Cohesity SpanFS vs Nasuni comparison

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Cohesity SpanFS

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 12, 2024

Nasuni and Cohesity SpanFS are both competitive storage solutions. Users appear happier with the pricing of Nasuni, but many feel that Cohesity SpanFS offers superior features, making it worth the higher price.

Features: Nasuni is praised for its efficient global file locking and expansive cloud support. It’s known for its cost-effectiveness. Users value Cohesity SpanFS for its robust data protection, seamless scalability, and advanced data management capabilities. Cohesity SpanFS stands out in data protection compared to Nasuni.

Room for Improvement: Nasuni users suggest enhancements in its synchronization speed and usability for large files. They seek improvements in overall product reliability. Cohesity SpanFS users seek better integration with third-party applications and enhancements in product reliability. They also desire improvements in the user interface for ease of use.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Nasuni is highlighted for its straightforward deployment and responsive support team. Cohesity SpanFS, while having a more complex deployment process, is commended for its comprehensive customer support once systems are up and running. Nasuni offers an easier deployment experience whereas Cohesity SpanFS ensures thorough post-deployment support.

Pricing and ROI: Nasuni users find the setup cost reasonable and mention a satisfactory ROI. Cohesity SpanFS, while more expensive to set up, provides a higher ROI according to user reviews. Nasuni is seen as a cost-effective option whereas Cohesity SpanFS is viewed as an investment for long-term value.

To learn more, read our detailed Cohesity SpanFS vs. Nasuni Report (Updated: March 2026).

Cohesity SpanFS 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

Cohesity SpanFS

Ranking in File System Software

9th

Average Rating

10.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Nasuni

Ranking in File System Software

2nd

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

NAS (10th), Cloud Migration (7th), Cloud Storage (13th), Cloud Backup (39th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (23rd), Cloud Storage Gateways (4th)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the File System Software category, the mindshare of Cohesity SpanFS is 5.1%, up from 3.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nasuni is 18.2%, down from 26.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

File System Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Nasuni	18.2%
Cohesity SpanFS	5.1%
Other	76.7%

File System Software

Featured Reviews

Stefan-Motsch

Evangelist / CTO at fgnext

Along with offering competitive prices, the solution can be used by small, medium, and large businesses

While guaranteeing the strictness of the file system, there is a lot of performance involved. The performance is not as good as I expected. It's not the functionality here but the performance level. It won't be a problem if it's twice as fast. Even though its stability has room for improvement, I would recommend it to my bigger customers. The only problem is the current performance of the individual nodes. As a sale-out solution with integrated load-balancing functions, performance is in principle not a problem at all. Capacity and performance are linearly scalable over the number of nodes in the cluster. An increase in the performance of the individual nodes in future releases would be desirable.

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SwapnilDaga

Infrastructure Architect at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees

Cloud data management that achieves cost efficiency with advanced data protection features

I am currently using Nasuni for seismic data. We have a huge data size, and we want to reduce costs. Nasuni acts as a caching solution, so we put some data into the cache, and the rest goes to the blob, which helps us save on costs. We use it for applications like Petrol and Tech Log, where 3D…

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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

"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"It has snapshot capabilities. We take advantage of those."

"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."

"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 disaster recovery. We can fully recover a site in two hours."

"Nasuni Management Console (NMC) is super valuable, and both physical and virtual filers are also valuable. NMC is the one-stop place for all our filers, both virtual and physical filers. They are definitely doing a great job in housing all our documents and surveillance videos."

"Nasuni offers us a single platform with a 360-degree view of our file data, which is definitely important to us. It simplifies IT operations tremendously. Because it is taking continuous snapshots, it eliminates a lot of work that was done previously when trying to manage backing up and restoring data files."

"We use Nasuni's continuous file versioning feature and it fully protects us. With the ability to version files and have continuous recovery, it helps in terms of resiliency. If we have an incident then we would be able to easily recover from it by using the technology."

"With Nasuni Management Console (NMC), we get a single, centralized view of our entire internal structure and data center structure. This is very important because this caters to remote locations. One of the main care center teams is dependent on this solution. As it is directly connected to customers for the calls that they receive and troubleshoot, they can then help customers out in case they are not able to place an order."

