Nasuni Reviews

We are a global media company and I look after eight Nasuni Filers for the UK and Ireland.

In the UK, every Nasuni appliance is stored locally in an office. They are stored in a standard comms room, and if that office went down for any reason, there are snapshots of the data made every hour that could be accessed.

A web version of the data can be available if there was a need due to an outage in a local office, so we can keep the business working.

With the mix of working from home and office, this is a good cloud solution for our company and we plan to use it as our standard file sharing platform going forward.

Our business is essentially split into two parts. We have a media element where they use standard office files such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Then, we have the creative division where they store things like high-end videos and Adobe files.

In the creative division, their file sizes are much bigger so we've seen the flexibility with having the on-premises device. For example, you can have a large caching device. Especially for our creative users, who are working on large creative files, they need that local speed access. They need something better than a standard USB drive, as well as something that can be backed up and is secure.

In general, it allows users in the business to access the data they need in a reliable fashion.

Nasuni has allowed us to replace multiple data silos and we are working toward having a single global file system. We shuttered one of our traditional on-premises data centers about 18 months ago, so we have this plan in the pipeline for the business. We know that Nasuni is our way to manage data effectively, where we can have cloud backups as well as the speed of a local appliance. Given how well it is working in our offices, they are now adopting it in other parts of the business, globally. The main drive for large data storage is going to be for Nasuni, going forward.

The need to have access to data 24 hours a day is very important for our business. We have teams and they sometimes work overnight or over a weekend. They may need to share data with colleagues in a different country or timezone, and that always-available service is quite important.

We do snapshots of our environment every hour, so if someone deletes a file and they're working on something with a deadline, we can revert back to something in a very recent version, in a short period of time. That element of the service has worked really well for us.

Nasuni has different sizes of appliances with different capacities that provide storage capacity anywhere it's needed, on-demand. They take up very little room in our comms room rack. The biggest one that we have at the moment is 2U or 4U, so depending on the size of our office space and the amount of data storage, the range of different appliances that Nasuni has available gives us good options so we can pick and choose the most suitable solution for each office we have.

This is important to us because of the nature of our business. We regularly acquire companies, and normally, their data structure is not in line with our standards. Using Nasuni, we are able to take what they have and standardize it with a range of different hardware to fit our data storage platform.

For example, two of the units that we installed were for companies that we recently bought, and having them made the transition a lot easier than we thought it might be at first.

One of the ways that Nasuni has improved our organization is by providing access to centralized data. For example, we have a range of applications that have their own data repository. One of our teams that does a lot of data analytics needed access to our media-borne information. The need to expand that across other countries became apparent, probably about a year ago.

Some of our offices in Eastern Europe didn't have any storage capacity themselves, so we found giving them access to these file shares, just by giving them a web solution with access to this data, really helped them with the business of reaching the colleagues they needed to. It allows them to work in a seamless fashion, where they haven't been able to before. This has now expanded because it worked well for the needs they had.

Nasuni has simplified management compared to our previous processes. This is the product on the data storage side that really helped us cross the mix of hybrid cloud and on-premises devices. In the past, we had traditional servers in comms rooms and offices, or data centers and tape backups, so allowing us to have that on-site storage but with a cloud backup, and once it's configured, having to spend minimal time worrying about backups and how they worked, allowed us to cross that barrier to make our business more agile and help us simplify the support we provide.

In terms of continuous versioning, we have configured a hundred file versions, which is more than enough for our capacity. We also have hourly snapshots, which give us the ability to recover files quickly and easily. This is something that really assists us. That feature is used every week I imagine, certainly from our offices. The fact that they're an always-available and always-on service really helps us keep up with our business.

When we identify a security incident, we know a time we can go back to, where the data we have is clean. We're confident that we can do that. We have test servers so that if there's a need to restore separate environments, to check that data is uninfected, we have that option available. We have the ability to look at the file timestamps at a quick glance, and the fact that we are confident Nasuni will provide what we need is very important for our operations.

Continuous file versioning has a positive impact on our users. When they accidentally delete a file, all they have to do is tell us a file name and when they last had it, and we can find a version of that file within an hour of having that request. The nature of our business is that people want things immediately. Using Nasuni, we can service that request without having to restore from a tape backup. With the right access, it's very quick to identify. Even if a file was corrupt from a month ago, we can keep going back to other versions. Because we maintain other copies of the data, we can go back to one version that we know works, from the most recent edition of it.

One of the good features with file versioning in Nasuni is they'll only backup changes during the hourly snapshot, so even if someone had uploaded a lot of video content, for example, onto the network, and the last backup was half an hour ago, it'll only backup the changes to those files. With the bandwidth limits we've put in place, we know it's not going to impact the live data by doing the backup. That's an important feature because we're using the little and often approach. We're constantly backing up changes and it allows us to keep on top of the data we back up, and have very recent versions of it.

Nasuni has helped us to eliminate on-premises infrastructure. We have known for perhaps three years that we were going to be phasing out our data centers. It was at this time when we started getting recommendations for Nasuni. Ultimately, it has helped to drive down the costs. Considering the whole backend infrastructure of what we would need in a data center to support devices like this, the costs have been much reduced and we've had no reduction in terms of reliability, which is the key thing. We've had an improved level of service with reduced costs, which is obviously a very big plus.

This product helps to simplify infrastructure purchasing and support requirements. We had looked up what sort of type of network you need and whether we needed to have a certain speed. We have Nasuni appliances in offices with a 50 meg internet connection, and then we've got them in offices with a 10 gig internet connection, so it shows you don't need to spend big money on your network infrastructure.

One of the good features of Nasuni is that it allows you to make the changes you need to, depending on your environment. We've got a range of offices of different sizes and internet speeds but we can still provide the same level of service.

In some of the smaller sites that we have in the UK, we had to increase the internet speeds. This happened because people had data stored in other places and said, "All right, we want to put this into Nasuni as well." This meant that there were some small increments of the internet circuits we needed, but we found that it was still far outweighed by the overall cost saving we've made with data centers, and for hiring network infrastructure that we've had to purchase in the past.

Nasuni has helped to decrease capital costs because we haven't had to buy as much excess capacity. When we've had the need to order an appliance, we've tried to do a bit of forecasting on current data sizes and how that might grow over time. One of the good things with Nasuni is that we've got it set so that if data isn't accessed over six to twelve months, it is archived. It can still be retrieved if necessary, but without it being stored on the main device, you can keep it the same size. Your data size can go up but it's because it only presents the most recently used data. That really helps us, not having to order new physical devices every couple of years. 

The Nasuni filers are easy to use. 

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.

We can configure alerts, which is a useful feature. We have a remote service support team and we've only handed over support to them in the last six months. Prior to that, a lot of support was the responsibility of the local IT teams that I managed. I was able to keep in touch with my colleagues in each local office to see if they needed updates supplied, or if they had issues with their devices. I was able to see all of this on one page, which was very useful because I could then drill into the details, as and when I needed to.

Nasuni provides options to limit the bandwidth of your live data as well as your backups, so you can perform backups after hours if needed.

When we first set up our bandwidth limiting, we had a few problems when it came to managing it. This is something that could be made easier; however, we were able to make the changes that we needed to for our environment.

I have been using Nasuni for approximately three years.

Nasuni is a stable product. Our users have really noticed the difference, just in having a web-based backup and the file shares available with the on-site appliance, 24/7.

We have found that people weren't needing to come into the office as much to work, even during pre-pandemic times. People really noticed the difference in terms of how much more flexible it made their teams, especially if they weren't all physically located in one office or country. It meant that they could still work on data and review different versions of files.

Especially with the business that I work in, if they're preparing pitch documents, they'll sometimes want to look at other versions of files, perhaps five versions earlier, just to compare. With Nasuni, they have that option readily available, and that took the pressure off my teams to support them because the features were there for them to use.

Across the UK, we have approximately 15 local IT support staff. We also have a backend network team, so if there are server issues or network outages, we can escalate to another team of five. However, on the administration side, day-to-day, it is very low because once the system is set up and stable, we don't encounter very many issues with it.

In summary, we have the trust that it delivers the stability we need for our products.

The scalability is really good. The fact you can increase your data, and the way it only presents the active data, is very helpful. Initially, for some of our brands, we thought that we needed to have a large amount of data available over time. Then, with some analysis on Nasuni, we realized pretty quickly they only needed a small portion of that available but we were able to present the data to them, without them realizing not all of it was actively available. These changes were invisible to our users that access the shares so it allowed us to present in a way it was more cost-effective, and allowed us to be more scalable if they were accessing lots of data regularly. We have the capacity to do that without changing hardware.

Currently, we have eight on-premises devices across our offices in the UK. In these offices, we have file shares for approximately 4,000 users and the bulk of them are standard-level access. We are currently expanding our use of this solution across our American offices.

Most of our business users have access to at least one or two of our Nasuni file shares. We find them being used regularly until late weeknights and weekends. As it allows people in the business to work in any capacity they need, it's used extensively. We see hundreds of users connected to file shares every day.

Now that we're coming out of lockdown, the usage of offices and people in the business is slowly rising. That said, everyone has access to some of the shares, and there are some teams that have smaller data sets that we're looking to migrate in, anywhere we don't have the data already stored in Nasuni. As the capacity of our business grows, and once we're aware of the data that is being used, we generally make plans to get it stored. As such, I expect usage to continue to increase. It makes sense because we have that single, secure platform for it.

