Arcserve OneXafe vs. CTERA Edge X Series (discontinued)

For SMB file storage Exablox is great, but as an ESXi datastore it still needs work.

Incentivized

This is all about the selling you a "Device" and prices vary greatly between resellers. The devices work well, but the pure cloud solutions need a lot of work.

• Exablox is simple to setup and relatively easy to use.
• Exablox is priced very competitively and is a good value for the cost.
• Exablox has good customer service.

Incentivized

• Standard File Backup

• Exablox is still in its infancy as a company and in some respects the product feels like a version 1.0.
• Integration with VMware ESXi has some bugs that need to be figured out.

Incentivized

• SQL Backups just don't work reliably. For us, we lost all of our SQL data backed up through the CTERA Application process. Although the logs indicated a success, that was really not the case. This came close to putting us out of business. Luckily I had taken a genuine SQL backup to a folder. Unfortunately it was a month old. We had to pick-up the pieces from there.
• Don't use it for file sync and share. There are better products out there i.e. anchorworks.com
• Support sucks. Good luck with response time and answers that are inconsistent between team members. For example I had to rebuild a VM from scratch. When I re-installed the CTERA client It obviously thought I was adding another device. When I inquired to tech support, one member said "copy the old Data folder" (I still had the old VHD. That did not work). The other directed me to the correct spot to just change the associated folder. The turn-around time was over 24 hours for this simple fix.
• Documentation, plenty of fodder but no real tech there.

The price for Exablox was very appealing. If we can resolve the NFS datastore issues we are seeing in VMware, this is a perfect solution for a ESXi datastore. Once that issue is resolved, I will give Exablox a higher rating.

Incentivized

Again, the initial install, setup and config was simple through a web browser.

Incentivized

Since the day we installed Exablox we have not had any down-time. The storage resources have been available 100% of the time.

Incentivized

SMB file access has been very responsive. We have not seen any slowness. Also, in using Exablox as tier 1 storage in our VMware environment, the VMs performed great. No slowness issues.

Incentivized

Exablox has been very responsive to our requests. They communicate very well and are extremely knowledgable

Incentivized

Straightforward and simple implementation. We completed the implementation in less than 2 hours.

Incentivized

Exablox was much less expensive than other storage arrays and I think there are a lot of reasons to purchase them. I believe that as the product matures, it will be a great option for storage.

Incentivized

Unfortunately CTERA does not stack up well if you want a pure cloud BDR. I have use iDrive and Asigra. iDrive has similar support and SQL backup issues. Asigra can vary widely in support and price, but the software is solid.

We have not tried to scale Exablox so we are not familiar with this.

Incentivized

• We purchased Exablox specifically for our ESXi environment, so we are hoping to get the wrinkles worked out to see a greater return on our investment.

Incentivized

• NONE, it about put us out of business