"Nasuni has the capability of taking a snapshot every five minutes. If a user has accidentally deleted their data, we can recover it from the snapshot and provide the latest data to the user. It's a really great feature, one that is not provided by other vendors."

More Nasuni pros

Cons

"Its read performance can be improved. It is just slow in comparison to other file systems, but a lot of it also has to do with the fact that they have a limited number of spindles under each node."

"The only problem is the current performance of the individual nodes. As a sale-out solution with integrated load-balancing functions, performance is in principle not a problem at all. Capacity and performance are linearly scalable over the number of nodes in the cluster. An increase in the performance of the individual nodes in future releases would be desirable."

"The Nasuni file storage platform doesn't work well when there are a high number of small files. This is the case when a directory structure contains more than 10,000 or 20,000 small files, e.g., 5 KB, 10 KB, or 15 KB. When the user is accessing these files from another geographical location, they might face a slow response or timeouts when connecting to the shares, and then to the files. This is because the file size is small. There is a scope of improvement with this solution when it comes to accessing a large number of small files."

"There is some room for improvement when it comes to monitoring. We are not using Nasuni monitoring. We are using our own monitoring through Xenos. Nasuni can provide better monitoring capabilities for us to monitor all the filers and NMC so that we don't have to use a third-party tool."

"I would like to see Nasuni create a Dropbox or Box alternative. One of the things that people like about those tools is that they are very easy to implement. They look just like a file server. With Nasuni, you have to be online to get your file storage. With Dropbox, there is a thing running on your PC that downloads the files to it when you need them, i.e., an agent."

"When we have to rebuild a filer or put a new one at a site, one of the things that I would like to be able to do is just repoint the data from Azure to it. As it is now, you need to copy it using a method like Robocopy."

"Nasuni does not support different retention policies within the same volume, so you have to keep creating volumes for retention policies. When you create a new volume, it means you're starting from zero all over again. You can't move data between two volumes. You have to move them from your physical device to Nasuni or your cloud device to Nasuni."

"The speed at which new files are created is something that could be improved. For example, if you create a new file in another country, I won't see it for between 10 and 15 minutes."

"The only thing that I'd like to see is more support for platforms like OneDrive or Box.com."

"Nasuni provides enough reporting to see what's happening. You can see the number of shares, total volume, issues, conflicts, etc., but it doesn't provide much visibility from a content perspective. For example, it doesn't tell you the data age. When you're trying to sort and filter information, the data creation date is a critical factor. Nasuni doesn't give you that. You can't get a count of all the file types, like the number of PDFs, Word docs, and PPT files."

More Nasuni cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I won't talk about specific numbers, but it is a little hard to compare it to other products out there because there is nobody out there that does exactly what they do. If you are just comparing it to another NAS box, it is probably going to look higher, but that's an unfair comparison because it does things that a NAS box can't do."

"When it comes to pricing, I know the prices because I am also running tenders for customers where I am not offering other solutions. Hence, the prices are pretty competitive."

"Its pricing can get a tad expensive. When we first took Nasuni out, we were just paying for the service. We got storage at a reduced rate. It has now changed, and they're now more of an all-in-one type of thing. It can be quite expensive, but it works out. Apart from that, licensing-wise, it's very simple."

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

"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."

"The pricing is on par with everybody else, and fair."

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

"They could lower the cost, but it saves so much money when you go into it (by losing all the backup)."

"The cost of licensing is negotiated and billed annually per terabyte."

"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."

More Nasuni pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	24

Questions from the Community

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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 ...

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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...

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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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Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

File System Software

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Also Known As

SpanFS

No data available

Overview

Designed to combine the best of enterprise and cloud stacks, SpanFS exposes industry-standard, globally distributed NFS, SMB and S3 interfaces.

The IO Engine detects random vs. sequential IO profiles, splits the data into chunks, performs deduplication and directs to the most appropriate storage tier.

SpanFS also includes a new Metadata Store based on a consistent, distributed, NoSQL store for fast operations at scale.

SnapTree® provides a distributed meta data structure based on B+ tree concepts. It supports unlimited, frequent snapshots with no performance degradation.

Cohesity

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

Tribune Media

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

Cohesity SpanFS vs. Nasuni