In the UK, there are a few different teams, especially within our creative brands. They may have a high level of access where they can create and administer folders, but Nasuni allows us to manage the non-standard requests as and when they're needed. For the volume of users we have for accessing that data, we see very few issues that present themselves.

In the UK, we started with on-premises filers. We had identified the offices where we needed to have replacements for our existing mix of on-premises file servers.

Scalability options for Nasuni include the ability to host data purely in the cloud, so some of the offices outside of the UK are now looking at that option. If they don't have the need or resources to fund an on-premises appliance, there is a big appeal to this approach because they can choose the way the data is available to users in the business.

Nasuni makes it easy to configure organizational changes. Something that we're looking at now is a cloud version of a Nasuni server. We found there are templates that allow you to build a server from scratch, so that definitely makes the cloud hosting element of Nasuni a lot easier to configure. You don't need to know all of the technical aspects of building a server from traditional Windows or a Linux operating system. You can replicate current service setups to a new one as well, so the tools have improved and got better over time. The support that we have with Nasuni gives us good options, so if our needs change, we feel like Nasuni is able to cope with those changes.

The scalability of these devices is the part that really did appeal to us and continues to do so. The whole ability to scale up data sizes but keep the same hardware for three years, if there are no hardware issues in that time, allows us to manage our data without having to make big investments on either hardware or supporting infrastructure. That has really helped us prove to our other offices around the business that it's a worthwhile investment to go with Nasuni.

We have been in contact with technical support a few times.

Certainly, at the start when we were doing the initial rollout, we had contact with them. Also, we did have a hardware issue on a server last year, so we had to involve support on that occasion. There were some internal parts that had to be replaced in some of the Nasuni servers last year, as well, so we had to wait for parts to be delivered. With the support and guidance of tech support, we were able to replace those after hours.

Overall, our experience with support, starting with logging tickets using the portal, is that they were quite responsive and helpful. I would rate them an eight out of ten. Not only were the replies quick but I think that the main Nasuni support is based in the US, and they made sure that someone was available UK time. Generally, we do stuff outside of business hours in the UK, and we found the support was there when we needed it at the right time, and that was very important because we were able to rely on it.

Prior to Nasuni, we had a mix of standard Windows file shares and different products. It was not a single product. Rather, it was various pieces of equipment that we had inherited. This is why we found it a lot more challenging to manage the data we had.

We switched because of the need to have a single platform. We needed something that we could rely on because we were spending more and more time on basic administration because the file shares were on different platforms, which meant that we had to grant different people access to multiple platforms. It was a lot more open to problems.

With our business, the drive was to a Cloud-First strategy and using Nasuni allowed us to meet that goal and to simplify the support we provide.

Because our data wasn't in a great state to start with, it probably took more time for planning than it should have. That was more fault on our side but what we saw fairly quickly, in terms of what Nasuni can do, helped us clear the picture of what we wanted to do or what we could do. We started with something reasonably complex but when we got Nasuni up and running, it had simplified the process for us.

With one physical device, you could have multiple volumes. When we merged multiple companies in the past, some of them had their own individual servers. We realized that you could have separate virtual servers or separate volumes within a single physical appliance, but you could still keep your data separated securely with the right permissions. That was another reason Nasuni appealed to us. It gave us more options to be flexible, and to an end-user, their file shares were on a shared physical device but they were still separated in terms of security.

In our first phase of the implementation, where we ordered five of the devices, it took seven or eight weeks to prepare the network information, order the units, and get the first one installed. It was probably another two months on top of that before we had the last of the five devices installed, so the deployment took between four and five months in total.

Our implementation strategy included trying to merge as many data sets into Nasuni as we could. It was not just all data and file servers. People, especially within our creative teams, had hard drives with lots of data that wasn't backed up. One of our goals was to simplify support and storage and make it secure, having it all backed up. As the deployment was rolled out, we improved things in these aspects.

When updates come out, we normally wait a few weeks to do the latest upgrades. For the most part, we keep them up to date.

It was myself and a couple of my colleagues who deployed the devices. We looked at the data for different offices around the UK and we collated data sizes and specifications. Between us, we looked at the size of appliances we needed in each site and then worked with Nasuni to implement and set those up.

We had assistance from a third party called Nephos Technologies, which is a professional services outlet that was recommended. We discussed plans that we had for them and then we provided them with data. They gave us some recommendations for each of the offices that we wanted to set up. Their assistance really helped us in the process.

I would rate Nephos and eight and a half out of ten. We found that they were flexible, understood our current challenges, and what we wanted to do. Like any project, timelines had to change. For example, we had to change the order of servers that we installed. Although the plan did change between when we started and when we finished, the support we got helped us to accommodate those changes.

Our ROI is in terms of the time that we have saved when it comes to supporting our users. When you consider the cost of the product and compare it to running the service, you find that the cost is flat when you have to increase your usage and data. This is something that was very appealing. 

We're looking at a global agreement on the licensing from Nasuni now, as we're expanding to other markets. We ordered five or six units to start, which helped with our pricing model.

When we first implemented Nasuni, we gave them an estimate of how many terabytes of storage we wanted to support, which helped to define the types of appliances we needed. We conduct annual reviews to see whether we're meeting our current and future needs, and as a result, we have increased our storage capacity. We've generally kept the same models of appliances, just because of the way Nusani stores the data.

The cost is based on the capacity, which is approximately $100 USD per terabyte.

In our case, we pay for both hardware support and software support. The software support is for the amount of data that we have and the hardware support is for the actual appliances that we have in our offices.

We incurred some additional costs when we asked for help from professional services. These were for offices in other countries that needed assistance with getting their devices installed.

When we were first looking into Nasuni, it was because of recommendations that we'd received and information that we had read online. There were other products, but Nasuni worked well for what we wanted to do at the time. All we needed was a good network connection and a secure room to store the Nasuni device, and we're able to manage that device remotely or on-site, as and when we need to.

There were some other Cloud platforms in use within smaller parts of our business at the time, so we reviewed those, spoke to some of the staff in the business and other IT teams for their input, and compared them against what Nasuni could offer. Through a process of elimination and pricing features, we realized Nasuni was looking like our best option, so it was the one we chose with all those factors in mind.

We use traditional file shares like Windows, Mac, and SMB files shares. As such, we haven't needed to take advantage of the storage for hosting VDI environments.

The switch from an on-premises device to the web is something we will test more, probably towards the start of next year. We would like to be able to have an office have a smaller on-site appliance with more data in the cloud. We will want to determine things like whether it needs a faster internet connection if you only have a web version of your data. Some of our other offices outside the UK will be testing that more than we currently do at the moment.

If a colleague of mine at another company was concerned about migration to the cloud and Nasuni's performance, I would say that based on the experience that I've had to this point, I definitely recommend it. I can recommend Nasuni just for reliability and scalability, as it definitely ticks those two boxes. I can't say anything other than good things about it.

My advice for anybody who is implementing Nasuni is to start by looking at where you're going to host your data. Do you want cloud-based storage, on-premises, or a hybrid of both? It has a range of options for different needs, which is one of the things that makes it a great product. It meets our need for standard and large individual file storage, and it is invisible to someone that uses it.

The biggest lesson that I have learned from using this product is related to scalability. We have been able to meet the very different needs of our business. We have a wide range of users and departments that want different things presented to them, and Nasuni allows you to present that on the backend in one way to people of different needs, so that it can fit whatever's needed for the business.

As I've progressed within my role in the IT support teams, it has increased my need to know more about the product and see how it affects our staff and the business.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We use Nasuni to provide storage at various locations. It is for office-type files that they would use for day-to-day office work, such as spreadsheets. None of it is critical data.

Each group at each site has its own data store. For example, HR has its own, and finance has its own. All of these different groups at different locations use this data, and they use these filers to store it.

The Nasuni filers are on-site, and we have virtual edge appliances on ESX servers at about 35 sites globally. The data stored at these sites is then fed up into Azure and we have all of our data stored there.

The OR and DR capabilities have been a very big help for us. Previously, with the solutions we had, it would have taken weeks sometimes to get things fixed and back up and running for people. Now, it only takes a matter of minutes.

It used to be a lot of trouble to bring data back up and a lot of the time, it was read-only, so the people couldn't use it very well. Now, with Nasuni, we're able to pretty much keep their experience seamless, no matter how much trouble the hardware is in at the site.

The Nasuni filers are easy to manage, although the process is similar to what we had before. We have a report that comes out three times a day that gives us the amount of data that's in the queue to be uploaded to Azure on each individual filer. We keep track of that to make sure nothing is getting out of hand. It also tells us if the filer has been restarted and how long ago that happened. It gives us a quick view of everything and how much total we're using within Nasuni. This report is something we created on our own to keep track of things.

If a user deletes a file or a file becomes corrupted, it's easy for them to get it restored. There is very little chance that the data is going to be done. We've had a few people delete things, or they have become corrupted, and we were able to get that file back to them in the states that it was in about five minutes before they had a problem. We were able to do this without any issues. Overall, the continuous file versioning is really helpful.

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. For example, we lost a controller the other day and all of the drives were corrupted. We were able to quickly repoint all of the users to a backup filer that we have at our data center, they were back up and running within minutes, and they still have read-write capabilities. Once that ESX server was fixed, we were able to repoint everything back to it in a matter of minutes. People were then again using their local filer to connect.

Nasuni provides continuous file versioning and we take snapshots on a regular basis. Right now, we have them stored forever, but we're trying to reign that in a little bit and keep them only for a period of time. Certainly, at this point, we have a lot of file versions.

