Nasuni Reviews

It's mostly for internal users. We use it for internal file sharing. We have moved our various departments, such as marketing, finance, and HR, to Nasuni. We started using it because of the StorSimple devices coming to an end of life. Microsoft announced that, so we considered Nasuni as the first option for internal file sharing of users.

It's on the cloud, but we started on-prem. We borrowed the filer from Nasuni themselves and completed the migration just to speed up the process, and then we sent the filer back. We are now completely on the cloud backed up by AWS.

We are using its latest version. We did the update two weeks ago to the latest version that we received from them.

Snapshot backup has been a lifesaver. It sometimes used to take us close to five hours to back up one spreadsheet for users because we were using physical file servers. We have not received any complaints from users regarding the performance or a connection or network not being available. It has been good so far.

Nasuni has also helped with data consolidation. It has improved our compliance and risk management with data consolidation. We have all our data in one place.

Nasuni has replaced multiple data silos and toolsets with a single global file system. We are only using a single, global file system instead of the five physical servers that we had previously. It's really good. We started with this project because we wanted to do data migration because of the StorSimple issue, but then we found out that we could do data consolidation at the same time because it did support multi-site access. We now have all our data centralized in one place, which is very helpful and useful. At the time of considering and doing data redundancy, we will only have to do it on one site instead of multiple sites.

Nasuni has helped to eliminate on-premises infrastructure. We were using five physical servers before. Instead of them advising us to buy a physical server to do the migration, they lent us one for free. We did our migration, and we sent it back to them, so that was a great call from them. We didn't even know that option was available. It was their sales team that suggested this. Otherwise, we would have ended up with one file server that we would not have been using. It would have been just on commission if we had to buy it ourselves.

Nasuni offers a single platform with a 360-degree view of our file data. We call it Nasuni Management Console. They do provide their own console for us to manage our data, which is a shift from the old way of managing our data. We used to have to physically log into the server and manage our data, but now, we manage it all in one place. It's quite an easy and straightforward process.

Nasuni doesn't provide file storage capacity anywhere it’s needed, on-demand, and without limits. You would have to sign up with them, but you can always request or demand a capacity increase. You have to go through a process with them, but the customer support is quite fast, so you can request it and then get it applied within the same day. I'm not sure about unlimited, but I know that we're using 20 terabytes, and we're able to expand it if we want to. It's $850 per terabyte. We do need this capability to be able to expand because it's an internal file system. At some point, our security team might decide to do a backup of the data, and that will just double the size. We need to have on-demand storage capacity support because the company data is growing day by day, so we would always need it. We would need to request more storage from Nasuni in the next couple of months.

With the support that was provided for us, it was easy to configure the solution to support organizational changes. It wasn't very easy, but it was easy. They were with us every step of the way. With their support, it got quite easy for us. We expected it to be way more complicated than this. It did not affect our business in a bad way. There was hardly any downtime. We completed the data migration, and then we did the switch within five minutes to Nasuni filer. It affected our business in a good way that the users did not even feel the change. A lot of users did not even notice the changes until we told them. We had to tell them to change the path they were accessing or the directories they were accessing. That was the only way it affected users, but that's not just with Nasuni. It would have been with any other vendor.

Nasuni has also simplified infrastructure purchasing and support requirements. We no longer have to worry about buying physical equipment. In terms of its effect on the time and effort spent on infrastructure support, we will be able to measure that only after a year. Next year, we don't have to worry about backup. We don't have to worry about maintaining the devices or upgrading them to the physical ones or buying or renewing a license. Overall, it has helped a lot. It would be a great shift next year once we do the infrastructure budget again.

Snapshot backup is most valuable. It's quick and easy to use. It's controlled only by an administrator, which is very good. It takes 10 seconds to back up a spreadsheet of three or four megabytes.

It can be improved in terms of retention policy or data retention for the volumes. We found this quite frustrating because different departments in our organization require different retention policies. For instance, the finance team wants their data to be kept for seven years. It's a legal requirement, whereas the HR team needs it to be kept for 10 years. The marketing team only wants it for the next two years. Nasuni does not support different retention policies within the same volume, so you have to keep creating volumes for retention policies. When you create a new volume, it means you're starting from zero all over again. You can't move data between two volumes. You have to move them from your physical device to Nasuni or your cloud device to Nasuni. That has added a lot of time for us because we were not aware of that feature, but when we shared this with Nasuni, they said it's something they'll be working on in the next quarter.

We started with it in November. We have been actively using it since November, but we started the process of migration in late August. It has been less than a year. 

So far, we haven't had any issues with them. It has been good so far. The stability has been good and on point.

Currently, we have around 400 internal users.

Their support is very good. I'd rate them a nine out of ten. When we send an email, we get a response from them within the next three hours. 

We had StorSimple from Microsoft. We switched to Nasuni because StorSimple devices were coming to an end of life.

It was straightforward because we got support from Nasuni every step of the way. There were two people involved in its deployment: myself and someone else.

It took us about two weeks between meetings and having an initial deployment. It would have taken one week if we were properly organized from our end as well because a lot of the staff were not available.

