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Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform vs Panzura CloudFS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on May 18, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.7
Users find Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform valuable, citing long-term benefits, competitive costs, financial gains, and improved performance.
Sentiment score
5.1
Organizations experienced enhanced resilience, doubled performance, and productivity gains by adopting Panzura CloudFS, solving past file storage issues.
While performance, security, and financial aspects of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform are satisfactory, I am unsure about the exact return on investment.
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.
We saw the benefits of Panzura CloudFS immediately because our remote offices were able to share files immediately after the product went live.
Panzura CloudFS saves us a significant amount of time frequently.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.4
Users have mixed feedback on Hitachi's support: praised for expertise but criticized for delays and inconsistent global assistance.
Sentiment score
6.8
Panzura CloudFS support is praised for quick, expert assistance despite occasional delays, receiving high ratings from users.
The time taken to act upon issues is quite large, and issue identification takes a significant amount of time, especially when it comes to critical problems.
The support staff and the number of people they have on staff right now are truly good.
When we have a priority-one issue, we typically receive a call within 20 to 30 minutes.
I would give the support for Panzura CloudFS a ten out of ten because they are responsive and helpful.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform provides scalable options, adaptability, and reliability, supporting diverse enterprise expansion needs effectively despite some limitations.
Sentiment score
6.8
Panzura CloudFS is highly scalable, effortlessly supports many users across locations, with seamless deployment and dedicated support.
Unlimited users can access the system without issues.
From our original entry with Panzura CloudFS, we have added an additional seven sites, and deploying those additional nodes was very seamless and did not take any effort.
The latest version, 8.0.2, has better ease of decommissioning filers and bringing new ones online.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is highly reliable and stable, ideal for critical 24/7 operations with minimal downtime issues.
Sentiment score
6.1
Panzura CloudFS is highly stable with rare outages and improved reliability, earning high user ratings overall.
If we are running on a standalone infrastructure, I would rate Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform a 10 for stability.
I would rate it a nine out of ten for stability.
We have never had their system crash on us.
There were times with file lock issues between filers, causing various anomalies, but with their ongoing development, these issues have improved.
 

Room For Improvement

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform needs improved UX, automation, scalability, support, reasonable pricing, deduplication, and better management tools.
Panzura CloudFS needs improvements in performance, compatibility, pricing, dashboard, alerting, licensing, Active Directory reliance, NFS service, and support.
The interface management and monitoring need improvement.
When something goes wrong somewhere, there should be a little bit better alerting with issues before they become a big problem.
The GIS data formats, such as a geo database, have been found better kept outside of Panzura CloudFS.
It would have been nice if they had offered them in increments, of 5, 10, 15, or 20 terabytes than having to get a whole chunk of 25 terabytes again for licensing purposes, which is a little costly.
 

Setup Cost

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is initially costly but offers justified performance and potential discounts, with complex licensing options.
Panzura CloudFS pricing is higher than competitors, lacks granular licenses, but offers negotiation flexibility and transparency.
The cost of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is reasonable compared to competitors.
It did require us to purchase new hardware, however, that was not overly expensive.
They should consider more attractive pricing for companies of our size.
Overall, it is quite costly compared to NetApp and similar solutions.
 

Valuable Features

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform offers seamless data mobility, reliability, scalability, and efficient storage management with user-friendly features across industries.
Panzura CloudFS enhances workflows with high availability, security, and seamless collaboration, reducing storage costs and boosting productivity.
The active data management of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, especially with the HOPS Center, makes it easier to work with the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform infrastructure.
It is very reliable and very quick.
It helps us increase network resilience. We have a primary object library stored in the cloud and have Panzura Mirroring which allows us to place data in a secondary cloud for added resiliency.
There is no degradation of speed because these filers have cached the data, and they are constantly swapping metadata and updating with each other, which is a very attractive method of getting us to use these applications.
 

Categories and Ranking

Hitachi Virtual Storage Pla...
Ranking in NAS
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
54
Ranking in other categories
Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) (3rd), Frame-Based Disk Arrays (1st), All-Flash Storage (9th), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (5th)
Panzura CloudFS
Ranking in NAS
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (2nd), Cloud Storage (6th), Cloud Storage Gateways (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the NAS category, the mindshare of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is 6.3%, up from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Panzura CloudFS is 3.0%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NAS
 

Featured Reviews

Bratislav Petkovic - PeerSpot reviewer
Active data management enhances performance and simplifies operation
The active data management of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, especially with the HOPS Center, makes it easier to work with the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform infrastructure. Previously, it was difficult to create and delete LUNs, which would take a long time, but now with HOPS Center, it is functioning correctly. It is now as easy as working with EMC or Dell storage, and the performance is better, especially with new features. The solution's performance, security, and cost are satisfactory. These factors influenced our decision to purchase Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform.
Roger Clark - PeerSpot reviewer
Handles file locks effectively enabling seamless remote collaboration in global teams
It has not reduced the data storage cost. We have been trying to come up with a plan internally to archive project data at a certain time frame. However, our data continues to grow, so at the point of 25 terabytes, we had to buy another 25 terabytes license to exceed that threshold. It would have been nice if they had offered them in increments, of 5, 10, 15, or 20 terabytes than having to get a whole chunk of 25 terabytes again for licensing purposes, which is a little costly. It would be nice if Panzura offered data in increments instead of 25 terabytes per license. They have done a pretty good job of development from the point of offering new products. Pricing seems to be high for certain things, such as the audit feature of Panzura Data Services. It would be nice to see who deleted that 100 gig of data out there. They should make the pricing plan more attractive for a company of our size. We have almost 700 employees over the southeast from Texas to Florida and up to Tennessee, so we are a pretty big region.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Construction Company
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform?
The cost of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is reasonable compared to competitors, but it is dependent on the customer; I cannot say for the entire industry, but for us, it's comparable.
What do you like most about Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform E990?
The product's reliability has been crucial for our company's operations.
What needs improvement with Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform E990?
The replication technology that Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform uses is quite older, and the replication methodology they employ for data between the data center and the production and standby dat...
What are the products that Panzura provides?
Panzura offers four main products: CloudFS, data services, smart apps, and global services. They call this "all-in-one solution" and it's for end-to-end cloud data management. Why is it called that...
What kind of industries does Panzura serve?
Hello, I think businesses from all industries that have their data on a cloud can benefit from Panzura. Especially if you have offices in various locations or your employees are working from home a...
Why was Panzura acquired? Is the acquisition going to cause a change?
I think Panzura may change in a positive direction now that it's been bought by Profile Capital. That's a very big investment company for technology businesses and I think it's an opportunity for ...
 

Also Known As

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series, 5000 Series, E Series, N Series, G Series
Panzura Freedom
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Turkcell, Owens Corning, Region Nord, Net Credit Financial Group (NFC Group), Russian Railways
Petrofac, Komatsu, HCA Healthcare, Vanguard, Disney, Pokemon, US Department of Justice, Gensler, Fluor, AFRY, Milwaukee Tool, Navy Federal Credit Union, TechTarget
Find out what your peers are saying about Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform vs. Panzura CloudFS and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.