Nasuni Reviews

We are using it as a file share server. The solution is for CIFS and Windows file shares. We have boxes deployed in different environments, including on-prem and, in a few locations, it's in a virtual image.

We provide support to our customers and are currently managing more than 200 devices.

We use it at the global level and it supports a 360-degree view of the data.

It's also easy to deploy. Before, with hardware, it was not possible to deploy things as quickly, but because Nasuni is available in the cloud, as well as via a VDI image, you can deploy it quickly.

Another benefit is that our RPO and RTO are very much reduced. If a user has deleted something, we can provide the latest backup. For example, if they deleted something at 11 AM, we have the backup available from 10:55 AM.

It also helps eliminate on-premises infrastructure. All the data is stored in the cloud, either in block or S3, and that means you do not need large storage hardware in your data centers. You just need an internet connection to connect with the device. That will save costs on space, air conditioning, and power.

And it will reduce your capital cost, with only OpEx contributing to the costs.

The most valuable features are the

• replication
• snapshots.

Nasuni has the capability of taking a snapshot every five minutes. If a user has accidentally deleted their data, we can recover it from the snapshot and provide the latest data to the user. It's a really great feature, one that is not provided by other vendors.

The solution is very important for us because of these features, as well as because there is a cloud version, virtual image, and the physical box.

It also replaces multiple data toolsets with a single global file system.

Also, for provisioning file storage, because Nasuni is a cache device and doesn't store any data—all the data is stored in the cloud—you can provision as much as is needed, spinning up instances as they are required. That means that even if a customer has heavy data requests, we can fulfill them in less than 24 hours. We just spin up the instance, connect it, and it's available for use.

And for some users who are accessing data on-premises, we are able to provide file storage capacity for VDI environments.

Nasuni also has an embedded feature, an antivirus, which will automatically scan for issues with any file. If a file is infected, it will not be saved on the disk.

Access Anywhere is also a great feature, allowing you to access data from your mobile and from your desktop.

And suppose a disaster happens. Nasuni's metadata is available within 20 minutes, meaning you can deploy the new instance and map the data, copying the data from the cloud.

The only issue we face with Nasuni is from the performance perspective. Sometimes, when we deploy a Nasuni device, it doesn't meet our requirements. It's a capacity-planning issue.

I have been working on Nasuni since 2018.

It's stable.

Nasuni's support is very good. They provide solutions on a priority basis.

It's easy to deploy, hardly taking an hour, on average, and requires minimal staff for both the deployment and management. A single person can easily manage it.

When we have migrated all of a customer's data to Nasuni, none have said that they had much ROI from their then-existing solution. Nasuni is a cheaper solution with good ROI compared to other solutions.

Nasuni should provide small-scale licenses, like a 20 TB license. Currently, the smallest is a 30 TB license. Smaller-capacity licenses would be good for some users and help increase Nasuni's sales.

NetApp doesn't have the same features for managing devices, whereas from the Nasuni Management Console, you can manage multiple devices at the same time. The centralized management is a great feature.

The only disadvantage of Nasuni is due to the fact that all the data is in the cloud. Other devices, like Panzura, have the data in the cloud as well as local copies.

If you're concerned about migration to the cloud, you can use Snowball to move the data to the cloud and then you can upload it to Nasuni. There are a lot of options available.

I can't think of any features that should be added to Nasuni. It's a good product.

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 use Nasuni to provide local access to files with data stored in the cloud, so we don't have to worry about backups. It offers fast access to the data and supports multi-site configuration. Nasuni allows us to collaborate across five or six sites using the same data set.

We have probably 600 filers deployed predominantly on-site, and the rest are primarily on a public cloud. However, we still have 20 filers on a private cloud. We use Nasuni on Azure and AWS, but we mostly work on AWS and have Clever Safe for our private cloud. Nasuni supports everything, including Azure, VM, GCP, and private cloud. It works on any cloud that supports S3.

Nasuni allowed us to replace a significant number of Windows File Servers with a single global system, and it gives us on-demand file storage capacity. It's essential. On a scale of one to ten, I would say it's probably a nine in terms of importance to our operations.

We can also use it with VDI environments, which is somewhat important. It creates a centralized repository every VDI workstation can access. We don't have to worry about how we present storage on each one.

it's solid and does a great job from a management perspective. However, its data propagation was pretty low when we first started using it, especially for the multi-site capabilities. For example, if site A accessed data site B, it took a while for them to get the updated version of that same data. They have vastly sped up data propagation and improved snapshot performance. 

