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CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs Nasuni comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 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

IBM Turbonomic
Sponsored
Ranking in Cloud Migration
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
205
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (4th), Virtualization Management Tools (4th), IT Financial Management (1st), IT Operations Analytics (4th), Cloud Analytics (1st), Cloud Cost Management (1st), AIOps (5th)
CTERA Enterprise File Servi...
Ranking in Cloud Migration
7th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (2nd), NAS (9th), Cloud Storage (10th), Cloud Backup (13th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (9th), Cloud Storage Gateways (2nd), Content Collaboration Platforms (12th)
Nasuni
Ranking in Cloud Migration
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (1st), NAS (5th), Cloud Storage (3rd), Cloud Backup (8th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (8th), Cloud Storage Gateways (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

Keldric Emery - PeerSpot reviewer
Saves time and costs while reducing performance degradation
It's been a very good solution. The reporting has been very, very valuable as, with a very large environment, it's very hard to get your hands on the environment. Turbonomic does that work for you and really shows you where some of the cost savings can be done. It also helps you with the reporting side. Me being able to see that this machine hasn't been used for a very long time, or seeing that a machine is overused and that it might need more RAM or CPU, et cetera, helps me understand my infrastructure. The cost savings are drastic in the cloud feature in Azure and in AWS. In some of those other areas, I'm able to see what we're using, what we're not using, and how we can change to better fit what we have. It gives us the ability for applications and teams to see the hardware and how it's being used versus how they've been told it's being used. The reporting really helps with that. It shows which application is really using how many resources or the least amount of resources. Some of the gaps between an infrastructure person like myself and an application are filled. It allows us to come to terms by seeing the raw data. This aspect is very important. In the past, it was me saying "I don't think that this application is using that many resources" or "I think this needs more resources." I now have concrete evidence as well as reporting and some different analytics that I can show. It gives me the evidence that I would need to show my application owners proof of what I'm talking about. In terms of the downtime, meantime, and resolution that Turbonomic has been able to show in reports, it has given me an idea of things before things happen. That is important as I would really like to see a machine that needs resources, and get resources to it before we have a problem where we have contention and aspects of that nature. It's been helpful in that regard. Turbonomic has helped us understand where performance risks exist. Turbonomic looks at my environment and at the servers and even at the different hosts and how they're handling traffic and the number of machines that are on them. I can analyze it and it can show me which server or which host needs resources, CPU, or RAM. Even in Azure, in the cloud, I'm able to see which resources are not being used to full capacity and understand where I could scale down some in order to save cost. It is very, very helpful in assessing performance risk by navigating underlying causes and actions. The reason why it's helpful is because if there's a machine that's overrunning the CPU, I can run reports every week to get an idea of machines that would need CPU, RAM, or additional resources. Those resources could be added by Turbonomic - not so much by me - on a scheduled basis. I personally don't have to do it. It actually gives me a little bit of my life back. It helps me to get resources added without me physically having to touch each and every resource myself. Turbonomic has helped to reduce performance degradation in the same way as it's able to see the resources and see what it needs and add them before a problem occurs. It follows the trends. It sees the trends of what's happening and it's able to add or take away those resources. For example, we discuss when we need to do certain disaster recovery tests. Over the years, Turbo will be able to see, for example, around this time of year that certain people ramp up certain resources in an environment, and then it will add the resources as required. Another time of year, it will realize these resources are not being used as much, and it takes those resources away. In this way, it saves money and time while letting us know where we are. We've saved a great deal of time using this product when I consider how I'd have to multiply myself and people like me who would have to add resources to devices or take resources away. We've saved hundreds of hours. Most of the time those hours would have to be after hours as well, which are more valuable to me as that's my personal time. Those saved hours are across months, not years. I would consider the number of resources that Turbonomic is adding and taking away and the placement (if I had to do it all myself) would end up being hundreds of hours monthly that would be added without the help of Turbonomic. It helps us to meet SLAs mainly due to the fact that we're able to keep the servers going and to keep the servers in an environment, to keep them to where (if we need to add resources) we can add them at any given time. It will keep our SLAs where they need to be. If we were to have downtime due to the fact that we had to add resources or take resources away and it was an emergency, then that would prevent us from meeting our SLAs. We also use it to monitor Azure and to monitor our machines in terms of the resources that are out there and the cost involved. In a lot of cases, it does a better job of giving us cost information than Azure itself does. We're able to see the cost per machine. We're able to see the unattached volume and storage that we are paying for. It gives us a great level of insight. Turbonomic gives us the time to be able to focus on innovation and ongoing modernization. Some of the tasks that it does are tasks that I would not necessarily have to do. It's very helpful in that I know that the resources are there where they need to be and it gives me an idea of what changes need to be