CTERA Edge X Series vs QNAP NAS

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.

We save a lot of money using QNAP for the backup of Virtual machines. We installed a QNAP in the datacenter of our Cloud Provider and the cost of the backup and storage that we use is, at least, 1/10 of the cost that we had in the past. We can choose what kind of drives we can install, so if we want affordable we can use 5400/7200 hard drives, if we need speed we can use SSD drives.

• Standard File Backup

• Management interface is very useful
• Quick solutions can be produced with flexible storage pools
• It can create a powerful customizable system on its own, along with connectivity features and add-ons.
• A powerful customizable system can be created with flexible connectivity features and add-ons.
• Advanced user management can be easily provided either in its own interface or on the domain.
• It can take on the role you want with its integrated modes or add-ons that you can install later.
• Most wonderful feature, advanced support service, we never had any unsolved problems and the support engineer was always interested, followed one to one
• With web, ssh, ftp, winscp connections, you can easily access in any environment.

• 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 can not think of any at this moment.
• Not a con - but security issues are due to users' negligence.

QNAP NAS is a really good product, but I think the best part is the support for the products. Whenever I have a question or imagine something that won't happen, I can ask the support side. When the support engineer understands what I want to do, he does his best.

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.

Our historical supplier was a QNAP partner so we started with them.

We resell on request also NETGEAR and Synology. Maybe is for the practice on them but we think that they are easier to use and configure.

The thing i can affirm with convinction is that are realy durable! I think i never repaired a QNAP NAS and, we resell them from about 10 years.

They have all the functionality we ever had to our customers.

• NONE, it about put us out of business

• I cannot quantify, but it really saves a lot of money for backup.