The most valuable feature is Nasuni's multi-site capabilities. Another beautiful thing about Nasuni is centralized management. We can see all our storage and manage it from a single pane of glass. It's definitely a lot better than Windows and NetApp. We have a bunch of NAS, so you have to manage each one as a separate silo. That was much more painful.

The continuous file versioning is top of the line. We can do snapshots of up to five-minute increments. The ransomware protection is also great, and we can roll back a version from any snapshot at any point in time. It has the ability to do end-user recovery, or a user can simply contact an admin who can perform a recovery from the management console. The versioning has simplified everything. Now we don't have to worry about those components.

We've had some organizational changes that Nasuni has not been able to keep up with, mainly from a data or file system perspective. Moving a filer from one management console has been a challenge. It lacks the flexibility to move files in and out of the management console. We have six management consoles now, and we're constantly telling Nasuni, "Hey, please allow us to move a filer from management console A to B." They can't do that.

I'd like to see Nasuni add the ability to search and access your data when your users are remote from the system. 

We've had Nasuni for about eight years.

Nasuni is highly stable.

Nasuni scales to what a single piece of hardware can scale to, and it allows multi-site functionality. However, it could get a little complicated in a scenario where I have an extreme concentration of users. Everyone in our company is using it, so it's around 80,000 users in roles across the board, from finance and creative to business and IT. 

I rate Nasuni's support 10 out of 10. Their support is great. They not only help you with their solution but also often help with issues that aren't even related to them. For example, if an Active Directory server is having issues, they'll help point us to the solutions that help us from an agency perspective.

Positive

We were predominantly using Windows File Servers. We mainly switched to Nasuni to increase our company's agility by enabling cloud-based storage utilization.

It's straightforward we provisioned an S3 bucket and deploy a management console. You only need to deploy the filers after that. It took a couple of weeks to deploy and several years to finish migrating all of our data 

We did it everything in-house, and we have probably 20 people worldwide managing it, which is pretty modest compared to the solution's scale.

Nasuni reduces our expenditures and makes them much more predictable. We don't have to buy as much storage because we can scale up in the cloud if we have a spike in business. Nasuni reduced our overall storage footprint at our sites by 70 to 80 percent. The vast majority of our infrastructure isn't related to our file servers, but it has greatly reduced our need for file-server architecture.

In most cases, it enabled us to completely eliminate our backup architecture, which costs nearly as much as the primary storage. It simplifies everything because we don't have to worry about IOPs and storage. We just keep it all in the cloud. 

It also allowed collaborative features we never had before, so we didn't need to invest in a third-party solution.

Nasuni is competitive with any other solution on the market. You have to pay for object storage and the cost of the backend object storage, which is where your data will actually reside. You also have to pay for filers and the hardware to run the filers themselves. However, those costs are pretty nominal compared to what we were previously paying in total storage.

We evaluated everything, including NetApp, Panzera, etc. We looked at 20-plus solutions, and Nasuni beat them all. The advantages include flexibility and fast access to files in branch offices while retaining a single source of truth for our storage in the cloud. It allows us to scale by putting as many filers on multiple sites as needed. 

One disadvantage is the strict rules on the filers. Also, it can only be managed from one NMC, and you can't change it. The lack of search has always been a major con for our company, too.

I rate Nasuni 10 out of 10. The hybrid cloud concept is Nasuni's bread and butter. It's good for anyone who wants to migrate to the cloud but maintain fast local access to their storage. 

My advice to anyone deploying Nasuni is to study the best practices carefully, especially if you have a Macintosh workstation. It's important to follow them closely to avoid performance issues. Study the knowledge base articles to learn how to set your POS correctly and use adequately sized filers.

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 work for a retail company. We have our users spread out geographically across the globe. We have deployed Nasuni in all our remote locations. With this service, we are catering to users across different continents, such as the EMEA, APAC, North American, and South American regions.

It is deployed on-premises through Azure appliances.

Nasuni deployment, along with its DFS capabilities, help with our SLA and RPO requirements. For example, if there is a site in Las Vegas and another site in San Francisco, and the Las Vegas site is down, then with the help of DFS, we can redirect clients to access the site from the back-end using the same path. The San Francisco site is then enabled and in an active state, but still clients will not have any issues connecting because of the Nasuni solution. So, this is an innovative solution that helps with the overall RPO requirements of our enterprise. 80% to 90% of the time, we are satisfied with its performance and with availability.

It is easy and seamless to configure Nasuni to support our organizational changes. We deployed the solution through a virtual appliance. If that particular virtual appliance is corrupted in any way, then we can deploy the OVA within no time. Within an hour, we can deploy and redirect users to the new appliance, then it can continue serving customers' requests.

