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CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs Druva Phoenix comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 15, 2024

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

CTERA Enterprise File Servi...
Ranking in Cloud Backup
12th
Ranking in Disaster Recovery (DR) Software
8th
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 Storage (10th), Cloud Storage Gateways (2nd), Content Collaboration Platforms (12th)
Druva Phoenix
Ranking in Cloud Backup
16th
Ranking in Disaster Recovery (DR) Software
11th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Disaster Recovery as a Service (5th), SaaS Backup (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Cloud Backup category, the mindshare of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is 0.5%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Druva Phoenix is 0.7%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Backup
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Ratnodeep Roy - PeerSpot reviewer
Patch-based system, offers network flexibility but Logs are not very informative for regular users
The ransomware features are limited in Druva. There's a lot of improvement needed. It should extend to Nutanix and Hyper-V. It should extend to Azure as well. A lot of people are looking for ransomware scans, but Druva doesn't support them. Veeam barely supports them over Azure Virtual Machines. It doesn't support Linux Virtual Machines. NetApp and Commvault don't have such features. Acronis is also limited. In Azure, you have Azure Defender, but that works extensively on cloud storage, not on the servers. So, backup companies like Druva need to work a lot on ransomware protection and detection. These companies need to work a lot on ransomware detection, protection and more. Ransomware protection doesn't work in this hash-based transfer mirroring. If I only have to find this hash and feed it to the Druva end. It's sometimes not possible. It will struggle when the workloads are more than a hundred machines. It's not possible to find the hash of each file and provide it to Druva. So, this needs to be fully automated. If I were scanning with some technology, maybe signature-based scanning, behavioral-based, or keyword-based scanning. I can put this FHA, maybe SIEMs as well. But Druva is very limited. It's already in an active stage. I don't like that they don't extend all the features to all the workloads. These features are minimal compared to those of its competitors. For instance, I have one customer who was looking for Druva, but since they have Azure machines, they couldn't find a way to restore a particular file. Druva doesn't provide Azure virtual machine single file restore. It doesn't make sense to build a product and then it doesn't support it. Customers really struggle. Some customers tried Druva so that they don't have to think about setting up a separate network, but Druva is making things critical by not providing all the things at once and gradually releasing them. It's been more than six months or one year since they started their virtual machines, but there is no single file restore. Every time you have to restore the VM, and then from there, you can get the file. Why would people go with Druva if they have to manage backup machines? Nowadays, backup product companies need to be aggressive and adopt themselves in this highly changing world of AI and ML.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is a hybrid solution that supports both on-premises and cloud environments."
"CTERA has been particularly capable of keeping all of our workstations backed up. That became a critical feature for us during the pandemic when computers were rarely in the office. Everybody went off-site with their computers, and we were accustomed to working with a centralized storage infrastructure where people would come to the office and connect to the server to use, create, and modify files. Everything was done directly to that server."
"CTERA's instantaneous and redundant file replication, available across multiple geographical locations, ensures easy and user-friendly recovery."
"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."
"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."
"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 best feature is the migration tool within CTERA."
"Druva Phoenix is easy to use and easy to start with."
"Once you set it up and you tell it exactly what needs to be backed up, you literally forget about it. It sends you emails and notifications of the current status of the jobs."
"The most valuable features of Druva Phoenix are the simple portal to log in and flexibility."
"It's patch-based, so you don't have to bother about the backup server or the repository."
"The initial setup was very straightforward."
"I would definitively say that we have been able to make our people more productive by at least 30%."
"I found the cost-effectiveness of Druva Phoenix to be its most valuable feature, especially when compared to on-premises backup solutions."
 

Cons

"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."
"The new Edge filer that they have comes with a lot more features than what we purchased. It would be better if we are able to add those extra features without having to swap out the hardware. A clear upgrade path for legacy customers would be beneficial."
"However, in some cases, they could improve performance."
"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."
"More monitoring from the platform would be good. There is some monitoring, but it is paid. It is a chargeable service. It would be good for that to be included in the base."
"Stability-wise, we just went through one issue that they addressed. We were having cloud sync issues."
"I am looking for a process where version upgrades do not impact the customers. There is no downtime."
"It has a learning curve."
"The product's pricing needs to be improved."
"They were able to give us a very reasonable price considering we were non-for-profit organizations, however, there is always room for improvement on that cost."
"Druva Phoenix is optimized to work with x86 platforms, making it unsuitable for backing up non-x86 architectures like AIX. The solution is primarily designed for physical Linux and Windows systems based on the x86 architecture, as well as virtualized Windows and Linux environments. However, if you have an AIX system, it cannot be deployed in the cloud, and therefore, backing it up in the cloud is not a concern."
"There is room for improvement in the reporting aspect of Druva Phoenix."
"Druva Phoenix should include a few reporting features that it doesn't provide currently."
"The ransomware features are limited in Druva. There's a lot of improvement needed. It should extend to Nutanix and Hyper-V. It should extend to Azure as well."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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 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."
"I am not directly involved in the pricing aspects, but I understand that CTERA's pricing is competitive and within industry standards."
"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."
"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."
"It's very costly. Normal people wouldn't understand how their credits are calculated. It's pretty complex."
"Druva Phoenix's pricing is based on the service provided, and it's reasonable. The cost of the service will depend on the size of your data and the number of virtual machines being backed up. However, the pricing structure is straightforward and easy to understand."
"I assume clients use Druva Phoenix because it is cheaper than other products."
"We’ve had experience with the data center for a while and we have had solutions that were able to support older versions of the operating systems that we needed. I would like for Druva to support it as well."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
70%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Educational Organization
4%
University
3%
Computer Software Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What do you like most about Druva Phoenix?
Druva Phoenix is easy to use and easy to start with.
What needs improvement with Druva Phoenix?
The product's pricing needs to be improved. Including more flexible feature sets such as options for sending secondary backups to different locations would be beneficial.
What is your primary use case for Druva Phoenix?
We utilized the product to modernize backup as a service, eliminating the need for extensive hardware and ensuring data is securely backed off-site.
 

Also Known As

No data available
CloudRanger
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

McDonald's, WPP, US Navy, Gore, Festo, Stryker, Bezeq, PERI
TRC Companies, Family Health Network, GulfMark Offshore, Pall Corporation
Find out what your peers are saying about CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs. Druva Phoenix and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.