It has been a pleasure working with them. They have been one of the best vendors so far. They are quite good, and I just hope we can continue this with them.

It's too soon for that. In one year's time, we will be able to give a full financial overview of how much is saved in terms of costs.

When it comes to business agility and cash flow compared to buying fixed assets through a hardware refresh, with Nasuni, it's the way forward. It's not just Nasuni, it's with everything. It's the way forward for the infrastructure of any IT department to buy everything on the cloud.

We are trying to move everything to the cloud. It has saved us about five grand in the total overall project cost. In the long run, it's going to reduce the carbon footprint as well. At this time, it's hard to say whether it has decreased capital costs. This kind of feedback would be possible in about a year's time because we've paid for the initial project. We paid for the S3 bucket on AWS, so our cost is quite high, but we will be able to evaluate the cost next year. We had to pay for everything at once, and we have been using it for less than a year. Next year, the cost will be very, very low because we don't have to renew the S3 bucket anymore. We've already bought a few years of reservation with them.

We did evaluate Azure Files and AWS as well, but the costs were quite high for both of them. They did not meet the security requirements, whereas Nasuni met the security requirements we had.

Do a cleanup before you get the initial cost. Do the data cleanup. Because we didn't clean our data properly, it came out to be 20 terabytes. We ended up using about 12 terabytes, but we had already signed the contract with Nasuni. This is no fault from Nasuni's end; it's from our end. So, organize your data, clean it up, and then request the quotation from Nasuni.

Any infrastructure team that wants to move to this solution should clean their data and consider retention policies. These are the two lessons we've learned from using this solution. Check with different departments because apparently, every department has its own retention policy. We found this the hard way.

To someone who has concerns about migration to the cloud and about the solution’s performance, I would say that we had the same concern, but four months in with Nasuni, we did not receive a single complaint from the users, whereas with our previous solution, we had filers at the same physical location where the users were based, but we used to get a lot of complaints about the performance and stability. I would recommend testing it out and reading the reviews about it.

In terms of our cloud strategy, we only have snapshots and backups. We have an active backup, which was advised by Nasuni anyway, and we applied a few retention policies as well on some of the files. This is the strategy we currently have. We will be considering redundancy, but because of the cost, we will just put that on hold until next year.

We have not used Nasuni for data protection. It was just a budget issue from our security team. They already had data protection with other vendors, and they will wait for that contract to finish.

We have not used the Access Anywhere feature, but we are considering it. We had a meeting with them last week regarding Access Anywhere. We haven't yet had an in-depth conversation with them. We have also not used the Continuous File Versioning feature or add-on services.

Overall, I'd rate Nasuni an eight out of ten.

We have multiple use cases. We have a lot of user data from users who share Excel files, Word files, et cetera. It is often used for their home directories, for Windows, and their folders and shared folders.

We also use it for test data.

And at remote sites where there are SQL backups, we'll dump those backups into it to get them offsite, because it's mirrored to AWS.

We also have users with multi-protocol files. They run CE solvers and the results get transferred to Nasuni and then they can get to them from wherever they are.

Nasuni has replaced multiple data silos and toolsets with a single, global file system. Once the data is in Nasuni and the users are using it, we don't have to worry about updating Windows File Servers anymore. We don't have to worry about disparate methods of access, where people are asking, "Where is this file server? Why can't I get to it?" It makes operations easier.

And the ease of backups is even more important than that, knowing data is protected. We used to chase down file servers everywhere, but now we don't have to worry about that.

Another one of the biggest benefits is the resiliency. Nasuni means our users have more uptime. We have a lot of little plants and we would often hear from them, "Oh, the file server here is down." There might only be five guys there, but now that happens way less often. It just runs. The reliability, for the users, is big.

And the Continuous File Versioning means that recovery from ransomware would be way faster. Fortunately, we haven't had any ransomware attacks since bringing up Nasuni, but in the cases where we've had to restore files for people, it's so fast that we know that if there were a ransomware attack, it would be the same situation. Also, this feature has alleviated concerns about timely backups and restores. It's affected our operations by giving us more confidence that everything is protected.

In addition, the users are always ecstatic when we show them that they can get something back themselves and that they can go to the one from yesterday or a week ago. They love it.

Nasuni has helped to eliminate on-premises infrastructure and that has been a cost-leveler. The overall cost is lower.

But the biggest thing is that we don't have to worry about budget cycles so much anymore. Instead of having to deal with spending a million dollars every five years, it's just a monthly bill now. It just runs. In terms of cash flow, compared to buying fixed assets through a hardware refresh, it has made things a lot easier to predict. It also simplifies infrastructure purchasing and support requirements, lowering the cost and allowing us to centralize things more.

The most important feature is that things are backed up automatically in AWS. We have a lot of remote sites where there is a tiny server onsite and, in a lot of cases, we really don't have to back them up because the data is automatically copied to AWS. The cloud replication is the most useful functionality for us.