We have not had a problem with ransomware but if we did, we would be able to restore the data pretty quickly by going back to an older version of the file before the ransomware took over. It is a similar process to the DR, although a little bit different. For us, OR and DR are pretty much the same thing. We haven't had any disasters that we've had to recover from but we've had three or four hardware failures a year that we've had to deal with. The continuous file versioning has helped to fix these problems pretty quickly.

Continuous file versioning also makes it easier for our operations group. The support team is able to restore files quickly, 24/7, and it is less work for them. They have more time to focus on other problems. The end-user also has access to shadow copies through Windows, and they've used that extensively at the sites.

Nasuni has helped to eliminate our on-premises infrastructure. When we moved to Nasuni, we moved to Azure. Before that, we had a large SAN storage that we were using, and we were able to get rid of it. That was a big difference for us.

We were definitely able to save some money because we've eliminated those expensive SAN disks completely. There were some servers at our old data center that we were able to get rid of, as well. There are some new expenses with Azure because we have to pay for the space taken by the snapshots, which is why we're going to put a retention limit in place. Overall, I don't have an exact number but we were able to save money.

Nasuni is transparent to our end-users. We have it all set up as a file server through Microsoft DFS. If you were to ask one of our end-users how they like Nasuni, they would have no idea what you're talking about.

One issue that we have is related to copying data out of Nasuni. We just sold a site and it was split into two pieces. One part of it was sold to another company and we kept the other part. At the site, they have a Nasuni filer with about eight terabytes of data. Now, we have to split that data and the problem stems from the fact that the other company doesn't have Nasuni.

This means that we have to copy all of that data back to the site and into a format that they can use, which is probably just a Windows file server, and then we have to split it somehow. I'm not really sure that there's an easy way to do that. It's going to take us a little bit longer to separate this other location, and we're having to invent things as we go along.  

In these areas, it's not as simple as it could be, but it doesn't happen very often. As such, we haven't had to worry about it too often. Although it's not affecting us too much at this point, if there's a problem such that we have trouble getting data out of Nasuni, then that could be an issue. However, for the time being, it seems fine.

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. To me, this seems counterintuitive or like we're going backward a little bit. I would like to see a way to be able to switch them around without any problem. That said, I'm not sure if it would then cause other issues because of how Nasuni works, so it may not be possible.

We started using Nasuni in 2018 and it's been running ever since.

Up until about a week ago, the stability has been rock solid. We've actually had a few issues after upgrading to version 9.3 that we're trying to deal with. We have a couple of sites that we're still not sure if Nasuni is the problem, or if it's VMware ESX, and we're working on that. At this point, we're not thinking about rolling back because of all of our sites, only two of them have problems. As such, we think that something else may be going on.

For the most part, it's been extremely stable, with no issues whatsoever. With Nasuni, there has been very little downtime, if any. Most of the sites have never gone down and with the sites that have, there's usually some other external problem.

Overall, it's been very stable for us.

We are limited to the amount of space that we have purchased from Nasuni. If we get close to running out then we just buy more. We still have to pay for the storage within Azure, so we're trying to make sure that it doesn't get out of control. In general, we don't need to add any on demand.

Scalability is not a problem and we can add as many servers and as many filers as we need to, which is really nice. For example, instead of buying tape drives and using that type of backup system, we decided to take a few sites where we have some smaller servers and we use Nasuni to back them up. We use a separate filer to back up all of that data. It's been nice in that way, where we've been able to do things with it that we hadn't originally thought of.

If it should happen that we make a large acquisition, and we bought 10 sites, we could easily put in 10 more filers. It wouldn't be a problem.

Amongst our 35 sites, we have between 10,000 and 12,000 users. A lot of them are office-type people such as those from HR and finance. All of us, including administrators and developers, use it for this kind of thing. The developers wouldn't store code on these because that's not what it's used for. Our Nasuni environment is specifically for data to help the business run, which isn't critical to producing goods or shipping them or anything like that. That is a completely different system. Anybody who works for the company that needs to access simple office data is going to be going through Nasuni.

We have approximately 210 terabytes stored in Nasuni right now. That continues to grow at perhaps a terabyte or two per month. I don't think we'll be moving it anywhere else at this point. Down the road, we do have a very large file system at our data center that we're considering moving, but it's going to take a lot of time to do that one because it's 400 terabytes and it's a lot of old data that we have to clean up first. But that's pretty much the only area that I would see us doing something.

Later this year, we're going to start refreshing some of the hardware because we're approaching five years on some of the older stuff. As we replace it, we'll do another rollout, but it's not going to be like before. We're just going to put a new server in and put a new filer and connect to the data.

Up until recently, I would have rated the technical support a seven out of ten. We had to open a case in Australia for a problem with one of the Nasuni filers, and I haven't got a response for it yet. We had one of the support people answer a question at about three in the morning, US East Coast time, and he said something to the effect that he would send an email giving an update. After that, we didn't hear back from him until about 25 hours later, which was a little concerning for me.

Part of the problem seems to be that Nasuni currently is not set up to do 24/7 support. They said that they were going to do that, so that was a little disappointing. Typically when we call in a problem, they jump all over it and they get it fixed in no time.

From the perspective of our end-users, the servers function the same way when they're working. We had Windows filers before and now they're Nasuni, so it's basically the same thing to them.

Although we mostly used Microsoft, we did use a backup solution called Double-Take, which is now owned by Carbonite. It did the job but it had a lot of idiosyncrasies that were very difficult to deal with at times. That was the only non-Microsoft thing that we used for the data before Nasuni, and we have since stopped using it.

In the beginning, the setup was kind of complex. We did have help from Nasuni, which was great. They were with us the whole time. We had some growing pains at the beginning, but once we figured out the first three or four sites, we were able to get everything done very quickly and efficiently, with very few problems moving to Nasuni.

When we first started with Nasuni, we had never used it before, and we had never used anything like that. We were used to using Windows servers, and there was a learning curve there to figure out the best way to set up the Nasuni filers. We really had to rely a lot on Nasuni for that. Some of it was trial and error, seeing what worked best as we started rolling it out.

We were replacing a single server that was responsible for doing everything. It was a file server, a domain controller, a print server, and an SCCM distribution point. It was all of these different things and we replaced that with one ESX server, which had multiple guest servers on it, doing all those functions separately. It is much better security-wise and much better operationally.

We started with a very slow implementation. We implemented one site, and then we waited two months before moving to the second site. We tried to start with some of the smaller sites first, with the least amount of data, to get our feet wet. Also, the first site we did was the one that I sit at. The team was all there and it was our site, so we figured we should do our site first. We staggered deployment, so it was not very quick. Then, once we had three or four completed, we did three a week for three months and we were done.

After completing the first site, choosing the next sites had to do with the hardware. We had some old hardware that we repurposed, so we did those sites next. After that, we moved to the sites that necessitated purchasing new hardware. 

From beginning to end, our implementation took a little more than a year. It began in August of 2018 and finished at the end of Q3 in 2019. The time it took was not because of Nasuni. Rather, it revolved around different ordering cycles in our company. Buying the new hardware was what stretched out the deployment time.

I was in charge of the team that did the implementation.

For purchasing and the initial negotiations with Nasuni, we used CDW. We still interact with them when it's time to do renewals, and they are great to deal with. They really help out quite a bit. They were the ones that brought us Nasuni in the first place and suggested that we take a look at it.

We're very happy with CDW. We use them for all of our hardware orders, and a couple of different infrastructure tools. We use them quite extensively.

We had four people responsible for the deployments, with one guy who was in charge of the group as the lead architect. Once it was deployed, we turned it over to our operations group, which is outsourced to TCS. Although they have supported us since then, they come to us if there's anything that's still an issue. We have a couple of guys that still work with Nasuni a little bit, but that's basically how the maintenance is done.

For the most part, there is little maintenance to do. There are situations such as when a controller card goes down, or like the issues we have been having since the upgrade. Otherwise, it's very hands-off and you really don't have to do a lot.

We don't plan on calculating a return on investment with this solution. In the grand scheme of things, it's really not very much money for what we're doing. We spend more money on the hardware, for example.

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.

We thought about an agreement with a three-year plan, where we would get a small increase every year, but we decided not to take that approach at this time. We go through CDW for these agreements and they help us get all of the quotes together.

In addition to what we pay Nasuni, there is the cost of storage in Azure or whatever cloud service you're using. It can get pretty pricey if you have a lot of snapshots, which is something we've found and we're now trying to scale back on. That's the biggest thing that is extra and you may not think of right at the beginning.

We looked at a few different products that year, and we decided that Nasuni was the best way to go. It has really worked well for us.

One of the products that we looked at was Veeam, the backup software, but it would have been used a little bit differently. We also looked at Backup Exec and a tool from Microsoft. We didn't look at anything that was exactly like Nasuni. We looked at these other things that would create backups of the primary data, which would have stayed at the site. Nasuni was a completely different way of looking at it.

The difference with Nasuni is that rather than having a backup in the cloud, the primary copy of the data is what's in the cloud. For us, it's stored in Azure, whereas with the other tools, the primary copy stays at the site. If you had a major problem, for instance, this issue with the controller card, the problem with these other solutions or the way it was before was that you're down and out at least until you can get the controller card replaced.

Then, once you're back up, you're going to have to copy all of the data back. For that, it would probably need at least a week. Some of these sites have very poor connections. For example, we have a site that's in the Amazon jungle in Brazil and they are notorious for being very slow, yet we've used Nasuni there and it works fine. Some of these other solutions probably wouldn't have worked. In fact, we probably would have had to buy a tape drive and back up the servers that way.

