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.

My main use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is related to a database shrinking and rebuilding activity that we recently performed.

The best features of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform include significant scalability in Edge Filer, especially where we use cloud object storage. It provides massive scalability. Another key feature is robust data protection that CTERA offers, and it provides us a unified global file system.

For robust data protection, CTERA provides continuous data protection and cloud-native backup. Regarding metadata, it provides a very converged solution for metadata and an immutable archive along with a cross-region converged solution for robust data protection. In the disaster recovery component, it provides a unique feature for metadata disaster recovery, allowing for fast retrieval of our critical files. Regarding scalability, CTERA offers unlimited capacity scaling at low-cost cloud storage, which reduces our storage costs and enables seamless tiering of our cold data to object storage.

Another advantage is that CTERA provides us a reduction in our IT cost and consolidation of our legacy infrastructure. CTERA has replaced multiple legacy hardware stacks including NAS, backup, and file servers. This is a very unique feature that eliminates our NAS branch for our client and provides a single platform for file storage where we can sync, share, and backup.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform has improved our operations tremendously by eliminating our NAS branch and providing a single platform for our file storage where we can sync, share, and backup our runtime data.

There needs to be improvements, particularly regarding real-time sync conflict resolution and cloud latency. Sometimes I face issues in real-time sync conflict as well as latency in the cloud.

If CTERA could automate its migration component and provide it in a utility way, that would be great. Additionally, there are a few other features that could improve my overall experience.

We were also facing performance issues in our CTERA environment, and after diagnosing various scenarios and use cases that users shared, we found that all of them were experiencing slowness in our Edge Filer. During diagnosis, we discovered that our database size had increased significantly. Although CTERA itself provides an automated service called CTERA vacuum, we found that a manual database vacuum activity needed to be performed on our Postgres database. We recently performed this manual CTERA database vacuum activity, and it helped tremendously. It resolved the intermittent slowness issue that we were experiencing for several customers and multiple CTERA Edge Filers.

We checked our audit logs and Edge Filer logs to identify the root cause. Initially, we observed that it appeared to be related to network issues, but after thoroughly checking our logs, we discovered that the issue was related to a delay in our services where our Edge Filers and application servers were reaching the database. We checked our database very thoroughly, reviewed all the logs, and identified the problem. During this process, we performed all CTERA vacuum activities, which helped significantly. I can provide more details if needed.

Regarding handling the issue on the Edge Filer side, the major issue recently has been the database component. On a day-to-day basis, we encounter performance issues in our Edge Filer where some of our Edge Filers experience network issues, resulting in higher response times. In one scenario, we moved our traffic from the physical Edge Filer to the local Edge Filer. We observed trouble with our local Edge Filer in that case, and we routed our traffic to the physical Edge Filer instead.

I have been using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform for the past six years.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is stable.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform's scalability is very good.

Regarding customer support, CTERA offers very good support. They assign a dedicated engineer for our account, and we can reach out to our account manager directly. In case of daily operational issues, we usually raise CTERA support tickets, and we receive exceptional support from them.

I previously used AWS file share services for another client, and now for my current client, I am using CTERA. When comparing it with my previous client, the best aspect of CTERA is that it supports a multi-cloud environment, unlike before where I was only concerned with one cloud.

I only evaluated AWS file share services.

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.

For those considering using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, I advise comparing it with NetApp, Nasuni, and Panzura, as CTERA stands out in terms of providing services and support. There are many use cases across various sectors where CTERA can be utilized, including banking, healthcare, and all remote sites. CTERA combines cloud-scale storage, edge performance, and intelligent data management with a unified platform.

In CTERA, we usually deal with application patching, new changes that need to be implemented, and overall maintenance of our application structure. CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform has positively impacted our organization's security posture by effectively offering user endpoint deduplication, continuous data protection, and multi-cloud replication.

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.

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.

I use the CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform administration portal for monitoring the servers, and if the files are not working and corrupted, I restore them. I also use it for the backup of the files.

I assessed my employees' learning curve for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, and it took me around one month to understand how it works and what it does exactly. I can monitor the different servers in it, and I can easily access the files over the cloud platform. However, it is a bit difficult to find the files because I need to go through each and every folder step-by-step, and the search engine optimization is not that good, so I face some difficulties in finding the files.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform has helped my organization to reduce its total cost of ownership. I track CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform for my project, and for my teammates, it is very helpful. If we encounter a problem, we directly log in to CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform portal to check whether any filer or machine is full, including RAM or storage. We can directly click on the machine, and a dashboard opens, allowing us to check if it is full, if it is synced or not, and if the backup is synced or not. This capability enables us to really manage our resources effectively.

