No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

DDN EXA5 vs Nasuni comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

DDN EXA5
Ranking in File System Software
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Nasuni
Ranking in File System Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
NAS (12th), Cloud Migration (6th), Cloud Storage (14th), Cloud Backup (34th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (18th), Cloud Storage Gateways (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the File System Software category, the mindshare of DDN EXA5 is 3.9%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nasuni is 16.5%, down from 28.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
File System Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Nasuni16.5%
DDN EXA53.9%
Other79.6%
File System Software
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2544219 - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Architect at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Enhancing AI cluster training with reliable performance and good customer service
This is for AI training cluster. The customer is using DDN as a default de facto standard for their AI cluster DDN is one of the storages actually supporting by NVIDIA Superport. The customer is using NVIDIA Superport, which helps in terms of scalability. The DDN Exascaler uses a parallel file…
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

"The DDN Exascaler uses a parallel file system, Lustre, which is proven for HPC and AI workloads."
"The performance is outstanding, and customers are very happy with it."
"I like the unlimited snapshotting."
"We have one platform to manage all of our data, to see it and to quickly access it, and that is huge."
"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."
"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."
"Nasuni gives us a single platform with a 360-degree view of our data, which is important so that we know the size of our estate and the amount of data that we hold."
"My advice for anybody who is considering this product is that it works great."
"I can't say anything other than good things about it."
"The OR and DR capabilities have been a very big help for us, reducing what used to take weeks to fix and bring back up and running for people down to a matter of minutes while keeping their experience seamless, no matter how much trouble the hardware is in at the site."
 

Cons

"There are challenges with the operation cost and upgrading process, which is disruptive, especially with the node."
"The performance of the filesystem could be improved."
"Some of their cross-platform features are really good, but it could always use more."
"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."
"The Nasuni file storage platform doesn't work well when there are a high number of small files."
"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."
"One area that we've recently spoken to Nasuni about is single sign-on. Another is integrating Nasuni with Azure Active Directory. In our particular case, that would allow for third-party consultants to access our Azure Active Directory environment as opposed to coming to our on-premises environment."
"One area that we've recently spoken to Nasuni about is single sign-on."
"I would like to see Nasuni provide the ability to mirror a Nasuni appliance from one site to another. They could maybe have a standby appliance that is mirrored in a different location for disaster recovery purposes. We can recover if data and a Filer are lost because of a possible ransomware event, but even that takes time to recover. If we had the ability to have a mirrored appliance, we could flip over to that mirrored device and resume instantly rather than repopulate the local appliance with data from the snapshot history in the cloud. This is another feature that we would really like to see, if possible."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The pricing is fair. It's an enterprise-level solution so it's not inexpensive... The cost is pretty stable year over year."
"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."
"It has a license fee as well as hardware costs, which we would incur if we want to use Nasuni Cloud Storage Gateway for upgrades."
"They could lower the cost, but it saves so much money when you go into it (by losing all the backup)."
"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."
"The cost is based on the capacity, which is approximately $100 USD per terabyte."
"Our agreement is set up such that we pay annually per terabyte, and we buy a chunk of it at a time. Then if we run out of space, we go back to them and buy another chunk."
"The pricing is on par with everybody else, and fair."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which File System Software solutions are best for your needs.
911,473 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

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

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

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for DDN EXA5?
The cost is higher compared to other offerings, but the performance is good. The challenge in comparison to other offerings is that DDN is a little bit expensive.
What needs improvement with DDN EXA5?
There are challenges with the operation cost and upgrading process, which is disruptive, especially with the node. Some customers have moved away due to these operational issues.
What is your primary use case for DDN EXA5?
This is for AI training cluster. The customer is using DDN as a default de facto standard for their AI cluster.
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 ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

EXA5
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ICR, Recursion, Toyota Technical Development Corporation (TTDC), Deluxe, Buff Dubs
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 CTERA, Panzura, Nasuni and others in File System Software. Updated: August 2026.
911,473 professionals have used our research since 2012.