We have a hosted data center where we don't pay for individual items, such as servers. Instead, we pay for a service. The service might include a server or storage, and Nasuni has not eliminated that because we still need our physical servers at the locations. We debated on whether or not to put the filer in Azure for each site, but we decided that it was better to have something local at this point.

For our company, we were a little ahead of the curve. We didn't have internet connections directly from each site, and they all routed through a central internet connection. Because of that, it was difficult to eliminate any hardware at the site. We needed something there physically. But, having the virtual appliance for Nasuni really helps out quite a bit, because then we only have to have one piece of hardware and we can put all of the other servers that we need for infrastructure on the same ESX server. We have five or six different servers that are doing different functions that at one point, would maybe have been three or four different physical servers. Now we've reduced it to one.

We use Microsoft SCOM as a monitoring tool to keep track of all of the filers and make sure that they are running. 

We don't use the Nasuni dashboard because we don't have to. Everything is working the way it is. We do have a management console set up and we do go into that occasionally, but it's not something that's a regular thing that our support people use.

If I had a colleague at another company with concerns about migration to the cloud and Nasuni's performance, I would talk about the fact that the OR capabilities are so different than anything else that I've seen. The performance has actually not been too bad. You would think that there would be an issue with the cloud stores, but we set up a local cache on each filer that allows it to store up to a terabyte or two of regularly used data. That gets probably 80% of what people use, which means that they're accessing a local copy that's synced with what's in the cloud. This means that they don't really have to go to the cloud to get a lot of it. But when they do, it's pretty quick. It may not be as fast as if it were a local copy, but it's not too bad.

My advice for anybody who is considering Nasuni is that they definitely want to look at all of the options, but that Nasuni does have the best setup at this point. It offers the ability to recover things and provides data security. Especially with ransomware and all of these other new things that are causing lots of problems out there, it really helps mitigate some of that.

The biggest thing that I have learned from using Nasuni is that you shouldn't be afraid of the cloud.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

The use case specifically is to allow our engineering staff in different offices to be able to work collaboratively on the same projects at the same time. Also, another important feature for us is the ability to recover or restore data from any point in time in its history.

We have Nasuni Filers deployed at each of our offices in the US and another location in India. Nasuni is used by our engineering staff and where production engineering data is stored.

The cloud is used for synchronization from site to site as well as for backup and storing all our snapshot historical data.

We use different cloud providers for different things. Currently, hard Nasuni data is in AWS.

We use it for VDI. VDI is the direction that we are going throughout the company for consistency and user experience for DR and DC capabilities. Having the Nasuni Filers be a central element supporting the VDI solution has enabled us to have all our engineers work collaboratively in a very tightly integrated total solution.

It is very rare that we need to make significant changes to the Nasuni infrastructure to support organizational changes. On a day-to-day basis, there are new projects added across various design teams in the company. Those can be set up in seconds in Nasuni. It is just very easy to work with it. In essence, setting up the basic file structures just looks like another volume that has been shared on the network. Through the console, we can configure Global File Lock permissions for how those files can be accessed from site to site.

One of its most valuable features would be the Global File Lock capability, which is what enables our engineers to be able to work on projects collaboratively from site to site.

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 previously done when trying to manage backing up and restoring data files.

It is far less labor intensive than our previous processes. There is a console interface that is used for managing all the data repositories, what is in the cache of each appliance, the Global File Lock parameters and settings, the ability to recover files, etc. The single pane of glass interface manages all those capabilities. Things can be done in minutes through the Nasuni Management Console, which previously would have been a more labor-intensive effort with more manual processes.

Nasuni enables us to provide file storage capacity anywhere it is needed, on-demand, and without limits. We have it deployed on Nasuni appliances at our offices, but we also have the ability to create virtual Nasuni Filers that potentially could be deployed anywhere in our infrastructure.

Nasuni provides Continuous File Versioning down to the granularity of the snapshots, which occur about every 15 minutes. If there was a ransomware or other disaster type of event, only the data in the cache on the local appliance would be affected. The entire snapshot history of every file is backed up in the cloud. We can, on a file-by-file, directory-by-directory, or volume basis, recover any or all files from that snapshot history back into the local appliance. The only impact would be the time to copy the data back from the cloud snapshot back into the local appliance.

Because these snapshots occur so frequently, we can recover data to a point very shortly before the time a person wants to recover that data, e.g., within 15 minutes of when whatever happened. If somebody deletes a file or accidentally moves/loses it, then we are able to recover it within 15 minutes of that point in time. Very little data, if any, is lost with this type of operation. This has greatly relieved any concerns about IT backups and restores to the point where it is a very minimal concern. 

It frees up IT staff to work on other initiatives, because these are automated processes that occur in the background and require minimal attention, if any at all, from IT staff.

One area where Nasuni has made huge strides over the last year and a half is the time required to synchronize data from site to site. This has gone down quite a lot, but we always would like it to occur faster. 

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.

I would like the ability to roll back to a prior version of the firmware, e.g., if you had a problem when you were upgrading to a newer version. They do not have this capability. This is less of a concern than it used to be. It is a much more mature product, but this would always be a very nice feature to have.

We have been using it longer than I have been in the IT management role here. I can estimate it at eight or nine years in total.

For the last several years, it has been very stable. There have been no issues.

Deployment and maintenance need a very tiny fraction of an FTE. With everything that we are doing with the appliance, it is probably a couple of hours a week.

Scalability is seemingly limitless in terms of the number of places where appliances could be deployed as well as the amount of data that can be handled. The only limitation is the amount of cache memory that is on the local appliance. So, if you needed to keep a very large amount of current data in the local cache memory, you might need to deploy multiple appliances at a site. However, it basically uses a first-in, first-out methodology for what data is kept in the cache. Any data that has been accessed or modified recently is in the cache. If it is not in the cache, it will pull it into the appliance from the snapshot history and replace the data that was accessed the longest time ago which is remaining in the local cache. However, any data can be brought into the local cache to the appliance. Therefore, we have been able to completely work within the bounds of an appliance at a given site.

All of our engineering staff are using it: designers, engineers, project managers, building information modeling (BIM) staff, and technicians. That is around 240 people in our firm.

It is being about as extensive used as it can get. It is used across all our engineering staff, covering all active project-related files. That is the extent to which we tend to deploy it. There are other file systems being used for other purposes, but we don't have the same kind of needs that would warrant using a Nasuni appliance for something like that, like we do for this. So, the Nasuni infrastructure is used really for the most business-critical applications.

Previously, the company used traditional file storage systems and big tape backup systems.

Nasuni replaced multiple older file systems and manual tape backup solutions. This has been absolutely business-critical because of the type of data that is stored on there, e.g., all our engineering client project information is stored there. Also, it is extremely resilient. It allows us to recover files if there was ever either accidental or malicious loss of data. For loss of data of any type, we have the ability to recover that data from the entire snapshot history on any file. So, Nasuni is important for day-to-day activities as well as providing disaster recovery capability on any data stored on it.

Before having the solution, it just would not have been possible to have staff in multiple offices be able to work collaboratively in some of these design applications at the same time. So, Nasuni was critical to enabling that capability, which increased productivity, allowing us to share resources more effectively across offices. Also, prior to having the Nasuni solution, if engineers wished to restore data to a prior point in time, we were limited by the capabilities of our previous tape backup solutions. This means they were not as granular as Nasuni. Our granularity is down to about 15-minute increments in time, where it might have been daily with the old tape backup solution. Nasuni is quicker when recovering data from any point in time than was ever possible with prior tape backup solutions.

Nasuni has replaced other on-premise infrastructure. It has replaced traditional file storage and tape backup solutions with a simple 2U appliance that has storage integrated into it and is connected back to the cloud for all the snapshot data.

We did have assistance from Nasuni to get the devices configured initially. It wasn't an enormously complex process. 

We did have Nasuni Professional Services help with the initial setup.

Nasuni certainly has reduced labor costs associated with managing all the data and how we manage client project data. It has greatly reduced the labor efforts and costs associated with that. It has also turned out to be a very reliable solution. As site-to-site sync performances have improved, that has enhanced the productivity for all our engineers as well.

Before Nasuni, the time investment was critical and a daily activity. It took a fair bit of time to prepare, load tapes, catalogue items, and run backups every day. Now, with Nasuni, the only time spent is when we have to customize the Global File Lock permissions for certain folders (for the engineers) so the Global File Lock mechanisms work correctly. This is a one-time activity that occurs when a project is set up and completed in minutes.

Nasuni has decreased capital costs because you don’t need to buy as much excess capacity. The CapEx cost is definitely lower with Nasuni. It is only when we either need to upgrade an appliance in an office or if we need to purchase appliances for new offices that there are CapEx costs. The rest of it is an OpEx cost.

It has reduced capital costs by over 80%.

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. There are CapEx and OpEx elements to both solutions: 

• With the old school solution, you have an OpEx expense for tapes, which is relatively small. With Nasuni, you have an OpEX cost for the data in the cloud, which is larger. 
• With the old school solution, you have CapEx costs for storage equipment, which are large. With Nasuni, you have a CapEx expense when you need to purchase new appliances for offices, which is relatively small. 

It is kind of a trade off with similar costs either way.

The snapshot history backed up in the cloud is an annual OpEX expense. Occasionally we have to bump it up because the amount of storage required for all our snapshot history increases over time, but the infrastructure purchasing and support requirements are definitely simpler.