In terms of file storage capacity, it enables us to provide it anywhere it’s needed, on-demand, and without limits. We just tell the users it'll cost you a little bit for every file, and go for it. They don't have to control it anymore. That's very important because it makes budget cycles easier. We, in IT, don't have to get involved in that anymore. We hand it off and say, "Okay, you guys are getting a bill every month," and we don't have to think about it.

The performance monitoring could be improved.

I have been using Nasuni for about 18 months.

We have a very good impression of the stability, so far.

The scalability is also very good. We haven't hit any brick walls. Almost everybody in our company, and we have thousands of employees, uses it in some way. They might not know that they're using it, but their files are on it.

The technical support is very good. It's definitely one of the better support teams that I've had to deal with.

Positive

We did not have a similar product. We used Windows plus VMware plus EMC storage. Now, we have a single server with a filer. It didn't really replace anything directly but you could say it replaced Windows File Servers.

Deployment required two guys over a long period of time. At this point, we have five people who know it very well and maintain it.

There is a learning curve. The disadvantage is that it's a whole new thing. You can't interview for a Windows guy and then say, "Here you go. Take care of this file server." But once you know it, any one person can take care of way more data.

ROI is hard to talk about because it's apples to oranges. In some areas, we have definitely seen ROI. For example, in user productivity when they say, "I need this file from yesterday," and we can say, "We have it," as opposed to, "I'm sorry, all we have is last week," there is ROI. We have also seen it in terms of reducing backup licensing.

Use Nasuni for a project. Pick a category, use it for that, and watch it for six months. Like a lot of cloud solutions, you don't really know what the ongoing costs of it, plus AWS, are. It's hard to determine what it will really cost you until you have used it and you see what the bills are. It's cheaper than a lot of alternatives but it's not cheap.

Years ago we looked at NetApp and one other solution. After the evaluation, those solutions just weren't quite ready. They didn't quite do everything we wanted done.

Then, about two years went by and we decided to do another round and we picked Nasuni. It seemed mature enough at that point and we haven't really compared it to anything else since then. It's done the job.

If a colleague at another company said he had concerns about the solution's performance on the cloud, I would tell him that to achieve performance X, you can do it with less need for horsepower onsite with Nasuni. If you're replacing a solution, you don't generally need hardware upgrades to do it.

Overall, there isn't much missing from Nasuni. It's good stuff.

We have one parent file system connected to three Nasuni systems. One is in the APAC region, and two are located in the US. The file system is connected across all three locations so that people can access the file system anywhere in the network. 

It's connected to object storage in the background, and we have some capacity there. We have a license of up to 500 TB that we manage, including all the data required for archiving or anything. We use it to create a backup pool in our cloud object storage and only use it for full backup.

We use Nasuni for daily activities. For example, some file shares have assigned tools and servers. People use it to create some requests for data recovery when data on the server is lost. The user asks us to create a new location from Nasuni. We also have some patches that must be updated on the cloud each month, and I'll use Nasuni to monitor any issues. 

Nasuni enabled us to eliminate on-premise infrastructure. This is an important benefit everyone should know about. If you have some kind of VDI environment, people don't want to lose access. Once you have this availability option, it makes your data access seamless if there are any outages.  

We like Nasuni's snapshot technology. The snapshot and recovery features are the things we use most frequently. Ideally, I would recommend NFS or CFS, which gives you more benefits for clients or anyone who wants to access FTP protocol, FTP utilities, SAN, and MSS.

The visibility Nasuni provides is top-notch. When there is an issue in the environment, and you open a ticket, they immediately come into the picture and help you find the solution.

Nasuni's data protection is crucial for our organization. All of the file systems we manage are protected. We're protected if users accidentally delete files or move data from one file system to another. We can recover the data using the snapshot functionality.

You can see whether your data is protected from the console. From there, you can view the missing data and recover it. Every device is visible in a centralized monitoring tool we call the MMC console. It can discover all the nodes or the necessary systems that are managed in the environment.

It's a user-friendly tool with a beautiful graphical interface. Anyone can use the management interface. If you're a layperson who doesn't know how to use Nasuni, I would only need to teach you the fundamentals of NAS technology.

Some applications may not be suited for the Nasuni environment. You may need something with better performance. Otherwise, if you want to run daily operations or some file system, it's a good bet. 

I have worked with Nasuni for three years.

I rate Nasuni seven out of 10 for stability. Nasuni is a stable solution if you understand the environment, and you've properly designed your environment. 

We can expand file storage capacity on-demand and without limitations.

I'm in India, and our support comes from the US, so it's always a little bit difficult to engage Nasuni during non-business hours. I would recommend providing support during the working hours of other regions. 

I don't think we use Natsuni for VDI environments. We do have another environment that uses NetApp.

Setting up Nasuni is straightforward, but it can be complicated to connect it with the technology on the back end. Nasuni is built on the cloud, and there's an appliance on top of that. The initial setup only takes five to 10 minutes. The deployment of Natsuni is very simple. It involves creating a VM in the cloud, and you create a Nasuni image on top of that. In our case, the back end is an IBM product.

Nasuni is cost-effective. If you need something that delivers a lot of value for the cost, Nasuni is a good thing. 

