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Cohesity SpanFS vs Nasuni comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 12, 2024

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
2
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
36
Ranking in other categories
NAS (10th), Cloud Migration (8th), Cloud Storage (13th), Cloud Backup (38th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (20th), Cloud Storage Gateways (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the File System Software category, the mindshare of Cohesity SpanFS is 5.2%, up from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nasuni is 17.5%, down from 27.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
File System Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Nasuni17.5%
Cohesity SpanFS5.2%
Other77.3%
File System Software
 

Featured Reviews

SM
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.
SD
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…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has snapshot capabilities. We take advantage of those."
"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"We switched over to it because it is an integrated solution that includes DataProtect and the platform, has other use cases for enterprise search, and can also do things like antivirus."
"My advice for anybody who is considering this product is that it works great."
"I particularly like the restore process. Our financial teams make changes to spreadsheets and other files, and we've got teams using Photoshop files. They make mistakes and need to recover files, and we can do that instantly. We also have users who manage to delete folders, and we can bring them back instantly within a few seconds."
"One of Nasuni's best characteristics is its fully redundant system; we don't have to shift tapes or use other backup solutions. It's a good, full-featured product."
"The features I find most valuable in Nasuni are the unlimited snapshots, antivirus capabilities, auditing, and ransomware protection."
"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."
"Nasuni is tremendously easy to manage. It eliminates many of the administrative challenges associated with physical hardware storage, and you don't need to worry about any hardware failure or products reaching the end of their lives."
"Continuous File Versioning is one of the best features because it helps you to restore at any point in time. That means you don't have to worry about a ransomware attack. Even if that attack happens, you can restore all the data to five minutes ago and save everything."
"A big advantage is having the data exist in the cloud, which has certainly relieved a lot of pressure from our IT department in regards to having a backup as well as preventing some ransomware in all of our offices."
 

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."
"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."
"One area that we've recently spoken to Nasuni about is single sign-on."
"Some of their cross-platform features are really good, but it could always use more."
"One thing to consider is that Nasuni will have the same limitations that a traditional file storage solution will have, although that is because they are taking the place of a traditional architectural model. For example, Office 365 supports collaboration on documents such as Excel files and Word documents, but because Nasuni is a traditional file server, in that sense, it can't make use of that functionality."
"We've had some organizational changes that Nasuni has not been able to keep up with, mainly from a data or file system perspective. Moving a filer from one management console has been a challenge."
"Nasuni recently implemented a health system for filers. However, it needs better visibility because it lacks data and an explanation, or reasoning as to why a particular filer may be unhealthy."
"Nasuni is not a stable solution."
"Its pricing can get a tad expensive."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"They could lower the cost, but it saves so much money when you go into it (by losing all the backup)."
"I would not say it is economically priced, but it is affordable. If you can afford to pay for it, it is worth the money, but it is definitely not overpriced. It is priced about where it needs to be in the market. We were satisfied with the way they did their licensing and how they handled it. I believe they actually license by data size. It is based on how much data is being held on the machine and replicated, and that's completely understandable. So, for us, their pricing was as expected and affordable."
"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."
"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."
"The cost of licensing is negotiated and billed annually per terabyte."
"Nasuni pricing is average; it's not too high or too low."
"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."
"There are cheaper forms of storage, but Nasuni is fairly priced for the functionality it offers. I can get basic file shares provisioned in Azure and pay for the storage and the CPU. The overall cost would be much less than Nasuni, but I would need to build the management console and encryption process, so it would cost a lot to develop that kind of functionality."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise24
 

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 ...
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 ...
 

Also Known As

SpanFS
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Tribune Media
American Standard, CBRE, Cushman & Wakefield, E*TRADE, Ithaca Energy, McLaren Construction, Morton Salt, Movado, Urban Outfitters, Western Digital
Find out what your peers are saying about Cohesity SpanFS vs. Nasuni and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
886,906 professionals have used our research since 2012.