We do hardware refreshes on Nasuni appliances. So, that is not a buy it once and you're done forever kind of thing. The majority of the cost with the Nasuni is an OpEx cost for storage of all the snapshot history.

I think the pricing on the appliances is completely reasonable and fair. I have had no issues with it. 

Keep in mind that Nasuni allows their clients to choose what cloud platform all the snapchat history is saved on. Depending on the cloud platforms that your company uses, or if there are standards on such things, there may be some benefits to looking at alternative cloud providers for storing the snapshot history, because there may be some savings to be had there. At the same time, because they have that flexibility and support several different cloud platform vendors, if your company is standardized on a particular cloud vendor, then odds are Nasuni is already supported in it.

The costs are the standard licensing fees and subscription for the total size of the data repository (for the snapshot history in the cloud).

We looked at Panzura too.

The cloud piece is almost transparent to the user. Because you are interacting through the Nasuni Management Console, you are not really working directly with that cloud provider solution to access files. You could, if you wish, but you can do everything that you need to do directly through the Nasuni Management Console. The cloud happens to be the place where the data is stored and you don't necessarily need to interact with it directly.

Keep in mind the amount of data that you need to keep in your cache. So, sizing your appliance for the local cache storage needs to meet your day-to-day needs, but your actual needs are probably less than what you think they might be. If you had the ability to store 30-days worth of data in the local cache appliance, you are probably in pretty good shape. I definitely would try to understand exactly what the needs of your business are. If you have site-to-site replication needs, carefully consider the capabilities of any particular solution to make sure that the vendors that you are considering can deliver on that as well as how easy it is to work with those vendors for restoring data, if you ever needed to do that.

We haven't tried going back to a more traditional solution. This solution has done a fantastic job of meeting all our needs. Overall, we are just very happy with Nasuni.

I would rate Nasuni as nine out of 10, but I am a tough grader. It is hard to get a 10.

We needed a solution that would allow our 12 offices to collaborate from one central location of active business data that is continuously synchronized and backed up. This is the problem that Nasuni solved for us.

Our environment includes Nasuni's cloud-based file storage called UniFS, and at each site, we have a filer on-premise. Our normal SAN/NAS refresh cycle at each office location was 3 to 5 years. This IT work involved a lot of time, effort, and cost involving research, planning, and deployment of the properly sized SAN/NAS. With Nasuni, this hardware refresh cycle has literally stopped. Our capacity now scales on-demand.

Prior to Nasuni, each office had its own on-premises file server and there was no real collaboration on a single set of data. We had data silos operating independently at each location and when we would win a project, it was very difficult to collaborate between offices. Nasuni came in and looked at all our offices and data within our workflows and made the requisite recommendations. In the end, all of our active business data was consolidated and synchronized into one universal ‘global’ drive that was automatically backed up every 15 minutes and accessible by all staff in all offices.

With Nasuni, we have been able to replace multiple data silos and toolsets with a single global file system, which is important to us because we have been able to consolidate several different products and solutions. Prior to Nasuni, the normal mode of operations in IT was to employ several products to use with critical business data. For example, we have to store it, back it up, think about disaster recovery, and think about how different employees collaborate on the same data at the same time. Each of these problems required different products.

Nasuni solves your storage, backup, disaster recovery, and file sync/collaboration needs in one product/solution.

Thankfully, we have not had to use it for a ransomware attack or disaster situation. But the risk of data loss due to a ransomware attack is significantly mitigated knowing we can restore our data to within 15 minutes of the last Nasuni ‘snapshot’. We also use Nasuni on a weekly basis for simple file restores. With Nasuni, in two clicks you can restore a file. 

Prior to Nasuni, we had a completely separate software package that we purchased for data backups. This is not required any longer. As such, our IT environment is simpler and more cost-effective.

We don't use Nasuni exclusively for VDI but we do have VDI components. This is very important to us because we've been using VMware for almost 20 years.

With regard to the simplicity of management, the Nasuni Management Console makes everything very simple. Related to that is the support that we received during our implementation, as well as the ongoing support that we get whenever we have any questions about configuration or otherwise.

Nasuni has helped to simplify infrastructure purchasing and support requirements, starting with the fact that we no longer do our regular SAN refresh every three to five years. Also, we are now dealing with one vendor, rather than multiple vendors for our storage solution.

Anybody that knows about storage products will understand how they just fill up because users create more data than you have a plan for. A storage upgrade is a big IT project and we haven't had to do one for almost three years. Having the benefit of being able to forgo one of these projects saves us hundreds of hours each time.

When compared to having to do SAN refreshes, Nasuni contributes positively to business agility. When you have to plan for an IT update project, it requires time and effort. With Nasuni in place, that need goes away because the technology automatically backs up the data, synchronizes it, and maintains version control for disaster recovery. From that perspective, the business is much more agile.

One of the most valuable features is scalability. As time goes on and we begin to run out of disk space, and we start planning for deployments and upgrades, Nasuni really helps. One of the things that we love about this product in IT is that it looks at your data and identifies what is active, or what is being worked on. We can set a threshold in terms of time where, for example, if the data has not been opened or touched for at least a year then it is automatically backed up to the cloud. By doing that, it's constantly keeping your file servers lean, which means that you don't have to regularly buy new storage upgrades.

Because we don't have to continue to buy storage as we did before, Nasuni has partially helped to eliminate our on-premises infrastructure. In this regard, it has reduced our SAN refresh costs. It is difficult to estimate how much we have saved because each office had its own SAN and storage requirements prior to Nasuni, and I would have to look into how much we paid for that infrastructure. Easily, we have saved six figures.

Aside from costs, Nasuni has reduced the amount of effort that we spend on our storage solution. The IT works and planning that's involved whenever you're doing a storage upgrade or a SAN refresh is significant. It becomes a month-long project. Having Nasuni manage active data versus inactive data has meant that we haven't bought a SAN since we implemented Nasuni in 2018.

Some of the other valuable features are collaboration and disaster recovery.

Nasuni gives us a single platform with a 360-degree view of our file data, which is very important to us. It is called the Nasuni Management Console and we have everything that we need to look at in a single pane of glass. From an IT administration standpoint, there's nothing worse than having to hop onto different toolsets or different solutions to manage different things. With regards to data management, specifically, we work through the Nasuni Management Console and everything is managed from there.

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 length of time that it takes depends on the speed of the internet. If it were to drop from 15 minutes to two minutes, that would be fantastic. However, I understand that there are a lot of variables involved. As such, it's probably not just Nasuni but also the speed of the internet.

We have been using Nasuni since November 2018.

Stability-wise, it has been top-notch. We haven't had any issues whatsoever. When we first implemented it, we had the occasional questions about the length of time required to create a new file. We thought that it might be quicker.

Nasuni is used daily. Literally, all of our business-critical data resides on it, so the availability has to be there 24/7/365.

Scaling is just a matter of contacting Nasuni and telling them that we need more storage. After that, they allocate it. We're using Azure, whereas some people use Amazon AWS or Google. It doesn’t matter to Nasuni which ‘backend’ you use.

We have approximately 450 users and the roles range from engineers to project managers, to administration, marketing, IT, and finance. We don't have any plans to increase usage. As the company grows, it doesn't mean that we're necessarily going to be doing anything different. We may just have to buy more Nasuni storage.

We have a small IT team of approximately four people that was responsible for the deployment and takes care of the maintenance. There is not much maintenance that needs to be done. It involves system updates and going into the Nasuni Management Console to check log files.

We received helpful support during our implementation, as well as ongoing support whenever we have questions. We also have access to Nasuni’s senior leadership team, which is fantastic!

We did not use another product prior to implementing Nasuni.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. Nasuni comes in and they look at your data. They do an assessment and then they give you a report that estimates your sizing based on the total data that you have, as well as the amount of data that is actively being worked on at any given point in time. For example, you may have five terabytes of data but there is only 1TB that is being actively used.

With assistance from Nasuni in classifying our data as active versus inactive, we were able to then size a proper solution and purchase the right amount of storage that we need both in the cloud and on-premises.

The implementation strategy was just a matter of sizing the environment and then copying data from a traditional file server to the Nasuni file server. It took about a month for us to complete. This included sizing the environment for each location, making sure each one had a Nasuni filter, then communicating to staff that we were going to be moving data from one location to another.

The moving of data is something that we did on a weekend and the staff were told that when they came back to work on Monday, they would automatically be pointing to a different location for their data.

Nasuni assisted us with the implementation. We did not rely on a third party.

Not having to purchase storage each year has helped to reduce our capital costs. We no longer have to do our SAN refresh cycles.

We analyzed our ROI when we first purchased the solution and although I can't share the actual costs, I can say that the primary savings are in the time and effort involved to do the SAN refreshes. This is not to mention buying the SAN in the first place. A safe estimate would be savings in the six-figure range.

The cost of licensing is negotiated and billed annually per terabyte. Different clients have different pricing, depending on their agreements.

In general, the pricing is straightforward and it's an all-inclusive price with no surprises. There is no charge for additional features, add-ons, or otherwise. The fact that it's one price for all of the technology is something else that we like a lot about this product.

Prior to implementing Nasuni, we evaluated Panzura. It is the direct competitor in the market. In our opinion, the Nasuni technology was better. The cost for the product and the cost to implement was significantly less with Nasuni, although the primary reason that we chose it was the technology.

When we saw the demo, we were more impressed with what we saw with Nasuni as compared to Panzura. We were also much more impressed with Nasuni’s representation in terms of how they communicated with us promptly and honestly.