There is a feature known as Global File Lock. If one of the users is accessing a file from another geographical location from where he is working, then this feature helps maintain the integrity of the file. It could be a Doc file, spreadsheet, etc.

Everything about Nasuni is easy, in terms of setup, deployment, access, and seeing the directory structure. Based on the DFS path, we are creating a directory structure, where we are pointing to multiple locations in a single directory structure. Nasuni helps with that. 

There is a minimal firewall requirement so we don't have to worry too much about the firewall.

With Nasuni Management Console (NMC), we get a single, centralized view of our entire internal structure and data center structure. This is very important because this caters to remote locations. One of the main care center teams is dependent on this solution. As it is directly connected to customers for the calls that they receive and troubleshoot, they can then help customers out in case they are not able to place an order. 

It provides file storage capacity anywhere it's needed on demand and without limits. The object storage capability helps provide storage to Nasuni.

In terms of simplicity, we have had 100% satisfaction.

The Nasuni file storage platform doesn't work well when there are a high number of small files. This is the case when a directory structure contains more than 10,000 or 20,000 small files, e.g., 5 KB, 10 KB, or 15 KB. When the user is accessing these files from another geographical location, they might face a slow response or timeouts when connecting to the shares, and then to the files. This is because the file size is small. There is a scope of improvement with this solution when it comes to accessing a large number of small files.

We have been using it for about five years.

Stability is at 80%. It is reliable. We get monthly newsletters from Nasuni regarding the state of the systems running on certain versions.

Scalability-wise, it is at 90%. We can easily scale the system.

There are close to 5,000 users across the globe who are using it for multiple purposes. Some of them are using it because they are part of the applications team. There are also some care center executives using it.

The technical support team doesn't have a lot of engineers to help customers. Thus, the response time can be a bit slower than with other vendor support. I would rate them as six out of 10.

Neutral

This was a new solution for us. We wanted to have Nasuni in place to increase our global footprint.

The initial setup was straightforward.

It took 30 days to deploy to all our locations. We went with the site-by-site approach.

We worked with the Nasuni account rep team. They shared portal access to all our administrators as well as the images that we need to deploy to OVAs. Before that, we took care of the firewall network and all its prerequisites. Then, we took care of the basic finances. Once that was done and based on geographical locations, we started deploying the OVA. We shared those paths with the end users and relevant teams who could also do testing. Once they were happy, we declared that the systems were in production.

The architecture team had a meeting with Nasuni. Then, within a couple of months, we decide on the solution and design. Once they approved it, the deployment was done within no time, which simplified everything.

5 to 10 people are involved in the deployment.

We have seen 100% ROI.

For some sites, it has helped us to eliminate on-premises infrastructure. For our enterprise, there are four major data center locations. We have physical data centers, which we share and a couple that we own. This solution helped us by having us avoid investing in on-premises infrastructure-related costs, saving us about 50% of the cost by just deploying the OVA through the ESX app. Instead, we are just investing in the vCenter environment, then deploying the OVA through that.

This solution has helped minimize our administration work. Because of its simplicity, you can log into NMC and get a global footprint of which files are working and which are having some issues. So, the interface helps us take a look at our infrastructure.

Nasuni has helped decrease capital costs by 66% since we don’t need to buy as much excess capacity. 

With this solution, the license renewal is pretty swift. With the virtual appliance, you just need to take care of the OS versions and patches. In a way, we don't have to struggle much with renewals because the only thing that we need to take care of are the licenses. We renew it every three years. This aspect goes with infrastructural costs because it doesn't cost us too much to maintain the solution.

There is a cost associated with vCenter maintenance.

It is a cost-effective solution. If performance is not a priority and you want to build a cost-effective solution for the remote sites, then this is a recommended solution for you.

Nasuni's file storage footprint is not that significant when it is spread out across the globe and deployed through a virtual appliance. 

If you need to deploy physical storage, then the footprint is larger and performance-intensive. Nasuni is not recommended in these cases.

It provides Continuous File Versioning, but we disabled that feature. From an administrative perspective, we disabled it because we wanted to ensure that we control the access to the previous versions for users.

We use the solution regularly. We don't have plans to increase usage since we use it for a specific use case.

I would rate this solution as eight out of 10.

We are using Nasuni for all of our storage needs. All the storage for our video surveillance and documents is on a couple of Nasuni filers. We have around 29 filers. We have 3 physical filers, and we have 26 virtual filers.

In terms of the version, we upgraded Nasuni Management Console (NMC) on May 20. So, NMC is on 22.1, and the filers are also on the latest version, which is 9.7.3. 