I like the dashboard of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform. It is very convenient and user-friendly. I can easily monitor the filers where I can find the root cause, which is very helpful to detect any problem.

I have seen multiple benefits from using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform. There are multiple servers on Linux-based machines over CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform. If any server machine goes offline, I directly get the alert over my email. It is very convenient for me to check my emails to see whether any filer or machine is offline, so I can log in to CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform portal and easily check what the problem is and what the root cause is, allowing me to work accordingly.

Overall, CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform has helped to free up IT resources for other projects or tasks. I find it a time-saving platform. I use CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform portal in my VDI, so it is kind of difficult for me to log in into my VDI through the VPN and then open the VDI server and then CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform portal. There are some lags in VDI, which I guess is due to the network issue, but overall, it is very convenient for me to work on CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform.

Apart from time-saving, CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform provides secure file access and centralized control, which are measurable benefits for me. I personally love the file access management from everywhere. I can access files from anywhere in the world, from any location or any device through the internet. It can also help with cost-saving infrastructure-wise, and the easy file sharing and collaboration features are superb, providing convenience in CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform portal.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is scalable. I can extend storage using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform easily, as it supports cloud object storage. Companies can increase storage for a few TBs or PBs without changing hardware, which is a plus point. It can support thousands of users in multiple offices at the same time, and if the company opens a new branch, they can simply deploy more Edge Filers and connect them to the same portal.

I feel the data protection offered by CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is solid. CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform provides automatic backup of files and endpoints, and if data is lost and deleted or corrupted, it can be restored from backup, which is very valuable. It also has snapshot versioning features, allowing companies to restore files to previous versions. If the current file is attacked or corrupted, I can click on the three dots for version history and restore the latest version, ensuring that the data is still protected. The access control features for viewing, editing, or downloading files have a good interface.

Based on my experience, I would prefer to see improvements or enhancements in CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform. My friends who also work with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform say the portal interface is confusing for them. Improvements could include a simpler and easier-to-navigate UI, and the technical documentation can sometimes be complex for beginners. When I was a beginner, it was really difficult for me to locate what I was searching for. I use it in VDI, so I feel that it is a bit unresponsive.

I have been working with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform for six months.

Regarding the stability aspect of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, I have been using it for six months, and I have not found any downtime with this portal. I have faced downtime with the VDI, the virtual machine, but not with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform portal.

Regarding the customer service team and technical support team from CTERA, I have escalated some questions to them. I have a ticket related to a user who is having issues on some filers. He created a ticket on the platform, ServiceNow, and I took that ticket. It has been one to two months since we contacted CTERA support team, and they are really listening to us. The ticket is ongoing, and they are supporting us with detecting the problem and identifying the exact root cause, which I can say is helpful.

On a scale of one to ten, I would really rate the tech support of CTERA at about an 8.5 because they are really good.

Before CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, I have not worked with any other solution of the same kind, as this is my first company. If I work with any other platform or software in the future, I can compare accordingly.

For the initial setup of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, senior people in my team took care of that part.

The deployment process of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform usually happens in a few steps such as planning and requirements, determining how much storage is needed, the number of users and offices, and deciding which cloud platforms will be used, such as AWS, Azure, and Google. After that, we install CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform portal management system, deploy it on a virtual machine or cloud server, configure network settings, and set up admin accounts and users. Then, we configure the storage backend including AWS S3 or Azure Blob, followed by deploying Edge Filers. After that, we create users, set up their permissions to access files, and enable backup and sync through CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform portal, including file backup and endpoint protection. Finally, we work with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform portal to detect any problems.

I do not know much about the pricing, setup cost, or licensing cost of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform. I believe it comes with a license. From what I heard from my seniors, a 50 TB capacity license would be around 55 to 60 lakhs in Indian rupees.

Currently, I do not think there are any specific features or functionalities missing in CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform that I would want to see included or enhanced in the future, as it has only been six months since I started using it.

I am not really familiar with file replication and versioning in CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform.

Regarding Ransom Protect, I do not know about it right now.

For organizations considering CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, I recommend that they first need to understand how CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform works. They should learn how it connects different cloud platforms and how CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform portal operates. Understanding all the options in CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, such as adding storage, finding files, restoring previous versions, and what to do if a file is corrupted will be really helpful for them.

I would rate this product an 8 out of 10.

I use CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform for end-user sharing, for CIFS and for NFS sharing. We use it to store biomedical equipment output and for archiving users files for long retention.

