CTERA Edge X Series (discontinued) vs. Panzura CloudFS

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.

Panzura works well for companies that have a high amount of data with cross site collaboration being done. The caching ensures you don't need huge investments of storage at each site and the cloud storage ensures high availability over what can be done locally. Also helps eliminate duplicate data across sites and/or small variations in the same data.

Incentivized

• Standard File Backup

• Real time file locking
• Backup and recovery
• Easy access to all your files

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.

• I would like to see more connectors. Tie in to traditional block storage or NAS. Additional cloud connectors to products like Hitachi Content Platform.
• I would like to see a collaborative product created between Panzura and Riverbed. I envision an almost perfect small footprint ROBO solution where Riverbed provides the compute+WAN optimization and Panzura provides the storage/risiliancy components. Combine the boxes into a single 4U solution and you have a near perfect product for remote offices.

Incentivized

Hands down support is the best part of Panzura. Their techs are always helpful, always knowledgeable, and consistently solve complex problems quickly. You can definitely tell they hire their support folks from the top tier of other companies and they go above and beyond what I have come to expect in terms of support compared to other companies.

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.

There are several other devices but Panzura is best of class.

Incentivized

• NONE, it about put us out of business

• Exceptional positive impact on availability - as users move so do their files.
• Panzura+DFS allowed for simple chargeback models to be implemented.

Incentivized