Zadara Reviews

We are running Zadara in three of our data centers.

We're a data protection organization so we back up a lot of customer's data. We use Zadara largely in one of three ways. This first is an Object storage platform in our data centers, the second is for Block storage, for a specific product that we have, and the third is for on-premise customer object storage. In the third case, when we're backing up a large amount of data from a customer's site, we put a local Zadara appliance on that customer's site as well.

Our initial application was probably the simplest one. We were sunsetting a product, but we needed to do some movement and we needed some additional storage, but we knew that what we needed was going to change within six months as we got rid of one product and brought in another. To handle this, we started deploying Block storage with Zadara, which we then changed to Object storage and effectively sent back the drives related to the Block storage as we did that migration. This meant that we did not have to invest in new technology or different platforms but rather, we could do it all on one platform and we can manage that migration very easily.

We use Zadara for most of our storage and it provides us with a single-tenant experience. We have a lot more customer environments running on it and although we don't use the compute services at the moment, we do use it for multi-tenant deployment for all of our storage.

I appreciate that they also offer compute services. Although we don't use it at the moment, it is something that we're looking at.

The fact that Zadara provides drive options such as SSD, NL-SAS, and SSD Cache is really useful for us. Much like in the way we can offer different deployments to our customers, having different drive sizes and different drive types means that we can mix and match, depending on customer requirements at the time they come in.

With available protocols including NFS, CIFS, and iSCSI, Zadara supports all of the main things that you'd want to support.

In terms of integration, Zadara supports all of the public and private clouds that we need it to. I'm not sure if it supports all of them on the market, but it works for everything that we require. This is something that is important to us because of the flexibility we have in that regardless of whether our customers are on-premises, in AWS, or otherwise, we can use Zadara storage to support that.

I would characterize Zadara's solution as elastic in all directions. There clearly are some limits to what technology can do, but from Zadara's perspective, it's very good.

With respect to performance, it was not a major factor for us so I don't know whether Zadara improved it or not. Flexibility around capacity is really the key aspect for us.

Zadara has not actually helped us to reduce our data center footprint but that's because we're adding a lot more customers. Instead, we are growing. It has helped us to redeploy people to more strategic projects. This is not so true with the budget, since it was factored in, but we do focus on more strategic projects.

The most valuable feature is the flexibility in terms of deployment options. For example, we typically use Block and Object storage types, but we've also used File storage in the past as well. It also gives you the ability to turn on different features, easily.

There's a simple cost model for everything. It's not like some more traditional storage vendors where we need to go and buy more hardware or pay for three years worth of software licensing, et cetera. We pay for what we use for the month we use it.

Some of the features are a little bit slow to come to market. For example, we've been talking about Object replication for some time, and it's now nearly available. I wouldn't really say that anything is in need of improvement, although it would be good if they could speed up development on some things.

We have been using Zadara Storage Cloud for approximately two years.

This acts as our primary object storage, so it is used pretty extensively. Stability-wise, we've not had any particular issues. We've had a few drive failures and other things that you would expect, but overall, no stability issues.

We have six people that work with Zadara directly. Our engineering team uses it for product development, our head of infrastructure runs the data center, and the infrastructure team works with it regularly.

We're an organization that runs 24/7, so the fact that Zadara comes with 24/7 management is hugely beneficial to us. Particularly on the customer deployments, the fact that we don't have to worry about those environments, where traditionally we'd have to look after them, means that we can focus on running our core backup technology rather than worrying about the underlying storage.

Overall, the support has been very good, both during our initial deployment and post-deployment. We've had no issues that they were not able to resolve and we have no problems with them whatsoever. Our account team is based in the UK and the support team is in the US.

Prior to Zadara, we were using NetApp. We replaced it because it was very old, out of support, and Zadara gave us the ability to not invest in hardware that we weren't going to need.

The initial setup was straightforward and the deployment didn't take very long.

Zadara largely took care of the deployment for us, so we didn't have to do anything. Our operations team coordinated the process with them.

When it first came in, we had it for one specific use case that was very easy. For that, we knew exactly how we were deploying it and it's evolved over time.

We have seen a return on our investment with Zadara storage, and it's because it has enabled us to deliver almost limitless capacity. As our business grows, we haven't had to have issues with forklift upgrades of storage, et cetera. It's enabled a very linear growth within our team and has meant that we haven't had to add any resources to the support team from our side to deal with that growth.