When it comes to configuring Nasuni to support organizational changes, the technology is very easy to implement. What's more difficult in any organization is communicating and implementing workflow changes required due to the new data structure. Human nature dictates that we are naturally resistant to change, especially in an organization that has workflows in place for a long time. As such, be sure to involve as many key stakeholders in your company as possible in order to communicate the many benefits of the project. With proper buy-in, the chances of any IT project succeeding are greatly increased.

Today, all of our employees realize that we now have what's called a "global drive", and this is where all of the data can be found. What used to frustrate people, understandably, is that if we're collaborating, they would go to their local office's file server and it wouldn't be there. Rather than stored locally, a file might be on the "British Columbia" server, or instead on the "Alberta" server. Consolidating all of the data and then communicating to staff that there's only ever now one location where that data or that file can be found, really simplifies finding and retrieving the file that people are looking for. Data structure simplification through consolidation and classification goes a very long way to removing friction for the end user when trying to find a file.

I have recommended Nasuni to many colleagues, and I point out that if they have any sort of multi-site collaboration problem, or if they're thinking of disaster recovery, business continuity, or backup solutions, or if they're tired of refreshing their SAN, then Nasuni is an excellent choice.

My advice for anybody who is implementing Nasuni is to take your time at doing the assessment and classifying your data. This is something that Nasuni helps with. Then, once you have a good understanding of the data classification, take time to get an understanding of everybody's workflow and what they expect things will be like post-change. If this is done correctly and you take your time then the implementation will go a lot smoother. If instead you just rip off the band-aid and do something, and then people wake up Monday and there are all sorts of changes, chaos is imminent.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

Nasuni is our data storage solution. In addition, it's our data backup solution. As a construction company, we have onsite offices where we're building a building, a highway, or a water treatment plant, and we use Nasuni for data storage for all of those job sites. Additionally, for all of our regional offices, Nasuni is our storage solution for our entire company's internal data.

It has on-prem and SaaS components, but for all intents and purposes, it is on-prem.

Nasuni replaced our previous data storage solution for all our job sites back in 2018. Before that, if we had a job where a data server was stolen or a file was deleted, it was a long and onerous process to get that data back. For us, just like pretty much every other company out there, our data, our intellectual property, is significantly more important than the hardware itself. Once we rolled out Nasuni, we were able to restore deleted files in seconds, as opposed to days or weeks. It takes five or six clicks and we're able to restore data.

Additionally, if one of our offices has an electrical or power issue, we are able to move our end-users to a different edge appliance where they can access their data, minimizing downtime for our end-users.

It has also replaced multiple data silos and toolsets with a single, global file system, and that is extremely important. We have one platform to manage all of our data, to see it and to quickly access it, and that is huge. On top of that, Nasuni provides something called the NMC, or the Nasuni Management Console, which manages all of our Nasuni edge appliances. Not only can we manage the data, but we can also manage the appliances from a single pane of glass. Instead of having to log in to 50, 75, or 100 appliances, we can just log in to one device and manage everything from there, monitor alerts, push out updates, et cetera. It's really helpful.

With the NMC, when we are asked to restore a deleted file, we can do that from that one console, as opposed to going to the specific appliance the end-user was using to access data. From an IT perspective and a support perspective, the fact that we can use one location to access all of our edge appliances and do the work that we need to do, such as a file restore, makes it significantly easier for us. In turn, it makes things easier, quicker, and more efficient for our end-users. When a mistake happens, we can quickly apply whatever the corrective action may be and get our end-users back to accessing the data that they need.

The NMC has made things even simpler by providing one area where we can manage all of our edge appliances, as opposed to hitting each edge appliance individually. The NMC has really made it more efficient, streamlined, and simple for us to manage our data environment.

With Nasuni, our data is stored in volumes. If we have to provide data to an internal business group, it's easy for us to set up a new volume of data, if needed, to make it unique to that business group. We can also just provide remote access for another group internally to an existing volume that we have. In terms of giving the right people access to the data they need, Nasuni makes it pretty easy to do. That makes our business more efficient and more streamlined. It cuts down on internal workload and the tickets to our department, the IT department, to give end-users access to the data they need. As a department, we have become more proactive in recognizing and giving correct access to the data the end-users need.

With continuous file versioning, the way our data is backed up allows us to recover quickly if some of our data is compromised by a ransomware attack. We can simply revert back to a different point in time before that attack took place and make that data available to our end-users. That makes things much easier for us and gives us one less thing to worry about.

In addition, with continuous file versioning, there are some tools in Nasuni to very quickly help us restore a file that's been deleted or corrupted, back to a time where it was not deleted or corrupted. We have that functionality in the NMC and we can restore a file in just a few minutes.

Another benefit is that Nasuni has helped to eliminate infrastructure significantly. About 90 percent of our jobs are scenarios where we're onsite building a building or a stretch of highway and, for those jobs, we have saved on hardware costs and have not had to purchase a server. Instead, we have been able to access other edge appliances within the company. We can utilize existing hardware and don't need to buy new hardware for a particular job. That has certainly saved a lot of money on hardware, on the order of a few thousand dollars for the cost of a job-site server.

And that has made our infrastructure support efforts a lot more streamlined. It has reduced the soft costs, including the time the entire IT department spends on getting things up and running, and the time spent supporting users when a file gets moved or deleted and has to be restored to an earlier time.

We can also accurately forecast our costs for replacing the 10 percent of our Nasuni edge appliances that are on-prem, as needed. We know what to expect, how much life we can get out of them, and forecast when we will need to replace one. There is a need for hardware replacement, but that need has decreased. While we have established, internally, that we need to have that on-premises machine, we have virtualized many of our Nasuni edge appliances going forward, minimizing that hardware footprint that we have to manage.

From an agility perspective, our onsite people who are building something have the ability to access their data from any location and they can go back to the data for jobs they previously worked on. An end-user can be starting up a new job and, at the same time, can close out a job that was run somewhere else. Nasuni gives them that flexibility, making them more productive from one location. In addition, many of our end-users work at multiple locations and may be in five different locations from Monday to Friday. They're able to access all the data they need from those different locations and that is definitely a part of what they need to be successful.

One of the things we find most valuable is how quickly we can restore a deleted file. An unexpected byproduct of this feature is the ransomware protection that Nasuni provides as well. 

Another helpful feature, in addition to restoring a file that was deleted within 24 to 48 hours, is that we have the ability to restore a file or a folder that was deleted, going all the way back to the inception of that file or folder. That means we actually have unlimited backups to the inception point of data with Nasuni.

In addition, Nasuni enables us to provide file storage capacity anywhere it’s needed, on-demand, and without limits. That's important to our company because, as a construction company, we are often building where nothing else exists. We may be adding a new stretch of highway, or replacing a stretch of highway in a remote area, or building a water treatment plant in a remote, desolate area where one doesn't exist. The ability to give our end-users their data, safely and securely, is huge. When we are informed of a new job that we have to work on, we can usually get that project management team up and running with access to their data within three to four hours. For our transient workforce, where people are at a location for 12 months or 24 months and then move, having the ability to move to a new location and access new data, as well as old data to close out an old job, is critical to the way that our workforce gets the job done.

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. 

Nasuni is aware of these issues which are something of a wishlist for us, and we hope they will work on them sooner rather than later.

I have been using Nasuni for 10 years.

Nasuni has developed a good product that is secure and allows our end-users the flexibility they need to access their data. We're very confident in Nasuni and in what they provide. We're hopeful that they can continue to stay up with the times, but we're completely comfortable with the stability and the footprint that they've created in the data storage field.

The product was built and designed to be scalable. We can add on new devices, new edge appliances, in less than a day, whether they are physical or virtual devices. The fact that we can do that quickly is really helpful in our environment. If we need to scale down, we can do that as well and move our end-users to a different edge appliance to access data when their primary one is being decommissioned or needs service. The scalability is definitely an asset of Nasuni.

We have about 3,500 to 4,000 employees and all of them are users of Nasuni. They include everyone from upper management and ownership, all the way down to people in the field and college interns at our job sites who help us complete the projects we're working on. Everyone in our company accesses that data.

We increase our storage by 10 to 20 percent every year. Data storage is a growing need in our company. I don't see that increase in storage diminishing any time soon.

We require two people for maintenance of Nasuni. They do things such as building a new edge appliance and monitoring for and implementing new version installations. They restore files that have been deleted or moved and work with our vendor when it comes to licensing renewal and when we need to purchase physical hardware. They are also the main point of contact for opening support tickets if an issue arises.

I give their tech support a 10 out 10. They're great.

This is the first vendor that has helped us with all our data storage. Before, we did all that internally.

We have a license that we renew annually and we recently renewed about 250 terabytes of data. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

If a colleague at another company told me they have concerns about migration to the cloud, I would say Nasuni has put a great deal of effort into simplifying and streamlining the migration process. We did not go through that, as our process was a little bit unique when we moved our data over to Nasuni. But in the years that I've been working with Nasuni, I have seen them put a lot of time and effort into streamlining that process to move data from an existing storage solution over to their cloud data storage solution.

When it comes to the migration, the amount of time you put into preparing and organizing your data will make that transition smoother and more efficient. If your source data is permissioned properly and the overall hierarchy is as organized as it can be before you move it, that will make that process significantly easier. Also make sure that end-users are accessing the data they need to access. Put time and effort into making sure that is correct, as opposed to making it a "Wild West" and giving everyone access to everything.