We provide insurance and financial services to our clients, and we rely on physical and virtual Nasuni filers to store all our data and get it replicated and backed up properly on time so that we don't lose any data. It gets cascaded to other filers as well. So, if we can't access the data from one filer, we can certainly access the same data from other filers. It provides us with flexible and efficient data storage and data replication.

It has replaced multiple data silos and toolsets with a single global file system. We were using TSM previously. We replaced all those with Nasuni. We need these filers running, especially during the US daytime. They're, for sure, very critical. If any filer goes down during the day, we normally open a P1 ticket.

We have a lot of users who are accessing the data during business hours. So, if any filer goes down, it is a straight downtime for the users. They cannot access their documents and video surveillance. It is extremely important for sure.

It enables us to provide file storage capacity anywhere it is needed, on-demand, and without limits. Our license is for around 226 terabytes, and currently, we are close to 200 terabytes. It is very important for us that our data is replicated and snapshots are taken on time.

It provides simplicity of management. Our previous solution was not that efficient. It was quite complex. The upgrades were not very smooth, but the most important thing was that it was outdated. It was very old technology. After we moved to Nasuni, there are three locations where we have physical filers, and then there are 26 filers that we can access virtually. Comparing the old system with Nasuni, there are definitely a lot of advantages that we are getting from Nasuni. We are still working around certain issues with Nasuni, but the advantages still are much more than the issues that we are facing.

It provides continuous file versioning, which is very helpful. Just a month ago, an application team lost two terabytes of production data, and because of Nasuni's replication and snapshot capability, we were able to restore the complete data in about 90 minutes.

Continuous versioning helps us to maintain all the versions. When needed, it helps us go back to any version on the filer to support our IT teams and our customers.

If a user deletes a file or a file has been corrupted, we can easily go back to the previous version, and we can easily access the version without starting from scratch.

It has been helpful in eliminating on-premises infrastructure. We have only three physical servers. They are located in Bloomington, Aurora, and Chester, but we have 26 virtual servers. We are saving a lot of space by having those 26 virtual servers. It reduces our maintenance and storage costs. We have saved a lot there.

It simplifies infrastructure purchasing. For these 26 virtual servers, we don't need to have any physical servers. 

Our license is for around 226 terabytes. If we have to buy this much physical storage along with the backup and replication functionalities, the cost would be multifold, which is something we don't want to invest in right now and even in the future. We would prefer to continue with Nasuni.

Nasuni Management Console (NMC) is super valuable, and both physical and virtual filers are also valuable. 

NMC is the one-stop place for all our filers, both virtual and physical filers. They are definitely doing a great job in housing all our documents and surveillance videos. 

It comes at a reasonable price, and their support is also very proactive. Remote support assistance where we can just turn on remote support and then Nasuni's support people help us is valuable. 

There is some room for improvement when it comes to monitoring. We are not using Nasuni monitoring. We are using our own monitoring through Xenos. Nasuni can provide better monitoring capabilities for us to monitor all the filers and NMC so that we don't have to use a third-party tool.

In our company, we have been using it for many years, but I have been using it for more than a year.

It is pretty stable. Every now and then, we face some issues, but on average, it is pretty stable, and it is pretty efficient. It is the best solution which we can use. 

The upgrades are going smoothly. We get upgrades from Nasuni once or twice every quarter, and we make sure our product is up to date. We normally have one or two weeks of cooling time after we get the latest release, but we do ensure that NMC and all filers are always up to date with the latest release and security patches.

Nasuni is scalable. We just have to buy more licenses to meet our needs. Currently, our usage is at its peak. If the license is around 226 terabytes, we are already using more than 200 terabytes. We have not crossed the limit, but in the future, we probably will have to increase the licensing capacity. I don't know about our exact plans to increase its usage, but we are definitely using it super extensively.

We have more than 1,000 users from different backgrounds. Some are from the application development side, some are from the infrastructure side, and some are from the video surveillance side. The infrastructure and operation team is one of the main users of this solution, and we take care of the infrastructure and operations side, but we also have users from all other areas who use these filers to access their documents, surveillance videos, etc.

They provide great customer service and support. Their support is very proactive, and they help us with all the issues. I would rate their support an eight out of ten.

Positive

I was not involved with its setup.

We have absolutely seen an ROI. We are super happy with our ROI.

Its price is fair and reasonable. I don't have anything negative about its pricing and licensing.

For us, there is also the cost of monitoring. We are monitoring through Xenos and not through Nasuni. That is another cost for us from the monitoring perspective, but as far as Nasuni goes, we don't have any other cost apart from the licensing fee.

I would definitely recommend Nasuni. It is a very effective and efficient product. It is reasonably priced, and it comes with great customer service and support.

I would rate Nasuni an eight out of ten.

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. 

Positive

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.