AWS Snowball vs Nasuni comparison

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AWS Snowball

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Nasuni and AWS Snowball are tools in the data management and migration space. Nasuni offers a competitive advantage with its continuous data protection and limitless storage capabilities, while AWS Snowball stands out for secure and cost-effective large data transfer to the cloud.

Features: Nasuni provides unlimited on-demand storage, global file locking, disaster recovery, and continuous file versioning, which ensures data is readily available and secure. AWS Snowball is advantageous for its secure, scalable data migration with strong encryption and end-to-end handling of large datasets, making it cost-effective compared to internet transfers.

Room for Improvement: Nasuni could enhance data replication speed, cross-platform functionalities, and cloud service support. Visibility of backend operations and improvements in single sign-on and mobile access could be beneficial. AWS Snowball could broaden connectivity options, improve international availability, and enhance security during data transit. Also, improving its user accessibility and support responsiveness could make it more beginner-friendly.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Nasuni supports hybrid, private, and public cloud environments, praised for ease of deployment and responsive customer support, though some delays exist during non-business hours. AWS Snowball is straightforward in public and hybrid cloud deployments with consistent, accessible support praised for quick responsiveness and resource availability.

Pricing and ROI: Nasuni offers cost-effective pricing based on data capacity, providing solid ROI by reducing infrastructure and labor costs with a predictable cost model. AWS Snowball supports varying organizational sizes with a pricing model facilitating labor reductions and operational improvements, gaining a favorable ROI particularly for large data transfers due to its efficient upfront pricing strategy.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Snowball vs. Nasuni Report (Updated: June 2025).

AWS Snowball vs. Nasuni

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

AWS Snowball

Ranking in Cloud Migration

12th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Migration Appliances (1st)

Nasuni

Ranking in Cloud Migration

3rd

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

File System Software (1st), NAS (6th), Cloud Storage (5th), Cloud Backup (15th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (10th), Cloud Storage Gateways (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Cloud Migration category, the mindshare of AWS Snowball is 0.7%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nasuni is 11.5%, up from 11.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Migration

Featured Reviews

Kevin-Davis

Global CTO AWS Business Group at Eviden

Seamless data transfer and efficient migration with customizable storage sizes

I like that I can take data and send it straight to S3 when it loads in. The interface for getting my data onto the Snowball is so streamlined. I don't know if you've ever seen it before. It's really cool. I connect them to the backplane of our existing network. I'm able to address it quickly and move the data quickly inside my customers' data centers. There's a little screen on it, which changes the UPS codes and all that stuff. The label and everything AWS electronic, so I don't have to deal with shipping issues. It makes it super simple and easy to use from end to end.

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Barry Sunanan

Senior Architect - Data and Solutions at Wipro Limited

It helped us save 40 to 45 percent on some types of data

It can provide a 360-degree view of your data, depending on how you implement it and whether you're storing your data in Nasuni. However, if you're working with multiple cloud providers, I don't think it's mature enough to provide a 360-degree view of what's in AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. I think it can do it, but it's still a lot of scope and range fitting. Given that Nasuni storage is actually cheaper in some areas, it made sense for us to move a lot of our data away from Microsoft. Nasuni gave us more of a 360 view of that particular data type. Other data types are a little different because the company went in a direction where they wanted to store some stuff in an AWS S3 bucket rather than a file storage system. An S3 bucket has its advantages, but if you were to store more of your data in Nasuni, you would get a wider 360-degree view of it rather than on several cloud providers. I have data in AWS, Google, and Azure, and I would like to see a wider view of all the data stored across these three top providers. Currently, I use it for AWS and Azure, but I couldn't use both of them at the same time. I think Nasuni could have better visibility across these different areas. I had to take my data out and then do some analysis to get the costs. It would be helpful to have more built-in analytics tools to compare the storage costs between the various cloud providers. I would also like some graphing capabilities. We had a tool called Grafana that we used for graphing. I think some more visual analytics like that would be nice.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The flexibility of AWS Snowball is valuable. Its security allows for the ability to move and secure data without concern if the device is lost and the option to trace it back to AWS data centers."

"I like that I can take data and send it straight to S3 when it loads in."

"AWS offers managed services which save time and reduce administrative overhead."

"It's a nice way of shipping a lot of data without using a network."

"The way the data is moved is very clever. Also, the interface is very simple and user-friendly."

"AWS helps save time and costs, being a managed cloud provider with evolving services."

"The features I like best are the tool's high capacity, scalability, end-to-end encryption for data security, ease of use, durability, and cost-effectiveness. It's particularly cost-effective for transferring large amounts of data compared to high-speed internet transfers."

"The support team's awesome, and they've always been very responsive."