I rate Nasuni seven out of 10. It isn't an ideal solution for all applications you have in your environment. If I'm an IT person, I do have a lot of other applications sitting in there, so I might need to adopt some other storage vendor for those. I might need to procure some other storage technology for other applications if I'm a business person, for example.

We have people in the field worldwide who go to various locations to gather data. After they gather the data, they need to upload it for our lab technicians and services to analyze. Somebody's out in a remote location, and they need to get that data back to the United States, but we can't send it via FTP to the local office. We need a system that can quickly offload the data to the technician and an automated way to deliver it to the branches. That's what Nasuni does for us.

Our company has 10 major locations, and the user count is about 150 at any given time. Nasuni users include data analysts, lab technicians, field technicians, and branch personnel administrators.

Nasuni enabled us to take data from on-premise data centers and put it in the cloud, so our technicians now have access from anywhere that is connected to our network. Everything was previously on legacy on-prem Windows Servers, and employees had to VPN into the network. You had to use standard network transfer systems. Nasuni allowed our entire operations group to become cloud-based.

Our strategy is to migrate everything we can to the cloud. Nasuni is tightly integrated with Azure, so we can seamlessly leverage infrastructure as a service up in the cloud.

We've replaced some of our on-premise infrastructure with Nasuni appliances, which has many benefits. We still have on-premises hardware, but they are Nasuni appliances built to operate in the company's technology.

Nasuni is a top-tier solution, and we pay a lot for it, so I don't know if it's necessarily helped cut our costs. It may have reduced some work for IT personnel. As an administrator, I can say that IT technicians would need to spend more time on standard maintenance tasks if we were working with a traditional solution. 

Adjusting the solution to our organizational processes has been effortless. It's seamless to roll out any update. It's only as difficult as we make it. For example, Nasuni allows us to automatically update all systems within the environment, and we only scale it back to the policy, so we can test those operations before they are implemented. Nasuni fully automates the process of updating to the latest and greatest features with minimal manual interference. 

Fortunately, we've never had a ransomware attack, but that could be because Nasuni has ransomware detection built into it. We have never had to recover from a ransomware attack on our Nasuni systems. Ransomware attacks on our traditional services were a nightmare to deal with, but we've never had that happen on our Nasuni infrastructure.

Nasuni's unified file system makes everything across the world appear as if it were in a single local directory for all users. Regardless of where an employee is, that data appears to an end-user as if it is sitting right there in their local office.
Nasuni's unified file system replaced one of our most critical operations, but not all of them. We still need to maintain software integration with legacy systems.

Nasuni offers a 360-degree view of our files to all global end-users by providing a single location where users can go. Nasuni technology allows us to operate without the delays associated with traditional systems. It provides unlimited on-demand storage capacity for our primary data centers and remote locations. This is mission-critical functionality.

Data protection is another crucial feature. We must protect field data that is uploaded to our data centers, and we rely on Nasuni's security pieces, including encryption and built-in malware detection. Our data must be encrypted, and we would face massive risks if the data were compromised.

Nasuni's continuous file versioning has been crucial on multiple occasions when files were accidentally deleted or when data was corrupted. The snapshot allows us to retrieve that data quickly. We can sit back and allow the Nasuni system to take care of our backups with no additional configuration on Azure or the infrastructure side. Nasuni provides all the essential pieces we need to utilize their service without having to implement any additional third-party products.

When users inadvertently delete or corrupt data, they can restore a previous version. With a few clicks, Nasuni enables us to do what would otherwise require significant effort with a traditional backup system. This feature reduced costs and effort because it's built into the system.

Nasuni could improve cloud integration and documentation of various ways we can leverage the product. It integrates with Azure, but the native Azure File Sync solution lets you divide data into tiers like hot, cool, and archived. Nasuni doesn't allow you to break the data apart into those tiered categories. 

That's helpful on the Azure side because you can control costs for data that isn't accessed frequently. Data classified as "cool" or "archived" costs less in Azure. The ability to separate that data within Nasuni would be an enhancement that allows customers to save money on Azure-based backend data storage.

We've used Nasuni since 2016.

We have never had a problem with Nasuni, and they have provided excellent support for any minor issues we've had. Most problems we've faced weren't Nasuni's fault. Any outages are typically due to failures in our network infrastructure or a local power outage. Nasuni can come back online as soon as the network connection is restored. 

I rate Nasuni support a 10 out of 10. Nasuni's support is helpful and they're always getting better. They provided solid support in the early days, but I think the product was also new for them. You could tell that some of their support engineers were still getting used to the product themselves. They work with you until the problem is resolved instead of just pointing to the documentation. 

Positive

We previously used legacy Windows File Servers and traditional network setups. That was a pain because we couldn't unify the directory structure, which is a core feature of Nasuni. We had legacy file servers out there in these branch offices and were using traditional file commands to exchange data between the various locations.

It's all automatic once everything is configured within the Nasuni environment. All the data is there. The fact that it comprises files hosted on the local filers means that you're not consuming the type of bandwidth you would be consuming with a Windows system. The difference is night and day. 

