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Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) vs CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
8.2
Amazon EBS provides scalable, efficient cloud storage, boosting performance and ROI between 20% to 25%, eliminating hard disk needs.
Sentiment score
7.2
CTERA Enterprise File Services reduced costs and time, minimized manual storage, and eliminated SSD and alternative storage needs.
As a cloud storage option, it is flexible and cost-effective, eliminating the need for a permanent investment in hard disks.
Adding SSD storage to Windows file servers is expensive, and we no longer need to back up those devices.
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.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.0
Amazon EBS customer service is generally efficient but varies in quality and cost based on support plans.
Sentiment score
8.3
CTERA's platform provides responsive support, rated highly for proactive assistance and efficient issue resolution by knowledgeable agents.
Enterprise support provides access to AWS developers 24/7.
They provide instant and chat support, addressing concerns in a timely manner.
Once subscribed, the support team is very responsive, connecting remotely to assist with troubleshooting.
They swiftly address concerns and take ownership of the call, providing a very satisfactory support experience.
High-priority issues are handled promptly.
I would rate their support a ten out of ten.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
Amazon EBS is praised for its scalability and efficiency, especially in database-heavy environments, despite some manual processes.
Sentiment score
8.3
CTERA's platform is scalable and easy to expand globally, though CPU and memory licensing constraints may pose challenges.
Amazon EBS is easy to scale up or down as needed.
Vertical scaling can be achieved by adding additional volumes whenever the created storage is insufficient.
All cloud solutions permit scalability, and this is an important feature.
If we need to upgrade CPU and memory, we should be able to do that without a license upgrade.
CTERA is a very scalable product, allowing us to grow.
It offers good scalability options, including vertical and outward scalability.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Amazon EBS is highly rated for stability, ease of use, and reliable performance, with occasional regional connectivity issues.
Sentiment score
7.5
CTERA's platform faced initial bugs but improved over time, earning high stability ratings with reliable data access.
AWS provides infrastructure stability like data centers, ensuring high stability.
I have never had problems with its stability.
If the server is stable, then EBS is stable.
It has been pretty stable since then.
We had things deployed for years, and we were suddenly getting cloud sync issues that were crashing our sites.
It is very stable and reliable.
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon EBS faces challenges with performance, cost, scaling, latency, interface usability, and file system compatibility, impacting user experience.
The CTERA platform needs improvements in monitoring, updates, UI, logging, and performance, while users value current features and support.
Regarding EBS, if an instance is terminated, the volume is also deleted, which leads to data loss.
I would like EBS to have no limitations, similar to stream-like block storage, which can accommodate an unlimited amount of sales.
Deployment is not easy as it requires server downtime to map newly created volumes, impacting operations during additional volume additions.
AI and automation features could enhance the platform, such as AI-powered search, predictive storage analytics, and intelligent alerts for proactive monitoring.
It would help to have a global single-pane-of-glass view of all my CTERA devices.
One suggested improvement for the CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is the ability to distribute data across multiple active backend storage nodes rather than the current limitation of a single active node.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon EBS pricing varies with optimization; higher costs offer performance and reliability, yet can be expensive compared to competitors.
CTERA offers cost-effective enterprise file services with flexible licensing, providing significant savings over EMC and Nasuni, especially in Israel.
For SSD IOPS, you only pay $0.125 per gigabyte.
The pay-for-what-you-use model justifies the amount paid, with no extra or hidden charges.
Users are charged only for the data used, not for the allocated volume.
Unlike other solutions that require hardware purchases, CTERA offers software licensing with flexibility across multiple infrastructure providers.
CTERA's pricing seems to be on par with some of the other players, such as Nasuni and Azure.
I find the pricing reasonable.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon EBS provides scalable, secure, and affordable storage with high performance and flexibility, supporting diverse storage needs effectively.
CTERA excels in scalability, flexibility, data management, and protection, making it ideal for hybrid cloud and remote work environments.
Amazon EBS is also scalable and provides high availability.
EBS provides vertical scaling options to add additional volumes when more storage is required.
Amazon EBS allows seamless changes to the instance type without affecting application availability.
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.
A vital advantage of this platform is its instantaneous recovery capability, allowing seamless access to a secondary gateway if the primary one fails.
It is a three-in-one solution for us. It is a file-sharing platform, an archiving solution, and also a backup solution.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EBS (Elastic Block S...
Ranking in Cloud Storage
9th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
CTERA Enterprise File Servi...
Ranking in Cloud Storage
10th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (2nd), NAS (9th), Cloud Migration (7th), Cloud Backup (12th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (8th), Cloud Storage Gateways (2nd), Content Collaboration Platforms (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Cloud Storage category, the mindshare of Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) is 2.1%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is 3.3%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Storage
 

Featured Reviews

MuhammadAzhar Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Diverse features and affordability drive effective resource management
Amazon EBS offers diverse features. It can be used for multi-purpose storage, supporting single, multiple, or heavy loads. It has different types for various use cases, allowing me to choose based on my specific requirements. The primary advantage of Amazon EBS is affordability compared to other solutions like EFS or FSX. It acts as a hard drive for servers, making it essential for operation.
Igal Muginstein - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers flexibility, fast performance, and ransomware protection
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.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
50%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
70%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Educational Organization
4%
University
3%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Amazon's S3 Glacier or EBS (Elastic Block Store)?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon's S3 Glacier or Elastic Block Store data storage software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Amazon's S3 Glacier, whi...
What do you like most about Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store)?
The durability and snapshot capabilities are good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store)?
The cost of Amazon EBS storage is high. I rate the price as eight out of ten. It is expensive to store a lot yet provides significant cost-efficiency as I pay only for the storage time required.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
I am not directly involved in the pricing aspects, but I understand that CTERA's pricing is competitive and within industry standards.
What needs improvement with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
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 ...
What is your primary use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
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 severa...
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bazaar Voice, Crowd Strike, Adobe, Gamevil, Hess, CopperEgg, TotalJobs Group, SuperCell, Dropcam, Unilever
McDonald's, WPP, US Navy, Gore, Festo, Stryker, Bezeq, PERI
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) vs. CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.