can be easily performed on the platform, which I feel is the best feature.

The profile rebuilding feature of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform stands out compared to other platforms I have used because with other platforms, I would have to go to multiple sites and ensure access, then return to build and sync the profile into the workstation. However, with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, it is straightforward. We just ensure all details are inputted correctly into the main platform when a person is onboarded, and once the requests are raised, we simply go to the directory services option in CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform and click to fetch the user, which makes the whole process very easy.

When it comes to mass undeleting in CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, it is a process where we restore files that are deleted by mistake. It is generally used when people delete some files unintentionally, but with a mass undeleting script, we restore all files deleted by a specific workgroup or folders in the cloud for the last six months. It is not easy to lose a file when we use CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform because even if it is lost, it can be restored easily. This is especially helpful when people change their laptops or when files are accidentally lost. Sometimes people do not check if their workstations are synced properly, and they mistakenly mess up with the files. There have also been situations where a whole office has lost thousands of files, and with the help of the mass undeletions script, we can restore everything quickly, just a few clicks away, because CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is that automated. Restoration is also straightforward; if a person can provide the file name or location and a tentative date when they last accessed the file, I can restore it for them with just a few steps. CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is so automated that I can handle these tasks easily on my own.

Regarding automation and ease of use in CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, while we currently have all the automations we need, I believe there is room for more improvements. CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform offers a broad platform, so the scope for further automation is large. In terms of ease of use, it is user-friendly, but we need to ensure users are well-trained on how to save files properly within a workgroup when using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform and how to keep everything synced. The only issue I face is that we give many rules to employees, and not everyone remembers all of them. Aside from that, everything is good.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform does not have a noticeable positive impact or a specific outcome that I have observed. It is as useful as any other cloud service but perhaps with more limitations, especially when compared to public clouds in Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud, where there are fewer user education requirements. However, I do support CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform in scenarios where a private cloud is essential over a public or hybrid cloud.

The limitations I have observed while using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform mainly revolve around access. For instance, if there are numerous agencies in my client company, each workgroup is assigned a specific agent number, and users must follow specific orders to save files. Sometimes users mistakenly save, which messes up synchronization. We do not have a catch for this problem, so we must educate users on proper file saving practices. The second limitation is a loss of functionality regarding access confidentiality, where staff under agents used to have restricted file access, but that feature is no longer available. This makes maintaining file confidentiality challenging.

To improve CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, it is crucial to implement features that allow better access controls; this would greatly benefit not just my client but many corporates worldwide looking to keep files organized while limiting access.

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

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is not as stable as a corporate would prefer. We have faced multiple issues in the past year, including a performance problem that took three to four months to resolve with the vendor. This incident led to a backlog of thousands of tickets for the team managing CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, and it took us more than four months to clear the queue and assist users in the organization.

I do not think CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform can handle growth or increased workloads easily because we faced such issues around nine months ago, where it took three to four months for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform to provide a resolution, followed by additional months to stabilize the system again within the organization.

I would rate customer support for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform as neutral because we have not always had good support. There have been times when they lagged considerably, making the overall experience neutral; while we had swift resolutions at times, there were long waits on other occasions.

The client I work for has been using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform from the beginning and did not use any other platform before this.

Before choosing CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, the organization evaluated other options but found them unsuitable due to confidentiality concerns related to being a public cloud, leading them to select CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform.

I can definitely say that there is considerable time savings with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform compared to traditional approaches for file access and saving. Additionally, the staff required for file access issues is significantly reduced; we manage with a small team of just ten people, which eases the financial burden on the organization.