Setting up Nasuni was pretty straightforward with some help from Nasuni. There were some prerequisites, and we had to explain to various groups how to prepare. The product was new, so many people didn't understand how it worked. Don't try to go at it alone. It's best to get the Nasuni professional services team to help you implement it. 

The initial setup took a few days, but we spent several weeks migrating large amounts of data from our legacy systems. It took us longer because of limitations on bandwidth. Once the migration was started, it was just a matter of waiting for that data to transfer across.

We had help from Nasuni professional services. 

The ROI is a reduction of labor hours on the IT side. We spend less on maintenance, and our people in the field don't need to go to an office to upload their data. Nasuni allows the technician to do it from the field.

If you plan to implement Nasuni, you should consider your data retention requirements and the amount of data you will use. You need to know how much data will be stored under the Nasuni license and where that data will sit. For example, we have our data stored on the Azure cloud, and we have to pay Azure for that. We pay the license for Nasuni technology to access that data. You need to clearly understand that so you won't be surprised by what you might perceive as double billing.

It's essential also to understand the requirements at each location because there is a charge for outgoing data. For example, you will spend a lot more on a Nasuni appliance at a massive on-premise data center, but a smaller appliance may work for a branch office in a remote location. You can save lots of money on data costs for whichever cloud platform you use. 

Nasuni hardware appliances have a product life of seven years, so you must purchase a new filer if you want continued support. 

Another team in our group evaluated a competing product and ruled it out quickly because it didn't meet our requirements. Nasuni helped us set up a proof of concept in a demo environment, whereas the other vendor was unable to do that.

I rate Nasuni a 10 out of 10. It performs a critical function when we deal with customer data that must be analyzed quickly. Field staff can upload the data and disseminate it to other places for deep analysis. If Nasuni ever went down, alarm bells would go off throughout the company. That's how essential it is. 

I would recommend Nasuni because it's a proven product that has delivered results for us even in the worst-case scenario. If you're still using a traditional cloud solution like native Azure products, you are still susceptible to human error. Also, you would need to architect your backup and DR solutions, then integrate, maintain, and administer them.

Nasuni has built-in security, so we're not worried about hosting our data on it. If you regularly do massive file transfers between multiple locations, Nasuni has an advantage over its competitors. 

We use the solution for file sharing, redundancy, and restore features. 

Regarding cloud strategy, we use a bucket in the cloud, but it's all private, so nothing public hits it. We have elements including the bucket, a filer, and an MC component; it's all there but only accessible from within. Part of our strategy when deploying filers and locations is to ensure firewalls are set so that traffic never exits; it's technically the internet, but we use a private IP, so no data travels over.  

Nasuni hasn't replaced any other solutions; we use it side-by-side and implement it at new sites. We're an extensive organization, so we can't just replace tools; it would take a very long time, and the initiative would have to be of great importance. Much money and work would go into replacing products, including storage requirements, buying a filer and spooling it up, and all the associated activity across multiple sites.

It's relatively straightforward to configure the solution to support organizational changes; Nasuni provides the required TCP and UDP ports. The product has its requirements, but they're easy to meet. When we harden the tool, this gets harder, but the actual Nasuni conditions are manageable.  

The product has a lot of zero-touch operation, which is good; we don't have to intervene too much except for updates, which is somewhat annoying. 

One of Nasuni's best characteristics is its fully redundant system; we don't have to shift tapes or use other backup solutions. It's a good, full-featured product.

Nasuni enables us to provide file storage capacity anywhere it's needed, on-demand, and without limits, which is essential for a global file storage solution. 

The solution provides Continuous File Versioning, positively affecting our ability to recover from ransomware or a disaster. We can roll back using protected snapshots, and we may lose some data, but how much depends on when the snapshot was taken and what's affected by the event.  

Continuous File Versioning also positively impacts a user if they delete a file or a file becomes corrupted. We can resurrect the file any time after its creation, based on our policies. For example, every volume can have a different retention policy, with backup increments every ten minutes.  

Sometimes, there are too many updates; recently, Nasuni flagged a virus incorrectly, and there was an update to fix that. This is not good in a production environment, so the solution isn't as mature or stable as needed.

The privilege settings need to be more granular, and alerts are an excellent example. If a user doesn't have access to them, they can't see them and access information such as what they may have done wrong, what's there, and when the last sync happened. However, the ability to view alerts also comes with permission to delete them, which is not good, so we need more customization options here.  

There are a few little functions that Nasuni can do for us, but we can't do for ourselves, and it shouldn't be that way. We should be free to customize what we want, and Nasuni should provide the commands or a place in the GUI to do it.

We've been using the solution for about a year. 

The solution is stable; the S3 bucket isn't going to break down, and we're on new servers running off a Linux kernel, so they shouldn't go down either. We have yet to experience any issues with the stability. 

The product is very scalable. I do wish we could throw more master volume owners on one device, as it's limited to 16 or eight if it's user-facing.

We contact customer support weekly, and the company representative who deals with us is excellent; he knows what he's talking about. They run through details with us and regularly teach us about the product. We can ask many questions, and Nasuni is more like an automatic transmission car than a manual, which is as it's supposed to be.