The pricing and licensing are very simple and the cost is predictable, although, like everything that you pay for as you use, you have to be mindful of what you're using. Much like the public cloud, if you leave stuff on there that you don't need, then the bill continues to grow. Outside of that, which isn't specific to Zadara, it is very good, very easy, and we have no concerns whatsoever.

Using Zadara has saved us CapEx and large upfront expenditure. 

I had used Zadara for a number of years in a previous organization, so I knew what they were and we brought them off of the back of that.

In summary, I think that this is an absolutely great product. It provides that mix of use and it also helps in these uncertain times, where if your capacity drops or, as in our case, it increases, then it has the ability to flex and scale with you.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We are using Zadara for disaster recovery. 

The most valuable feature of Zadara is its ease of use and safety. Overall the solution is a complete package, it has all the features needed.

I have been using Zadara for approximately two years.

The stability of Zadara is good.

It is very simple to increase the system, it is scalable.

We are using Zadara with Oracle database and there are 2,000 users in the database.

We have end users that are using this solution in my organization.

We have used the IBM disaster recovery solution.

The initial setup of the solution is complex.

I had one customer where the setup took approximately one month and another customer with a smaller system took one week.

We have two people that do the deployment and maintenance of the solution.

The price of Zadara is very good and it covers everything. There is no subscription needed.

I rate Zadara a seven out of ten.

We offer ongoing infrastructure support on behalf of customers. Zadara is a customer of the bank, which I work for. I'm also a vendor of the bank, however, we are taking care of the day-to-day. We maintain the solution in terms of day-to-day operations.

We use it as traditional disk storage, just like a normal SAN. We connect it to our SAN switch, and then from the SAN switch, it is also connected to the servers. We present the Zadara storage to those servers.

Zadara is all-flash so it has a very high IOPS. The speed of the box and what you call the IOPS, the IO operations per second, works very well. The processing is much faster with this product.

Technical support has been great.

The scalability is very good. 

The range of support of VMware could be better. It can support Windows, however, it cannot support other operating systems like IBM AIX. This needs to improve.

We're looking for platforms for implementing object storage. If Zadara can have that, similar to what they have in Amazon, the S3, that would be ideal. If they have APIs, I would like to see that feature be available, similar to the way an S3 or a Ceph object storage protocol. That could be developed or provided on top of the platform. 

I wouldn't say that it's very stable. It can recover from outages, however, there's still room for improvement on the stability.

The users would be the ones using the applications on the top of the servers. If I were to count, that's maybe more than 10,000 users.

I cannot tell exactly as it's a storage provided to a server and then the servers have applications and the applications have users. The company has more than 10,000 employees. Each of them will use an application that is on a server that is provisioned with the storage of Zadara. 

It's very scalable. All we have to do is just add more storage and we're good to go.

We've been increasing usage in the past few years and we are likely to continue to do so.

Technical support is helpful and they know their product. The support on offer is very good. We are quite satisfied.

I was not involved in the deployment, however, I don't recall any problem there. The one who implemented it was a local distributor of Zadara here in the Philippines. They were the ones who did the setup.

We have two people who are assigned to maintenance. Behind them, we have the distributor as well. We are also connected to the main Zadara support, which is in Israel.

We had a local distributor handle the implementation process for us.

We didn't evaluate other options before choosing this solution.

I'm not sure which version of the solution we're using currently.

We're like partners, however, we're not a direct partner. We have a common customer.

I'd advise new users to make sure that the operating system where they are going to provision the storage has compatibility and interoperability prior to implementation. You need to know you are at the right firmware level, so you don't have any surprises as far as the compatibility.

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten.

We use services on Zadara for our customers in Brazil.

The most valuable features of Zadara are its visibility and simplicity to use.

In the next release, there can be some improvements to the web console by adding more features because the console is simple. Additionally, the calculator could improve.

I have been using Zadara for approximately two years.

The technical support from Zadara is good.

The initial setup of Zadara was simple and configured. The process took us approximately one week.

We had a lot of issues with the Zadara recently regarding performance, reports, and offloads, the customers could not send backups to Zadara. However, at the moment, the problems have been solved.

Overall Zadara is a useful solution that provides good services.

I rate Zadara an eight out of ten.