More AWS Snowball pros

"The Nasuni management dashboard is helpful because, on the administration side, I'm able to view all of the different filers that we have in the UK, rather than check each one of them individually."

"The biggest and most impressive thing for us is the operational recovery (OR) and disaster recovery (DR) capabilities that Nasuni has. If a filer goes down, or an ESX server goes down, then we can quickly recover."

"Snapshot backup is most valuable. It's quick and easy to use. It's controlled only by an administrator, which is very good. It takes 10 seconds to back up a spreadsheet of three or four megabytes."

"The most valuable feature is the simplicity of the backup and restore functions."

"The feature I have found to be most valuable is the revision control of the files. If somebody deletes or accidentally makes a wrong change to files, we can go back to the revision history and restore the previous versions. That is a very good feature that we rely on."

"The snapshot functionality and the unified file system are definitely the most valuable features for us. The UFS allows everybody across the organization to see the exact same data at the same time, instead of having different file servers with different structures on them, and that's mission-critical. We have different branches throughout our organization that have to act on that data."

"The features I find most valuable in Nasuni are the unlimited snapshots, antivirus capabilities, auditing, and ransomware protection."

"The most valuable feature is that we have redundancy in our data. It's nice to know that it is cached both locally on the filters, as well as stored on that cloud."

More Nasuni pros

Cons

"It would be helpful if Snowball provided more kinds of connectivity. That will make it easier to add and move data."

"The stability of the solution isn't ideal and should be improved."

"The costs of services the customer needs also matter, such as storage requirements and whether storage is rational."

"It's not an easy product to start using for a beginner, but If you're a professional, it's easy to understand."

"It's not cheap."

"AWS support could be more responsive."

"Snowball is not interesting and is a pain to deal with."

"24/7 support is more expensive on AWS compared to Azure."

More AWS Snowball cons

"When users from one office save their changes, their peers in another office can see the changes within minutes. Of course, this is an area for constant improvement and we hope that they can still reduce the amount of time it takes to replicate changes."

"The user-friendliness of its access needs improvement. When I log into the console, I see all the files that we handle globally. There are hundreds of Nasuni files that I can see on the console, but no way that I can filter them down. While this is a small thing, I need to scroll down and select the ones that I want. "Control F" doesn't work nor is there a dropdown menu that I can click on and select the ones that I want."

"It would be helpful to have more built-in analytics tools to compare the storage costs between the various cloud providers. I would also like some graphing capabilities. We had a tool called Grafana that we used for graphing. I think some more visual analytics like that would be nice."

"We would like to have a user desktop agent to help improve the end-user experience."

"The privilege settings need to be more granular, and alerts are an excellent example. If a user doesn't have access to them, they can't see them and access information such as what they may have done wrong, what's there, and when the last sync happened. However, the ability to view alerts also comes with permission to delete them, which is not good, so we need more customization options here."

"Nasuni could improve cloud integration and documentation of various ways we can leverage the product. It integrates with Azure, but the native Azure File Sync solution lets you divide data into tiers like hot, cool, and archived. Nasuni doesn't allow you to break the data apart into those tiered categories."

"I would like to see improvement in the training Nasuni provides. Compared to some of the other vendors out there, like Microsoft, where you can find how-to videos, Nasuni only has a lot of PDF documents that you have to go hunting for. It's workable, it certainly isn't a problem, but video walkthroughs would always be helpful."

"Some applications may not be suited for the Nasuni environment. You may need something with better performance. Otherwise, if you want to run daily operations or some file system, it's a good bet."

More Nasuni cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's pricing depends on the type of Snowball device you choose, the amount of data you need to transfer, and the service fees involved. There’s a standard price for larger data transfers and a flat job fee, which includes the first ten days of on-site usage. Typically, there are no additional data transfer fees."

"It's not a cheap solution, but the price is right for the product."

"Nasuni should provide small-scale licenses, like a 20 TB license. Currently, the smallest is a 30 TB license."

"With this solution, the license renewal is pretty swift. With the virtual appliance, you just need to take care of the OS versions and patches. In a way, we don't have to struggle much with renewals because the only thing that we need to take care of are the licenses. We renew it every three years. This aspect goes with infrastructural costs because it doesn't cost us too much to maintain the solution."

"It's cheaper than a lot of alternatives but it's not cheap."

"It is around $850 per terabyte per year. Any additional costs that you would incur are for the local caching devices that you'll need to access Nasuni. You kind of provide your own virtual machines or compute to access the data. You also pay for the object storage. So, there are three parts to it. There is the Nasuni license per terabyte. You would also pay for the actual object storage in the cloud, and then you would pay for virtual machines to access the storage."