Before Nasuni, we used traditional Microsoft tools and didn't necessarily switch. It's more of a slow upgrade process; we use Nasuni for all newer sites and will continue to do so going forward.

The initial deployment is relatively straightforward; the only complexity comes from our internal rules around traffic flow and quality of service, but Nasuni itself has nothing to do with that. The server comes pre-configured, we do the volume, it's without glitches, and connecting to the NNC is fine.

The last two deployments I worked on took almost six months for a full deployment. It's important to remember we are a massive company, so much waiting is involved, and things take time. If someone wants to spool up a VM here, it could take months for that to happen; this is a very controlled environment, we can't afford mistakes, security is tight, and many checks and balances exist.

We evaluated other options, but I was not involved in the process. We looked at many products, including Commvault and online tools, as there are a lot of choices when it comes to backup and recovery, incremental backup, and file-sharing solutions. Ultimately, our requirement was for a product that could be solely internal and would not go over the internet, so Nasuni fit the bill.

I rate the solution seven out of ten. 

Nasuni's analytics connector provides analytics, including what data is flowing. We can access that locally and in the cloud from wherever the filers are.

Regarding data protection, we use the solution's built-in antivirus but not exclusively; we also have other tools to scan the data. We have it as an extra layer of protection, but otherwise, secure files as we usually would.

We use Nasuni Access Anywhere, but we may not need it. As we use an SD-WAN solution, Nasuni tacked a CNAME on the device so we can access the shares. Therefore, we can use both of those.

Regarding simplicity of management, I'm not involved in the daily management, but I suspect it isn't as glitchy as Oracle ZFS. ZFS is horrible; it works, but good luck fixing it if it breaks. Nasuni is probably better because it's a newer platform built on a Linux kernel.

If we didn't have Nasuni, we would instead have some kind of file server, attached storage maybe with a RAID, and then push that to AWS in a blob or S3 bucket. We could do much of what Nasuni does in other ways, but it would be more complicated; it would be less clean and easy. Having a unified platform to handle everything is much better. Regarding hardware elimination, the solution doesn't really do that; we could eliminate the hardware, but that leads to other problems and is less cost-effective.  

In terms of cloud migration, I've done lift and shift projects, and I was more involved in the management side. I've also been involved in Azure projects, including AAD, hybrid AD, and some Intune rollouts.  

To a colleague at another company who has concerns about migration to the cloud and the solution's performance, I would say the performance is related to your WAN, hardware, and user demands; it's not the product that will limit you. Regarding the cloud concerns, your data is safer in the cloud; I've never heard of a company losing their data in an S3 bucket due to an Amazon mistake, for example.  

To those considering implementing the solution, I recommend you have your infrastructure properly set up before, depending on the security requirements. Putting the solution in a VLAN and the filer in a different VLAN is a consideration. I also recommend buying enough storage for future capacity, testing the data, and not skimping on storage; it's better to lean toward generosity here. For product-specific advice, I recommend being prepared for some learning; taking the time to learn how Nasuni works and how to support it post-deployment is essential. As with everything, it will take a little time, a few months or so, so be prepared for an investment of time and planning.

I am a Nasuni implementer, not an end user. We have deployed Nasuni at nearly 150 offices worldwide. The backend is an IBM cloud, and we use VMware ESXi on the deployment side. Due to the price of the IBM cloud, we will likely switch to Azure or AWS. 

From a disaster recovery perspective, we have synchronization across three locations: Houston, Atlanta, and one other. Nasuni is replicating among those. The IBM cloud is in the backend, and we deploy the Nasuni filer appliance to various locations. It transmits the cache to that particular location's bucket, which is replicated in the cloud data center, providing redundancy.

We haven't enabled Nasuni's Access Anywhere feature on this project because the client doesn't want users to access storage from anywhere. Users need to connect with the network via VPN, and they access the solution from there. We have also enabled global file locking, where the data resides at other locations, but most users access it from another place. 

In organizations where we had implemented Nasuni, we performed migrations and a few other tasks, like consolidating the data and legacy domains. We migrated the existing data onto Nasuni, simplifying the environment by consolidating multiple file servers at the exact location. We eliminated the numerous storage devices from Windows, NetApp, or other vendors.

By switching our clients to Nasuni, we decreased our clients' on-prem footprint and significantly reduced costs. For example, let's say a client has ten NetApp file servers in one location, we can replace all of those with a single Nasuni appliance. A mid-sized appliance can replace five or six file servers, and a small one can replace one or two. 

When existing file servers reach the end of their lifecycles, we must replace them with new hardware. We recommended that the client adopt Nasuni, so the client saved capital costs by reducing the hardware space and hosting charges. At the end of the day, it definitely reduces capital and operational costs. I can't say how much because I'm unaware of the license costs. 

My clients are happy with Nasuni because the transmission is seamless, and it consolidates all the existing file servers into one location. Also, Nasuni has no boundaries. It's infinitely expandable. They don't have to rely on the service provider for backup and restoration. It's self-serve. 