Our use case at the moment is for our file storage for all our London offices. It's for our London editorial teams, our London business units, and also our college.

We tend to keep it up to date in terms of the version. We're pretty much only a week or so behind a certain release because we know how easy the upgrade process is and we also know how successful the upgrades are. We've never had to roll back any upgrades. We've never experienced any issues with the upgrade process. So, we always keep it on its latest and greatest.

We're currently only using it in our London offices. We have our backend storage, which is AWS at the moment. It's about 100 terabytes of S3 storage, and in front of the S3 storage, we have three physical filers. Two of them are in our London offices and one is in our colocation data center. We have a virtual filer as well, which is running on our Nutanix hypervisor. 

It's pretty much all cloud. The on-premise is pretty much just a cache. They're just filers. They're just for the speed. We're a media and publications house. So, we need our files quite close to us so that we have a cache of those files, and our editors can access those files quickly and responsively.

When we purchased it years ago, we could only get it on Azure, but because we are 99% AWS, it was better that we moved over to have our costs in line with our other AWS spend.

It replaced multiple data silos and toolsets with a single global file system. The main reason for purchasing Nasuni at the time was that it took out so many tiers of other technologies that we were running at the time. We had on-premise file servers. We had virtual file servers, and we had replication going from three or four different sites and that replication was going to colocations. We had tape backups. We had physical backup storage. There were multiple vendors we had to deal with. We had multiple contracts. We had outer support, hardware, and software. By bringing in Nasuni, which was pretty much full cloud-based technology, we managed to remove heaps and heaps of infrastructure, and management as well. Previously, the management was like a day job of checking backups and checking the replications running and things like that. They weren't even replicating over to the other side. Nasuni changed all of that. We were instantly making one copy straight to the Cloud, and it was available and protected. It was definitely very important for us. It was probably our biggest project at the time. It fitted perfectly into our disaster recovery process and plan. It was something simple to work with, and we didn't have to deal with those workloads. 

Some of the benefits were obviously the cost savings from not having to manage and have so much infrastructure in our colocations. Our editorial teams felt secure knowing that we had forever backups of their files. We have to have multiple copies of our publications, files, photography, and things like that, and whenever we've spoken to the departments about how secure their data is, we just tell them, "Things are never going to get lost here. We've got multiple copies. It's forever."

It offers a single platform with a 360-degree view of our file data. Having the dashboard or a single pane of glass means that you're not moving between different management GUIs. It's very important that everything you need to know and see is there.

It provides file storage capacity anywhere it’s needed, on demand, and without limits. We pay for a set amount, but there have been times when we've gone over that amount, and we've continued to work. We just spoke to our account manager and we could spin up more data. Our invoice changes because we're using up more storage, but it's there on-demand, and we use as little and as much as we like.

It's easy to configure it to support organizational changes. We have changed. Our organization has changed over time, and we've continued to make changes to the product. Although Condé Nast is a global company, we were working as 12, 13 different entities in that company. We've now merged all our offices together, which meant more people wanted access to UK data. We've now got people from the US, India, European countries, and all other areas of the globe accessing that data. It was simple to make configuration changes so that those users could access the data via their domain or via their active directories.

It does continuous file versioning for us. The files are always protected in AWS S3, and they're also protected from ransomware, which I believe Nasuni guarantees. It's not something that we configure or switch on. It's just something that's been mentioned to us by the account managers.

There is snapshot retention. There are snapshot schedules that you can set on each share or file level. You can set up whatever level you want to set for the schedules. We sometimes have our scheduling done once an hour, so we can make changes back to an hour. There are forever snapshots from day one of a file appearing.

It has increased our productivity knowing that we can restore things in an instant. We've never had any complaints from any users about bringing back the wrong type of files or not being happy with a file that we've brought back.

It has helped eliminate on-premises infrastructure. We had a number of physical file servers and physical storage and backup infrastructure, and it was also the same in our colocation where we were replicating our entire infrastructure. We managed to remove tons of on-premise hardware and virtual machines just because we could install Nasuni. In terms of the effect of this reduced infrastructure footprint on our costs, one of our higher costs would've been the rack space at our colocation. That's a massive cost reduced from our monthly outgoings.

It has simplified infrastructure purchasing and support requirements. We have a single provider for our file storage and file backups. It has simplified purchasing and management. It has enabled us to be more proactive with other projects. We don't have to manage all that old infrastructure. It has enabled us to move forward.

It's a lot simpler and more cost-effective as compared to buying fixed assets through hardware refresh.

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.

Knowing that it's all protected from ransomware is also a very big advantage at the moment with the number of ransomware attacks that you see out there. Nasuni is being very protective of that, which is quite good to hear. There were times when we had to replace the filers we've had issues with, and because we know all our data is protected in AWS, we could just turn them off and spin them up. As quickly as in an hour or so, we were back working with zero downtime. That area of functionality is really good.

In terms of ease of management, it's the easiest one you can use. It's very simple. It's very easy to set up, very easy to configure, and very easy to manage.

The customer portal could be improved, but it has been a while since I've used it. They might already have improved it.

We probably started using Nasuni in 2016 or 2017. That was when we first started purchasing filers and backend storage. Initially, it was with Azure Storage, and then we easily migrated over to AWS, which helped streamline our costs and things like that.

Its stability is very good. We don't have any issues, and we never had any issues.

Its scalability is very good. You can scale forever.

It is being used extensively. In terms of our plans to increase its usage, it depends on whether it's on the roadmap and it fits into our strategic vision. It was being used only in the UK, and now, we've got other products being used globally elsewhere. 

We use their technical support quite often. I would rate them a nine out of ten for their technical response.

Positive

Before Nasuni, we were using a number of products. We were using Windows File Servers. We were also using DPM for backup and replication. We were also using another tool called Double-Take for replication. We were then using tape drives. We had a lot going on. We switched because we wanted one platform.

I configured and set it up myself, and I found it very easy and simple. It took a few hours.

We set it up in-house. In terms of maintenance, it's very lightweight. We have a maintenance vendor once a month or once every other month. The upgrade process is very simple. It's very easy to follow. With one click, you can watch Nasuni do its work.

I wouldn't know, but I would guess that we have seen an ROI.

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.

We did a comparison with a few other products, but I can't remember which ones they were. 

My advice to others looking into implementing Nasuni is to go for it. It's very simple to set up, very simple to configure, and easy to manage. Its performance is very good. It's very simple, and you just know it works. Migration-wise, we've migrated 100 terabytes to it with no problem. It's a really good product.

I would rate it a nine out of ten.

We use Nasuni to replicate sensitive data from on-premise to the cloud.

We have a hybrid deployment. It is hosted by a company in the cloud, but it is not our company. 

It replaced multiple data silos and toolsets with a single global file system. It was important to have data in a central location where the information could be monitored, maintained, and audited. We needed a single point of reference for the data. We needed it in one central location to be able to replicate it to the cloud. Rather than having data spread out all over the place, we wanted it in one place so that everybody has one place to go and get it.

In terms of simplicity of management, previous processes had no management in place. However, Nasuni was very easy to set up and manage. Integrations with Active Directory made it even simpler. It is very easy to manage.

It is very easy to make changes to the system for organizational changes. It is easy to set up new shares, and it is easy to configure who has access to those shares. It is also easy to do some of the replications that are needed with the system. There are some things that are not easy to set up, but that's a specific use case for us. It is not necessarily what most people do.

We use Nasuni's Continuous File Versioning feature. If somebody accidentally deletes something, we have version history available for the file system. So, if somebody were to accidentally go out there and make a change to the wrong document, or go out there and actually delete the document, we have multiple versions of that file that we can recover from to restore it, which is good. So, there is some type of disaster recovery. 

We're saving manpower and man hours. People don't have to do so much individual-task work and side work. They can use this system. It is all connected to our network. It makes everything more efficient. Our workflows are more efficient. It saves our company probably six hours a week with all combined employees.

Its dependability and auditing capabilities are very important to us to be able to maintain a chain of custody of the information.

Its file-sharing capabilities via a web portal are huge to us.

Its interface design or the graphic user interface design can be slightly tweaked in some areas. Some built-in setup wizards would be very beneficial. Rather than having to go in and configure it by hand, there should be more setup wizards for onboarding new data shares and getting it set up the way you want. I don't know if these are on their roadmap, but I sat down and talked to them about some of the work concerns, some of the things that we liked, and some of the things that we didn't like. They are probably working on that.

I have been using this solution for about a year and a half.

I would rate it a 10 out of 10 in terms of stability. In a year and a half, we've had one downtime. You can't give it a 100%, but it is 99.99999%. The way we've implemented it and have it running, it works. It is rarely down. Its uptime is wonderful.

We haven't really had to scale it, so that doesn't really apply to us, but I know the inherent operation of the system, and it is scalable to as big as you want it to go. Our environment is of a hundred terabytes. We have projected to increase its usage within the next five years.

Their support system is helpful and gets the job done, which is important to us. We haven't had to really use their support system because the system is just working the way it was designed, which is good for us.

Its initial setup was very complex. We are using Nasuni in a non-standard implementation. We are not using Nasuni the way it was designed to work out of the box. We decided to go with Nasuni because there was no solution on the market to do what we were trying to do. So, we worked and partnered with Nasuni to build a solution that fits our custom needs and the needs of many other companies, should they decide to go the same route.

Its deployment took two months. It was a pilot implementation. We had designed the system from the beginning and then implemented it. There was no real time frame or deadline. 