"Its price is fair and reasonable. I don't have anything negative about its pricing and licensing. For us, there is also the cost of monitoring. We are monitoring through Xenos and not through Nasuni. That is another cost for us from the monitoring perspective, but as far as Nasuni goes, we don't have any other cost apart from the licensing fee."

"The pricing is fair. It's an enterprise-level solution so it's not inexpensive... The cost is pretty stable year over year."

"Nasuni pricing is average; it's not too high or too low."

"There are annual costs that we pay for maintaining all of the snapshot history in the cloud. That is the primary cost that we pay. We occasionally buy newer Nasuni appliances or deploy them to new offices when the need occurs. That capital equipment expenses is less than the cost of buying new file storage systems. For the most part, you are trading a CapEx cost of storage equipment for an OpEx cost for management of all the snapshot data in the cloud."

More Nasuni pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Microsoft Azure Data Box or AWS Snowball?

Microsoft Azure Databox is a 45-pound, super rugged, tamper-resistant, human-managed hardware appliance that can transfer up to 100TB of data capacity to copy, store, then send to the Azure cloud. ...

What do you like most about AWS Snowball?

The most valuable features of AWS Snowball for me are its security measures and its flexibility.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Snowball?

Depending of what is your priority; UseAWS Snowball if you are heavily invested in AWS or need edge computing features Choose Azure Data Box for smooth integration with Azure and potentially lower ...

Does Nasuni have a good pricing model?

Based on the experience of my organization, Nasuni is definitely worth the money, since it gives you an all-in-one solution where you'd usually need several programs. About the cost, there isn't a ...

Is it easy to restore files with Nasuni?

As someone who has used this feature of Nasuni I can tell you - yes, it's good for file recovery and you'll definitely benefit from very quick times. I can't tell you if it's the best one because I...

What features and services does Nasuni offer?

Hi, if you pick Nasuni, you'll be benefiting from many services for a good price. Well, it's a personalized price you get after an agreement with the company but in my organization's case, it is a ...

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Comparisons

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Microsoft Azure Data Box vs AWS Snowball

Compared 42% of the time

IBM Cloud Mass Data Migration vs AWS Snowball

Compared 5% of the time

Palantir Foundry vs AWS Snowball

Compared 3% of the time

AWS Snowball Edge vs AWS Snowball

Compared 1% of the time

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Panzura CloudFS vs Nasuni

Compared 18% of the time

Egnyte vs Nasuni

Compared 10% of the time

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs Nasuni

Compared 9% of the time

Qumulo vs Nasuni

Compared 7% of the time

Rubrik vs Nasuni

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

AWS Snowball

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Also Known As

Amazon AWS Snowball, Amazon Snowball, Snowball

No data available

Overview

Snowball is a petabyte-scale data transport solution that uses devices designed to be secure to transfer large amounts of data into and out of the AWS Cloud. Using Snowball addresses common challenges with large-scale data transfers including high network costs, long transfer times, and security concerns. Customers today use Snowball to migrate analytics data, genomics data, video libraries, image repositories, backups, and to archive part of data center shutdowns, tape replacement or application migration projects. Transferring data with Snowball is simple, fast, more secure, and can be as little as one-fifth the cost of transferring data via high-speed Internet.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Nasuni is a file data services enterprise focused on assisting firms with their digital transformation, global expansion, and information awareness. The Nasuni File Data Platform is a suite of cloud-based services designed to enhance user productivity, ensure business continuity, provide data intelligence, offer cloud options, and simplify global infrastructure. This platform and its auxiliary services are projected to replace conventional file infrastructure such as network attached storage (NAS), backup, and Disaster Recovery (DR), with an expandable cloud-scale solution. By storing file data in scalable cloud object storage from multiple providers, Nasuni positions itself as a cloud-native alternative for traditional NAS and file server infrastructure. Based in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, Nasuni serves sectors like manufacturing, construction, technology, oil and gas, financial services, and public sector worldwide, offering its services in more than 70 countries.

Reviews from Real Users

James J., IT Manager at a marketing services firm, says Nasuni’s management dashboard is helpful because he's able to view all of the different filers at once rather than check each one of them individually. He values the software’s security, reliability, good performance, helpful alerting, and responsive support.

According to a Server Engineering Services Lead at a mining and metals company, Nasuni offers good OR and DR capabilities, performs well, offers data security, and continuous file versioning helps recover from hardware failures.

The Managing Director of IT at a construction company appreciates Nasuni because it eliminates a lot of work that was previously done when managing backing up and restoring data files.

Sample Customers

Wazee Digital, Craftsy, Live Nation, Essess

American Standard, CBRE, Cushman & Wakefield, E*TRADE, Ithaca Energy, McLaren Construction, Morton Salt, Movado, Urban Outfitters, Western Digital

AWS Snowball vs. Nasuni