made or what suggestions it's making. Even if I don't take them, I'm able to get a good idea of some best practices through Turbonomic. One of the ways that Turbonomic does to help bring new resources to market is that we are now able to see the resources (or at least monitor the resources) before they get out to the general public within our environment. We saw immediate value from the product in the test environment. We set it up in a small test environment and we started with just placement and we could tell that the placement was being handled more efficiently than what VMware was doing. There was value for us in placement alone. Then, after we left the placement, we began to look at the resources and there were resources. We immediately began to see a change in the environment. It has made the application and performance better, mainly due to the fact that we are able to give resources and take resources away based on what the need is. Our expenses, definitely, have been in a better place based on the savings that we've been able to make in the cloud and on-prem. Turbonomic has been very helpful in that regard. We've been able to see the savings easily based on the reports in Turbonomic. That, and just seeing the machines that are not being used to capacity allows us to set everything up so it runs a bit more efficiently.
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.
Richard McGregor - PeerSpot reviewer
Removes a lot of infrastructure, allows us to restore files instantly, and is simple to work with
I particularly like the restore process. Our financial teams make changes to spreadsheets and other files, and we've got teams using Photoshop files. They make mistakes and need to recover files, and we can do that instantly. We also have users who manage to delete folders, and we can bring them back instantly within a few seconds. Knowing that it's all protected from ransomware is also a very big advantage at the moment with the number of ransomware attacks that you see out there. Nasuni is being very protective of that, which is quite good to hear. There were times when we had to replace the filers we've had issues with, and because we know all our data is protected in AWS, we could just turn them off and spin them up. As quickly as in an hour or so, we were back working with zero downtime. That area of functionality is really good. In terms of ease of management, it's the easiest one you can use. It's very simple. It's very easy to set up, very easy to configure, and very easy to manage.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The system automatically sizes and moves resources based on the needs of the applications."
"It helps us get a consolidated view of all customer spending into a single dashboard, allowing us to identify opportunities to improve their current spending."
"It also brings up a list of machines and if something is under-provisioned and needs more compute power it will tell you, 'This server needs more compute power, and we suggest you raise it up to this level.' It will even automatically do it for you. In Azure, you don't have to actually go into the cloud provider to resize. You can just say, 'Apply these resizes,' and Turbonomic uses some back-end APIs to make the changes for you."
"The feature for optimizing VMs is the most valuable because a number of the agencies have workloads or VMs that are not really being used. Turbonomic enables us to say, 'If you combine these, or if you decide to go with a reserve instance, you will save this much.'"
"On-premises, one advantage I find particularly appealing is the ability to create policies for automatic CPU and memory scaling based on demand."
"Rightsizing is valuable. Its recommendations are pretty good."
"The solution has a good optimization feature."
"We can manage multiple environments using a single pane of glass, which is something that I really like."
"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 features I find most valuable are in the gateways themselves. They have done a great job over the years of providing insight into what is happening with our products, with the batches that come through that are scanned. I enjoy that part of it, and it is fairly easy to use from our standpoint once we get to know the product."
"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."
"The CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is a hybrid solution that supports both on-premises and cloud environments."
"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."
"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 support is awesome. It is top-notch. I would rate their support a ten out of ten."
"I can see who is logging in on files from all over the globe. For example, if a file is locked, maybe a user in Shanghai has locked files or something, I can see that from the Management Console, then unlock the file."
"Nasuni offers us a single platform with a 360-degree view of our file data, which is definitely important to us. It simplifies IT operations tremendously. Because it is taking continuous snapshots, it eliminates a lot of work that was done previously when trying to manage backing up and restoring data files."
"The Nasuni management dashboard is helpful because, on the administration side, I'm able to view all of the different filers that we have in the UK, rather than check each one of them individually."
"Nasuni is tremendously easy to manage. It eliminates many of the administrative challenges associated with physical hardware storage, and you don't need to worry about any hardware failure or products reaching the end of their lives."
"Nasuni has the capability of taking a snapshot every five minutes. If a user has accidentally deleted their data, we can recover it from the snapshot and provide the latest data to the user. It's a really great feature, one that is not provided by other vendors."
"The global file locking feature is valuable. The ability to quickly deploy new sites is also valuable."
"Snapshot backup is most valuable. It's quick and easy to use. It's controlled only by an administrator, which is very good. It takes 10 seconds to back up a spreadsheet of three or four megabytes."
"With Nasuni Management Console (NMC), we get a single, centralized view of our entire internal structure and data center structure. This is very important because this caters to remote locations. One of the main care center teams is dependent on this solution. As it is directly connected to customers for the calls that they receive and troubleshoot, they can then help customers out in case they are not able to place an order."
 

