Share your experience using SmartVault

It is our primary storage.

It is easy for our organization to manage data using Panzura.

We take snapshots of everything every hour. It does incremental backups. We have several different types of backups, so we never have a problem with restoring if anything ever happens.

Panzura Detect & Rescue does a good job of detecting threats in real-time.

Panzura Edge helps give people access to the Panzura system on iPads or nontraditional devices, and it works great for that. It is very important for us to have secure data access for mobile devices.

Panzura has not helped to reduce data storage costs. We have all of our storage on Azure, but one thing they allowed us to do was to have a good way of archiving data. We do not have everything in hot storage anymore. We have some in cold storage. They had a way for us to move our data to a lower-cost tier.

We were able to realize its benefits pretty much immediately. We bought it originally for four offices and did a proof of concept for the first month. Within two weeks, we bought 23 additional units to put in all our offices.

It is a very solid product. We keep all of our older files on their system. It is easy to restore if a file gets deleted. We have good disaster recovery. It is very reliable and very quick, and we do not have files that get overwritten because it locks the file. 

For me, it is the stability aspect. It is a lot more stable now than it ever has been, but just keeping that stability is important. Previously, a new update would come out, and there might be something wrong with it, or it may not sync up as well as it should, or it may cause something to lose access to the server. We have had some problems in the past, but in the last couple of years, we have not had any issues like we had early on.

There could be a slightly better dashboard or a better pane of glass. When something goes wrong somewhere, there should be a little bit better alerting with issues before they become a big problem.

We have been their customer for 12 years.

We have had some problems in the past, but in the last couple of years, we have not had issues. I would rate it a nine out of ten for stability.

I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten.

The support has been good. We have had stretches in the past that were not as good, but over 12 years with someone, you are going to have some ups and downs. The support staff and the number of people they have on staff right now are truly good.

Positive

We were using a software program from Peer Software. It was a long time ago. It might work better now than when we used it, but it was not replicating data between our offices in real-time. We would have to wait a long time before it would replicate our files between offices.

I am pretty sure it is easy. When we put new units in, it goes quickly. They have a cloud offering now that you can get up and running in less than an afternoon.

It does not take a lot. One person can get it set up pretty easily.

When it comes to maintenance, we have a person who will apply updates to the system. One primary person at my work takes care of it.

It has helped increase our organization’s network resilience, but it is hard to quantify. Panzura is a hundred percent better than what we had before. Previously, we had latency issues with syncing up files between offices. Files were not locked, leading to overwrites which cost us literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost time and revenue. Since transitioning to Panzura, it has been like a night-and-day difference.

It is not bad. It is like everything else. Pricing has gone up quite over the last couple of years, but everybody's pricing has gone up. For what they deliver, it is right in line with what everybody else has.

You could start with just a handful of offices and do a proof of concept to see how it goes for you before deploying it enterprise-wide. I would start with either a small group or maybe small offices, two or three offices, and see how it works. 

Overall, I would rate the product a nine out of ten.

My use case for Panzura CloudFS involves having multiple offices in the United States, and we use it to share all our file structure between the offices.

Panzura CloudFS has helped to increase the network resilience by 100%. It helped us with our growth, and we have had double-digit growth for years now, and they were able to help us achieve that.

What I appreciate the most about Panzura CloudFS is that it just works; it provides enterprise-level application across all our offices and simplifies administration. Since the product works so well, we don't have to have a lot of issues or downtime. It helps us to be more efficient and more productive. 

We've been able to increase network resilience. We've had double-digit growth for years now, and Panzura helped us achieve that.

In terms of improvements for Panzura CloudFS, I would like to see the Edge feature. I would love for that feature to be usable for our company and our employees.

I have been using Panzura CloudFS since 2016, so nine years.

The stability of Panzura CloudFS is good.

The scalability of Panzura CloudFS is very good.

I have contacted the support. The quality of support from Panzura CloudFS is good; the speed is good, and they have knowledgeable staff.

Positive

The initial deployment was long with the amount of data we have. It was not difficult, it was just lengthy due to the amount of data that had to be sent to the cloud. 

For the deployment of Panzura CloudFS, the number of people required really depends on the size of the company. We had two people working on our deployment.

Panzura CloudFS takes care of all the maintenance. We just schedule the outage with them.

We saw the benefits of Panzura CloudFS immediately. Our remote offices were able to share files immediately after the product went live.

The pricing of Panzura CloudFS is relevant, and their pricing is comparable to other competitors. What you get is fair pricing.

I have tested out alternatives to Panzura CloudFS in my career, however, Panzura CloudFS is the number one product we used.

I would say to a colleague who prefers using big-name software companies that Panzura CloudFS is a solid solution. It's a solution that works, it's priced appropriately, and their support is good. 

On a scale from one to ten, I rate Panzura CloudFS a ten.