CTERA Edge X Series (Cloud Storage Gateways) vs. Nasuni

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.

Well suited if you have a lot of data that doesn't need to be stored and read right away. I think even if you don't have much data, you can still use it for it's intended purpose to great effect, but think of it as the more data you have, the even better it will work. I don't think it would be particularly useful if you already have a slick file restore system in place and you don't need to store your data elsewhere with redundancy.

Incentivized

• Standard File Backup

• The management console is extremely simple and easy to navigate, making common tasks easy to do.
• Our storage appliance is configured to snapshot data several times an hour, making the risk of data loss very low.
• Data restores are very intuitive, and take seconds to initiate regardless of whether it is one file or 300GB of data. We have successfully restored many Gigs of data in minutes.

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.

• Better analytics when issues arise.
• Better onboarding documentation.
• Real-time monitoring.

Incentivized

As I mentioned, the user interface is amazing and straight forward. It's very easy to learn how to configure and restore files. I would like a bit more reporting, especially in terms of live reporting and monitoring. The support is great when you have a question on how to do something, which helps with usability.

Incentivized

Again, it may have a little to do with the size and speed of your own environment, but we've been nothing but pleased with the speed of access of the files - even pulling old files from the cloud storage. Recovery of huge and many data files is a bit slow if you don't have the specs of the filer up to snuff.

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.

The technical support and escalation path for Nasuni is much more reliable and efficient. No getting transferred to various teams. Often times, the person who answers your call is able to resolve your issue. If they cannot, they get the case assigned to the appropriate engineer right away. Time to close has always been very good.

Incentivized

• NONE, it about put us out of business

• Dramatically reduced time spent managing our storage platform. Quotas and reporting tools take all the guesswork out of data growth. Updates are easy to deploy. Time freed up can be used for more user-facing activities that we consider more valuable to the organization.
• The overall stability of the platform has been very good. We have been running on the same hardware for the past four years without any performance issues.

Incentivized