Nasuni has an excellent management console that gives us visibility into all locations worldwide. Everything is visible from a single dashboard. We can see the amount of data stored and the number of servers or users connected. It also has metrics on the utilization of bandwidth and other resources. Nasuni provides a single portal from which we can control and monitor data. 

It offers clients unlimited file-storage expansion with an IBM cloud on the backend. We buy petabyte licenses for our clients and add licenses if we exceed the limit.

Data protection is another crucial feature. Nasuni creates snapshots of the data in my environment with versioning. Users can revert to the previous versions on their own. We have a strong contingency plan if a client is attacked. They can restore the data from the portal. 

We forecasted that the data at my client's organization would grow by about ten percent annually, but we are migrating more data because we are bringing in some servers that had not previously been within the scope of our license. We expected it would take us two years to reach a specific amount of data, but we hit that mark in one year. The licensing cost skyrocketed, so we need to renegotiate. It puts us in a bind because we are reliant on Nasuni for our service strategy. We can't deny our customers, but we also struggle to pay for that. 

I have used Nasuni for two and a half years. Once we finish migrating this organization to Nasuni in July, I will move on to another project. 

We haven't experienced any downtime in the last two-and-a-half years during our global deployment. So we haven't got any downtime because everything is hosted in our organization. We can't say that it's hosted somewhere else. If it is going to be down, that means our infrastructure is going down first.

I rate Nasuni support a ten out of ten. They provide instant support when we have an outage that affects 20 or so users. Nasuni sends a senior engineer. Other vendors like Microsoft don't escalate that quickly. 

Positive

My clients used on-prem Windows file servers in each office, but Nasuni is a cloud-based solution, so it's more reliable. Nasuni has advantages over competing solutions like Windows File Server, NetApp, StorSimple, etc. Nasuni provides a single portal we can use to manage and monitor data. 

It also allows unlimited expansion of storage, which is unavailable on a traditional Windows File Server. You aren't limited by dependence on a storage site or the EMC backup. Nasuni's console backs up automatically without any interventions, and you can restore from there. Nasuni has many features that Windows Files Server or NetApp devices can't provide.

I can only speak for my client's use case, but deploying Nansuni was complex because we migrated data from existing Windows file servers or traditional storage solutions to Nasuni. It was a complex lift-and-shift operation because we needed to consolidate the domains and data. However, it should be straightforward if you are migrating some existing data to Nasuni. 

We did the POC in 2018 but didn't deploy Nasuni until 2020. We were doing POCs for multiple solutions before we finalized our decision. The implementation started in 2020, and we still aren't finished with the project, but we finished deploying most of the locations. The total deployment time depends on the organization's size, the number of servers and locations, and the amount of data you are migrating.  

Our client determined the deployment strategy. After the POC, the client was more confident in the solution, and a strategy started taking shape, but new challenges emerged. We had to consult with the IT teams at each location, who were worried about where the data would reside and complications due to GDPR or other national regulations that require data to stay within the country. The strategy was not a straight line and depended on various agreements everyone had to reach. 

The size of the team needed also depends on your organization and the number of filers deployed across the organization. I can't give a simple answer that you need X number of people. In our case, it involved VM, storage, cloud, and network teams. 

After deployment, we have to do periodic upgrades. Nasuni's management console displays the version of each filer. We need to upgrade, but it requires downtime. Each week, we have a region-specific patching window. The management is easy and practical. 

We are the implementer, but we open a ticket with Nasuni support when we face an issue that we can't fix. We provide them remote access, so they take over the console and fix the issue. 

Azure has a similar solution in its early stages called StorSimple, but it isn't as reliable yet. You can control and integrate multiple clouds in the backend seamlessly and control storage globally from a single console.

I rate Nasuni a nine out of ten. I'm satisfied.

If you plan to implement Nasuni, I recommend reading the company's white paper with all the details and technical specifications during the POC. Nasuni allocated a dedicated resource to help us through the POC process. Contact Nasuni and see what resources are available to help you implement it. 

We have multiple physical locations and we had to find an alternative data repository so that we could transition from some legacy technology like Microsoft StorSimple. We needed a cloud-native solution that would be more cost-effective than some of the other vendors out there. We ended up going with Nasuni primarily for file server access for three locations within Australia.

Nasuni is helping us replace multiple data silos and toolsets with a single global file system. We are still in the transition stage for some of our locations. We're doing away with the Microsoft StorSimple services, which is being retired at the end of the year. We have an HPE Unity SAN at one of our locations, and because that used to store all the data, we have had to have backup technology to replicate it. We're doing away with both of them and simplifying our infrastructure in that location to accommodate just a small caching appliance. And there's an FTP capability that we're looking to investigate for some of our infrastructure components.

Also, we have reduced the IT risk in our recovery point objectives and recovery time objectives. In the event of a disaster, we're able to bring up the infrastructure in a different location very quickly. In addition, we can have access to this data in a site-survivability mode in our manufacturing area. That means that for a period of time, the data that's cached on those appliances will happily be used by that office, should the network become isolated from the internet.