Cons

"They have a long road map when we ask for certain things that will make the product better. It takes time, but that's understandable because there are other things that are higher on the priority list."
"The deployment process is a little tricky. It wasn't hard for me because I have pretty in-depth knowledge of Kubernetes, and their software runs on Kubernetes. To deploy it or upgrade it, you have to be able to follow steps and use the Kubernetes command line, or you'll need someone to come in and do it for you."
"Since the introduction of a HTML 5 based interface, our main - but minor - criticism of a less than intuitive operation managers' GUI would be the area of improvement."
"In Azure, it's not what you're using. You purchase the whole 8 TB disk and you pay for it. It doesn't matter how much you're using. So something that I've asked for from Turbonomic is recommendations based on disk utilization. In the example of the 8 TB disk where only 200 GBs are being used, based on the history, there should be a recommendation like, "You can safely use a 500 GB disk." That would create a lot of savings."
"After running this solution in production for a year, we may want a more granular approach to how we utilize the product because we are planning to use some of its metrics to feed into our financial system."
"We're still evaluating the solution, so I don't know enough about what I don't know. They've done a lot over the years. I used Turbonomics six or seven years ago before IBM bought them. They've matured a lot since then."
"I would like Turbonomic to add more services, especially in the cloud area. I have already told them this. They can add Azure NetApp Files. They can add Azure Blob storage. They have already added Azure App service, but they can do more."
"It sometimes does get false positives. Sometimes, it'll move something when it really wasn't a performance metric. I've seen it do that, but it's pretty much an automated tool for performance. We've only got about 500 virtual machines, so lots of times, I'm able to manage it physically, but it's definitely a nice tool for a larger enterprise that might be managing 2,000 or 3,000 virtual machines."
"It has a learning curve."
"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."
"I am looking for a process where version upgrades do not impact the customers. There is no downtime."
"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."
"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."
"However, in some cases, they could improve performance."
"Stability-wise, we just went through one issue that they addressed. We were having cloud sync issues."
"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."
"I would like to see them improve their tools in regards to accessing data using smartphones, tablets, and iPads. I think the Nasuni app could be improved to make access to the data cleaner and more efficient."
"One thing to consider is that Nasuni will have the same limitations that a traditional file storage solution will have, although that is because they are taking the place of a traditional architectural model. For example, Office 365 supports collaboration on documents such as Excel files and Word documents, but because Nasuni is a traditional file server, in that sense, it can't make use of that functionality."
"We forecasted that the data at my client's organization would grow by about ten percent annually, but we are migrating more data because we are bringing in some servers that had not previously been within the scope of our license. We expected it would take us two years to reach a specific amount of data, but we hit that mark in one year. The licensing cost skyrocketed, so we need to renegotiate. It puts us in a bind because we are reliant on Nasuni for our service strategy. We can't deny our customers, but we also struggle to pay for that."
"The only issue we face with Nasuni is from the performance perspective. Sometimes, when we deploy a Nasuni device, it doesn't meet our requirements. It's a capacity-planning issue."
"Nasuni does not support different retention policies within the same volume, so you have to keep creating volumes for retention policies. When you create a new volume, it means you're starting from zero all over again. You can't move data between two volumes. You have to move them from your physical device to Nasuni or your cloud device to Nasuni."
"The user-friendliness of its access needs improvement. When I log into the console, I see all the files that we handle globally. There are hundreds of Nasuni files that I can see on the console, but no way that I can filter them down. While this is a small thing, I need to scroll down and select the ones that I want. "Control F" doesn't work nor is there a dropdown menu that I can click on and select the ones that I want."
"When we first set up our bandwidth limiting, we had a few problems when it came to managing it. This is something that could be made easier; however, we were able to make the changes that we needed to for our environment."