The Nasuni team was there for implementation. They were very knowledgeable of their product and of things that we needed answers to that were not their project. Their team that helped us implement was awesome. In particular, they had one guy with whom we worked. He just knew everything and was very smart when it came to software programming that was required on our side to implement the system. He was critical to the project's success. I called him a Wizard because he was very good with PowerShell commands. If we didn't have Nasuni's team working with us, it would have taken us a lot longer.

Their support during and after deployment was definitely a 10 star because they maintained contact with us. After we got everything deployed, they were available for answers and information to make sure everything was working. The system needed an update or something like that or had a couple of errors, and we reached out to them, and within 48 hours, they answered back on whether it was a concern or why it was happening. From the start to the fix, the whole thing took less than 48 hours. After we wrapped the project up and called it done, we haven't had to really use their support system because the system is just working the way it was designed.

We have slightly seen an ROI. We're not having to micromanage multiple data locations because it is all centrally located, so we don't have to buy that product anymore or that material anymore. For our use case, we had slight cost savings to hardware since implementing the system, but the amount of money that it is saving us time-wise is huge. That's the main reason we went with the solution. We can make everything more efficient.

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 additional costs depending on how you set it up. If you want to host an on-premise solution, you've got to have the hardware to do that. If you deploy their solution in the cloud, you're going to pay more for it. If you host in your own personal cloud, there are costs associated with that.

I can't remember the name of the other company, but basically, we went to a test environment to try to set up the solution, but the company could not get it to do as we wanted it to do. So, we had to cancel the project with that company and find a different company.

To someone who has concerns about migration to the cloud and about Nasuni's performance in that area, I would say that there is no worry at all about using it. Nasuni's software does data replication. So, it takes the data that's on-premise and replicates it to another server or to the cloud. If you want an offsite backup and a stable solution that is affordable, you would have no worry whatsoever. This would be a highly recommended product to do that because that's what it is designed to do.

I would advise making sure that you've got everything planned out of what you want to move. Have a good project plan, and at the beginning, have all the data on the table of what you want to move to the cloud or what data you want to replicate from one point to another. As you set the system up, it is easy to go through and add more data entry points into that replication process, but it would be better to have that at the beginning and get it all set up from the beginning.

It can provide file storage capacity anywhere it is needed, on-demand and without limits, but we are not using Nasuni in that capacity. We have also not used Nasuni to provide file storage capacity for VDI environments.

It has not helped us in eliminating on-premises infrastructure. It has eased our concerns related to data recovery, but it has not affected our IT operation. We specifically put a certain type of data into the system that we knew that we could not lose, and we needed it replicated. The system has so far been doing an awesome job and working as advertised. We have things in place, and with other solution providers and whatnot, this one had to live in its own environment. Nasuni gave us its own environment where it could be replicated, but it has not affected our concerns about timely backups and restores or other areas of IT.

I'd have to give it a 10 out of 10 because we haven't had any issues, and the amount of technological experience and expertise that they brought to the table in our project was amazing. 

Unified, global file sharing while reducing costs and eliminating backups.

We had a Nasuni filer in our Texas office. But due to the cold in Texas, power was down for a couple of weeks due to the inability to get fuel for the generator.  The users outside the area could work from home but they could not get to their filer in their Texas office. Since Nasuni stores our files in the cloud, we just setup another filer in the cloud with access to their files and they were back in business.

The features most valuable are 

1: Nasuni storage is immutable and the ransomware protection that it provides.

2: Elimination of file storage cost through elimination of backups as well as deduplication and compression.

3: Excellent support - the Nasuni support team is always there when you need them.

4: Centralize management and reporting capabilities provided by the NMC.

5: Ability to leverage our AWS Marketplace discount.

6: User file restoration self service.

7: Global file locking providing the ability to share any file with others in the world with the same controls that a users would have on one file server.

8: Ease of performing updates through a centralized console.

I originally felt that a Dropbox type interface would be useful but after second thought with all of the new always-on vpn capabilities that are available, I've reconsidered and decided that's not an appropriate for this platform. 

I have been using the solution for about two years.

We have not had any issues with stability.

The filers are separate devices. Admins really don't have to log into them too often. There is a Nasuni Management Console, which can do most of the management work and perform all of the upgrades, which routinely come out. You don't have to worry about shutting things down. We alert users when updates are being deployed with plenty of notice and reminders and do them manually. We typically do the updates manually during non-working hours in each region, but you can also schedule the upgrades to install automatically. 

It's a solid solution, easy to maintain.

It is very scalable. The only thing that I was concerned about initially was the global file locking. Everyone who was opening a file, anywhere in the world, has to talk to that service component. This solution was very well designed, scalable and redundant.  We've had no performance or problems with it at all. 

Nasuni's file storage system is extremely scalable and we are not close to exceeding it's capabilities or scalability limits.

Properly sizing filers is the best way to provide good performance and Nasuni does have a spreadsheet-based tool to help in that regard.

Nasuni's integration with Varonis is another plus.  We have one filer setup to read all files in the system in the event the entire file system has to be rescanned, which occurs about once per year.  When it does, the users don't even know it's happening.

The technical support is excellent. The Nasuni team knows we rarely have issues  and that we are not as familiar with the service as they are.  They are good about it and help us through all problems, all of which have been related to issues on our side.  We have not had any problem related to the service itself. 

When the Dallas Tx are had a deep freeze, we were upset because we could not access the filer there with a projected restoration of at least 2 weeks.  Nasuni support indicated that we could just do a disaster recovery to make another filer, which we proceeded to do in the cloud.  It was that simple and guidance was much appreciated.

I would give the Nasuni sales and technical support teams a 10+ out of 10. I don't do that very often, but Nasuni has never failed us and they are very easy to deal with with a top quality service organization.

Positive

Our original solution was traditional file servers and backup systems located in each remote office which we migrate to regional data centers.  Access performance became an issue.

We wanted to go to a cloud based system and back then, I was sold on Dropbox. It was fast, clean and simple. But upon a closer look, I could see it was not an enterprise solution.  Then I came across Nasuni and they had what we needed with global file locking.  We tested it, it worked as advertised and we moved to Nasuni with local office filers, supplemented with virtual filers in our regional data centers.

An additional win involved eliminating most of our disk and tape storage for backups performed by our software development team in Australia.  Our engineers had terabytes worth of source files that they used to develop our product and we were purchasing backup media for them. Once we convinced them that Nasuni could do the job, and that the data was stored in AWS, we were able to eliminate all of the extra hardware, tapes and physical storage space for it. Deduplication worked wonders for this solution too.

The initial setups varied on a site by site basis.  Some had physical filers and others were VMware based.  Our Infra team was very familiar with all of the environments and worked well setting up the sites and doing the file migrations.

It was a combination of our Nasuni Sales and Solution Architect, Nasuni Professional Services and our internal Infrastructure team and consultants.

Most of the work was related to summarizing our storage usage at each remote office and in our data centers which was then used to determine the sizing of the Nasuni resources.  During that process sizing of the physical filers was also done, allowing for projected growth.  Although there were a lot of logistical details related to the infrastructure configurations at each of our sites, we were able to get the information needed.

However, by far most of the work was in migrating the files from the old file servers to the Nasuni filers and coordinating testing with the end users.

The Nasuni caching system, if it's properly configured, will not be touching the S3 storage in AWS very often. With S3, the way they configure it, the normal S3 stores all your data and you can access it at any time. Then, there is something called S3 IA for the infrequently accessed. AWS says that they give you a break, e.g., half the price, if you write your data once and don't touch it for something like six months or a year. By setting the caching up in the filers, you can reduce the amount of access you have to S3 and cut that cost by 50% too.

The overall cost of storage for Nasuni is much lower than to setup file server, especially in light of the fact that you don't have to back them up.  There are no charges for virtual Filers - you can install as many as you want.  

Virtual filer images come in various formats depending on the technology that you are hosting them on.  There are images for various cloud-based or in house infra service being used such a AWS, Google, VMware, etc.  

ROI is also accelerated backup systems, media, off site storage and transportation/shipping is all eliminated.

They could lower the cost, but it saves so much money when you go into it (by losing all the backup).  I believe getting the experts involved pays off in the long run.

There are two packages that you can buy, but we only got the first. The first package is how you set up Nasuni. It is mainly related to selecting which virtual image you want. This depends on what target you are running it on. We didn't really have a lot of problems with that, because we purchased most of our filers right from Nasuni. Therefore, they came preloaded. It was just a matter of receiving the filers and having them set up at the site. The second package is basically setting up the file server, the directories, and doing the migration.

With the appliances, we received five years worth of all service and maintenance. Basically, they give you a rack mount PC. They actually have one desk side if you want to put it in an office environment that has encrypted disks. They follow the Fed standard. Therefore, if someone steals a disk, they can't look at the data. Even if they take it out of a machine, they still can't get to your data. 

There are five or six different filer models. One of them is an office-based unit that sits under a desk. The rest of them are all 1U and 2U rack mount devices. They have it covered pretty well.

We tested it at my previous company. There are other companies who do the same thing that Nasuni does, but Nasuni is the only one with a single global file lock. They have spent a lot on making that fast and redundant.  The global file locking was a major difference and benefit for us.

The company and its technology are solid and their solution architects and support teams are EXCELLENT!!

A proper directory and file structure/organization design is important to allow auto-failover access redundancy.  Nasuni can explain how this can be done.

If I had to rate Nasuni, I would give Nasuni 10+ out of 10. The solution has been a lifesaver.