Another benefit is that, compared to what we had before, from a dashboarding perspective, we get really good visibility within the Nasuni console. We also have much better assurances around the backups and the mechanisms assuring that the data is actually being securely stored, based on our rules, with various tools and backup solutions. There were many different places where we used to get that information and that just wasn't efficient.

One of our guiding principles, when it comes to architecture, is to ensure that we have immutable backups of all of our data. Historically, we were able to do that for everything except for our file servers. We still leveraged legacy capabilities for that. By moving to Nasuni, we were able to ensure that the backups are immutable and retained for a period of time without being impacted. That gives us assurance that, in the event of a ransomware attack, we're able not only to restore the data or make it accessible, but we're also able to provide a different mechanism for users to access the data in a disaster recovery scenario. That can be done by using the web interface rather than having to establish network connectivity.

Nasuni has also helped to eliminate on-premises infrastructure. We're simplifying the infrastructure we deploy and, as part of that process, we're able to then repurpose it. For example, we currently have SAN storage attached to the network and we had a couple of NAS appliances. We consolidated all of that into a virtualization stack that only has to store a minimal amount of caching data. That saves us hours a week from managing the backups and ensuring that they work. When we do restore testing, we only have to test a finite amount of data because it's one system working for many different areas. It's considerably easier. There was a little bit of a learning curve to understand how the new technology works, but the implementer helped us with that.

It has also decreased capital costs in the sense that we don't have to renew the purchasing of additional specific hardware for it. The last SAN storage appliance that we purchased cost $180,000 four and a half years ago, and it is coming up for retirement and decommissioning. Nasuni is not a complete replacement, as we'll be replacing that SAN with some virtualization infrastructure, but that will be co-shared and used by a number of different systems and applications. We're taking away a storage appliance, but adding more capacity and more processing power for use with more systems.

We effectively subscribe to the storage where that is saved. As a result, from a cash flow perspective, we're clearer. We're not having a large capital investment for the storage appliance. And we also have the assurance that it is considerably more redundant than what we used previously.

The disaster recovery capabilities are very easy because their virtual appliances are just like OVFs or images. You put in a code and it collects all the configuration from the cloud and then builds up the cache. But that doesn't preclude the device from easily being restored or recovered at short notice. It also means, from a security-patching perspective, that we don't have to add any additional processes like managing a Windows Server or having agents on it. We can simply rebuild those or upgrade those agents.

The storage that we're deploying it to is in Azure, but one of the key features of Nasuni is the fact that we can actually change the location of that storage when it becomes cost-prohibited to have it in Azure, and we can find equally reliable but cost-effective places. A good example would be Wasabi storage services. They don't have regions in Australia, but should they get regions in Australia, they are considerably cheaper than what Azure, AWS, and GCP offer. We have that flexibility.

Nasuni also provides file storage capacity anywhere it's needed on-demand and without any limits. What we've found is that a lot of our storage is dormant and not actively used. Nasuni gives us really good insights into the usage of the data and enables us to store that data in an immutable secured location. The flexibility is there and the level of data that we can send to it is exceptionally high. The importance of this feature is about a six out of 10 for us. That's because our volume of data is actually decreasing year-on-year, specifically in those types of data repositories. We are exponentially growing on data stored in cloud services, like Dropbox, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams, but that's a different technology stack.

Migration from existing systems, specifically StorSimple, could be improved, but that solution will be end-of-life by the end of the year. 

Also, the documentation could be more accessible.

It's a pretty good product, overall. It's hard to find something specific that they really have to focus on.

I have been using Nasuni for a couple of months.

So far, we've had no problems with its stability.

We're assessing whether we're going to deploy it throughout Asia as well. But strategically, we're moving away from this type of storage. We're looking to leverage more cloud-based collaborative storage. The primary reason is that we don't have the necessary use cases for really large storage connectivity, like CAD or design drawings. Our usage of Nasuni will actually become lower and lower over time as we transition business processes.

Their tech support is quite busy at the moment with everyone trying to outsource storage. We can give them a little bit of leniency on that.

Positive

We had a risk around an end-of-life technology and we brought in Nasuni and we transitioned to it within a week and a half.

The initial setup was straightforward. The biggest thing that we had to focus on was transitioning our existing snapshot backups. They definitely had some guidance on how to do that and that helped. The technology side was straightforward. Some of the business decisions that we had to make were more complex. For example, how comfortable were we in keeping some of the data that we had in our old system and getting rid of some of the other data?

Compared to what we used to have, this solution is significantly simpler. The deployment of the caching appliances is very easy, as is redeploying them. From an infrastructure perspective, that's quite straightforward. We don't have the hardware appliances, but I believe they are equally easy to manage.

Our deployment is a combination. In one location it's on-premises, but it's in a virtualized environment. We are deploying components in our core data center, which is a co-lo with our virtualization infrastructure.

While a 360-degree view is going to be a stretch, it does allow us to have all of our file repositories centrally managed in one administrative console. It doesn't cater to data classifications and data loss prevention, but from an object storage point of view and a management perspective, it definitely works.

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. 

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.