My favourite feature about CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is the cloud synchronisation and the way the filers work. For example, when we do an upgrade from the application and the database servers perspective, the filers, which are the nodes that share the information to the users, those can continue working without the synchronisation with the portal because they have their own reduced storage space. For a two hours upgrade, the users didn't notice the upgrades or we didn't need to open a maintenance window. We can continue providing services to the users, and that is my favourite solution for that tool.

The file replication in CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is good, and the same thing with the filers and the portal is good because you can have on the filers the more used files, similar to hot pinning. In the portal, you have all the complete directories. For me, that is good. The replication works fast, and they do a good job with that.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform has helped me to reduce my recovery point objectives, the RPOs, because with the solution we have a principal site and a disaster recovery site. In the disaster recovery site we have CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform components so in case of a problem in the principal site, we can migrate the sharing to the disaster recovery site. This is also implemented with a storage solution. CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is our front-end platform for the users, but in the back end, we have Scality as the S3 bucket. CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform connects to the Scality for storage, and we have Scality replicated too. CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform uses the Scality bucket to store the data, and the RPOs work better with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform.

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. Because I have seen other tools that have it. The reporting and monitoring capabilities could be improved. The second one is that the filers are a good solution, but there is a problem because when you have multiple filers in three sites or in the same site with multiple filers, we have to replicate the configuration manually. It's not automatically syncing. For us, that is a problem because if I create a share in one filer, I have to go and create the share on the other filers. That means a lot of configuration time wasted in something that could potentially be done with a tool to replicate that automatically in the backend or in the background of the solution. Those two points would be the areas most needing improvement in the solution.

I have been working with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform for two years, since 2024.

Yes, CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is a stable platform. There are not concerns from users perspective about latency, out of service or disruption of the service, but also in an upgrade maintenance window.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform can scale out and scale up with out problem. We can add more resources on the same servers and in case we need to create more servers it can be done without problem.

We had to contact CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform technical support several times on the first months because we were still understanding the platform and we required some help. After the implementation was done, we had a knowledge transference for two days where they explained the solution to the whole team. When we opened cases I a noticed a great technical support level. The people that work there are always trying to help us. As a recommendation, the access to the software downloads, firmware, and updates should be more opened and allowed without having to create a case. When we worked with others vendors, we can access the software downloads without a problem, but with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, we have to open a case. When you open the case, they send you the links for the download but also the support team help you to create a plan to upgrade the platform.

The support deserves a nine on a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being the highest.

In my career, I have used NetApp solutions, HP solutions, Windows file server, and Scality. Scality had a Samba implementation, but I migrated from Scality because all the configuration and all the administration tasks were over CLI. Then I migrated to CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform to have a better administration platform for shares management, but I continued with Scality as the storage backend solution because of the replication and the ring platform. Those are the four solutions that I have worked with before CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform.

The initial deployment of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform was more or less difficult overall. As I mentioned, architecting the solution and seeing the components took a little more than we expected because it was difficult to understand the components and the way they work. After all the components were checked, all the networking was reviewed, and all the requirements were completed, the implementation took about two or three days, more or less. The architecting took about two weeks.

It was a team effort for the deployment of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform because in our company, we have the cyber security team, networking team, and infrastructure team. We had to work together to complete all the requirements for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform to be implemented. There was a team of about six to eight people internally and about two or three people from CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform.

The pricing of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is not a concern because we have CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform with more components packaged with HP GreenLake. They sell us the whole solution: the servers, the networking, and everything else.

However, I have a point of view about the licensing. Currently, we have a license for 150 terabytes, but the consumption in the licensing is not just the user current data, but also the deleted data and the snapshots. That means that we have about 70 terabytes of current data for the user, but from CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform's consumption point of view, we have consumed about 120 terabytes. For me, it's a little confusing because from the point of view of the user, we have one value, but from CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform we have another value. It would be better for us to consolidate or have the same information because I have to ask them about that, and they explain it to me. At first, it was a little confusing to figure that out.

Qumulo, IBM, Dell and Scality solutions.

When we started with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform and architecting the solution, there was something difficult to understand because of the different components they have: the database, the application or the portal, and the filers, and how they sync the information. After we finished the implementation, after about six months or so of using it, it's good because all the administration tasks are done via a graphical user interface. Before, we used another solution that was all done via CLI and was harder to use. CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is all about the graphical user interface, and after several months, I can use it without a problem.

I use the Ransom Protect feature in CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, and we have it in a monitoring state. They have found some behavioral analysis and reported it to us in cases where users deleted a lot of files or moved the files, and sent us an email about ransomware behavior. I have activated it right now, but that's in monitoring, not in active status, because in active status, they will disconnect the user.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform does not require any maintenance on my end. I would rate this solution an 8 on a scale from 1 to 10.

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.