"One area that we've recently spoken to Nasuni about is single sign-on. Another is integrating Nasuni with Azure Active Directory. In our particular case, that would allow for third-party consultants to access our Azure Active Directory environment as opposed to coming to our on-premises environment."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You should understand the cost of your physical servers and how much time and money you are spending year over year on expanding your virtual farm."
"Contact the Turbonomic sales team, explain your needs and what you're looking to monitor. They will get a pre-sales SE on the phone and together work up a very accurate quote."
"The pricing is in line with the other solutions that we have. It's not a bargain software, nor is it overly expensive."
"I have not seen Turbonomic's new pricing since IBM purchased it. When we were looking at it in my previous company before IBM's purchase, it was compatible with other tools."
"It's worth the time and money investment if you can afford it."
"I don't know the current prices, but I like how the licensing is based on the number of instances instead of sockets, clusters, or cores. We have some VMs that are so heavy I can only fit four on one server. It's not cost-effective if we have to pay more for those. When I move around a VM SQL box with 30 cores and a half-terabyte of RAM, I'm not paying for an entire socket and cores where people assume you have at least 10 or 20 VMs on that socket for that pricing."
"It was an annual buy-in. You basically purchase it based on your host type stuff. The buy-in was about 20K, and the annual maintenance is about $3,000 a year."
"What I can advise is to trial the product, taking advantage of the Turbonomic pre-sales implemention support and kickstart training."
"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 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 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."
"So far, pricing seems to be fine."
"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."
"The pricing is fair. It's an enterprise-level solution so it's not inexpensive... The cost is pretty stable year over year."
"Nasuni pricing is average; it's not too high or too low."
"They could lower the cost, but it saves so much money when you go into it (by losing all the backup)."
"The cost is based on the capacity, which is approximately $100 USD per terabyte."
"Our agreement is set up such that we pay annually per terabyte, and we buy a chunk of it at a time. Then if we run out of space, we go back to them and buy another chunk."
"The pricing is on par with everybody else, and fair."
"Its pricing can get a tad expensive. When we first took Nasuni out, we were just paying for the service. We got storage at a reduced rate. It has now changed, and they're now more of an all-in-one type of thing. It can be quite expensive, but it works out. Apart from that, licensing-wise, it's very simple."
"It has a license fee as well as hardware costs, which we would incur if we want to use Nasuni Cloud Storage Gateway for upgrades."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Insurance Company
8%
Computer Software Company
68%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Educational Organization
4%
University
3%
Computer Software Company
19%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Turbonomic?
It offers different scenarios. It provides more capabilities than many other tools available. Typically, its price is...
What needs improvement with Turbonomic?
The implementation could be enhanced.
What is your primary use case for Turbonomic?
We use IBM Turbonomic to automate our cloud operations, including monitoring, consolidating dashboards, and reporting...
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 las...
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 wit...
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 ...
Does Nasuni have a good pricing model?
Based on the experience of my organization, Nasuni is definitely worth the money, since it gives you an all-in-one so...
Is it easy to restore files with Nasuni?
As someone who has used this feature of Nasuni I can tell you - yes, it's good for file recovery and you'll definitel...
What features and services does Nasuni offer?
Hi, if you pick Nasuni, you'll be benefiting from many services for a good price. Well, it's a personalized price you...
 

Also Known As

Turbonomic, VMTurbo Operations Manager
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Learn More

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Interactive Demo

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

IBM, J.B. Hunt, BBC, The Capita Group, SulAmérica, Rabobank, PROS, ThinkON, O.C. Tanner Co.
McDonald's, WPP, US Navy, Gore, Festo, Stryker, Bezeq, PERI
American Standard, CBRE, Cushman & Wakefield, E*TRADE, Ithaca Energy, McLaren Construction, Morton Salt, Movado, Urban Outfitters, Western Digital
Find out what your peers are saying about CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs. Nasuni and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.