CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs Cohesity SpanFS comparison

Cohesity and CTERA are both solutions in the File System Software category. Cohesity is ranked #7 with an average rating of 10.0, while CTERA is ranked #3 with an average rating of 9.3. Cohesity holds a 3.4% mindshare in FSS, compared to CTERA’s 7.4% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of CTERA users are willing to recommend the solution.

Cohesity SpanFS

Read 2 Cohesity SpanFS reviews

347 Views
212 Comparison Views

0% willing to recommend

CTERA Enterprise File Servi...

Read 8 CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform reviews

654 Views
281 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Cohesity SpanFS

CTERA Enterprise File Servi...

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cohesity SpanFS and CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two File System Software solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs. Cohesity SpanFS Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs. Cohesity SpanFS

January 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Cohesity SpanFS

Ranking in File System Software

7th

Average Rating

10.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

CTERA Enterprise File Servi...

Ranking in File System Software

3rd

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

NAS (9th), Cloud Migration (7th), Cloud Storage (10th), Cloud Backup (13th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (9th), Cloud Storage Gateways (2nd), Content Collaboration Platforms (12th)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the File System Software category, the mindshare of Cohesity SpanFS is 3.4%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is 7.4%, up from 4.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

File System Software

Featured Reviews

Stefan Motsch

Evangelist / CTO at FGNext / FGN GmbH

Along with offering competitive prices, the solution can be used by small, medium, and large businesses

While guaranteeing the strictness of the file system, there is a lot of performance involved. The performance is not as good as I expected. It's not the functionality here but the performance level. It won't be a problem if it's twice as fast. Even though its stability has room for improvement, I would recommend it to my bigger customers. The only problem is the current performance of the individual nodes. As a sale-out solution with integrated load-balancing functions, performance is in principle not a problem at all. Capacity and performance are linearly scalable over the number of nodes in the cluster. An increase in the performance of the individual nodes in future releases would be desirable.

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Igal Muginstein

Engineering & Network Division Storage, Backup & Os Team Manager at a comms service provider with 5,001-10,000 employees

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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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"It has snapshot capabilities. We take advantage of those."

"Our main reason for going for this solution was the uncontrollable growth of file data. It was unsustainable on our previous platform or technology. We needed something scalable like CTERA, so it was the scalability that we required."

"The CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is a hybrid solution that supports both on-premises and cloud environments."

"It is a three-in-one solution for us. It is a file-sharing platform, an archiving solution, and also a backup solution."

"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."

"CTERA has out-of-the-box data protection capabilities."

"The solution provides substantial flexibility, allowing the separation of workloads across various hardware platforms without vendor lock-in. This flexibility makes it adaptable to future infrastructure changes."

"CTERA is a very scalable product, allowing us to grow."

"The support is awesome. It is top-notch. I would rate their support a ten out of ten."

More CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform pros

Cons

"Its read performance can be improved. It is just slow in comparison to other file systems, but a lot of it also has to do with the fact that they have a limited number of spindles under each node."

"The only problem is the current performance of the individual nodes. As a sale-out solution with integrated load-balancing functions, performance is in principle not a problem at all. Capacity and performance are linearly scalable over the number of nodes in the cluster. An increase in the performance of the individual nodes in future releases would be desirable."

"It has a learning curve."

"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."

"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."

"Stability-wise, we just went through one issue that they addressed. We were having cloud sync issues."

"The web portal that our users access to view data and backups could be optimized. CTERA could apply some of the improvements made to their administrative interface on the user side. The administrators are a much smaller group of people than the users, so it would be helpful if they targeted user experience resources to them."

"However, in some cases, they could improve performance."

"They fixed all the requirements that we had in the beginning. The beginning was a little bit rough, but we tuned it nicely. However, in some cases, they could improve performance."

More CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I won't talk about specific numbers, but it is a little hard to compare it to other products out there because there is nobody out there that does exactly what they do. If you are just comparing it to another NAS box, it is probably going to look higher, but that's an unfair comparison because it does things that a NAS box can't do."

"When it comes to pricing, I know the prices because I am also running tenders for customers where I am not offering other solutions. Hence, the prices are pretty competitive."

"It is hard to compare the costs if we want to retain the same model of a separate high-performance storage or certain things, but it is one of the cheapest solutions available in Israel."

"CTERA's pricing 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."

"CTERA's pricing model is competitive compared to other companies that achieve the same thing. Their closest rival is Nasuni, and CTERA is significantly more affordable than Nasuni."

"It is fairly priced. I am not too involved in the pricing of what we used to pay, but it would have reduced the cost of ownership. I cannot give a figure, but the EMC solution was very expensive compared to CTERA."

"So far, pricing seems to be fine."

"I find the pricing reasonable. They offered us deals that helped us. Especially with the upgrade to a bigger unit last year, they were helpful with the deal."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

17%

Real Estate/Law Firm

12%

Government

Computer Software Company

69%

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cohesity SpanFS?

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cohesity SpanFS?

When it comes to pricing, I know the prices because I am also running tenders for customers where I am not offering other solutions. Hence, the prices are pretty competitive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cohesity SpanFS?

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?

I find the pricing reasonable. They offered us deals that helped us. Especially with the upgrade to a bigger unit last year, they were helpful with the deal.

See all answers

What needs improvement with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?

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, ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for 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 ...

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

File System Software

January 2025

Download Cohesity SpanFS product report

Buyer's Guide

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform

February 2025

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform report

Download CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform product report

Also Known As

SpanFS

No data available

Interactive Demo

Demo not available

Cohesity

CTERA

Overview

Designed to combine the best of enterprise and cloud stacks, SpanFS exposes industry-standard, globally distributed NFS, SMB and S3 interfaces.

The IO Engine detects random vs. sequential IO profiles, splits the data into chunks, performs deduplication and directs to the most appropriate storage tier.

SpanFS also includes a new Metadata Store based on a consistent, distributed, NoSQL store for fast operations at scale.

SnapTree® provides a distributed meta data structure based on B+ tree concepts. It supports unlimited, frequent snapshots with no performance degradation.

Cohesity

The CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform provides a cloud-native global file system over public and private object storage, revolutionizing the world of hybrid cloud data solutions. Enhanced by a rich data services ecosystem, CTERA enables enterprises to gain full control of their data for optimal edge performance, data insight, and governance. The platform focuses on security, providing features like data encryption, access controls, and ransomware protection. Centralized management tools enable efficient data control and monitoring. The platform is being used to replace legacy NAS and file servers, especially at remote locations, and simplify backup and disaster recovery of file data while providing the flexibility of multi-cloud deployments with infinite scalability. CTERA is at the core of hybrid cloud transformations of some of the world’s largest banks, healthcare organizations, global media groups, and government agencies, in deployments that scale to tens of petabytes.

CTERA

Sample Customers

Tribune Media

McDonald's, WPP, US Navy, Gore, Festo, Stryker, Bezeq, PERI

Buyer's Guide

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs. Cohesity SpanFS

January 2025

Free Report: CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs. Cohesity SpanFS

Find out what your peers are saying about CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs. Cohesity SpanFS and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.

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