Nasuni Reviews

We use it for a couple of business units that need to quickly transfer data from the field to our offices. They run tests in the field and then they have to get that data uploaded quickly. They connect to the filers in our cloud, and that allows the data to snapshot across to all the Nasuni environments within our organization.

It's deployed through a combination of on-prem and cloud. It's more of a platform as a service or infrastructure as a service because we have hardware appliances that connect to our Azure infrastructure in the cloud.

When our field techs collect data from the units they're inspecting, that data is being uploaded and made visible on-demand. The way we're configured, those snapshots commit every five minutes. Within a five-minute window, based on bandwidth, that data will be available to any of the business units that are looking for it at our various locations.

Nasuni has definitely simplified our data management. Before we implemented it, we were struggling to figure out how to get data to different locations. It was a challenge. But the unified file system turned that into a very straightforward process. Everybody uploads their data to that directory structure and the data becomes available for everybody in all our locations.

Thankfully, we've never had a ransom attack, but the fact that we can restore data within that five-minute window, after each snapshot, has been extremely helpful. The continuous file versioning also makes recovery of a deleted file a very straightforward process through the NMC, the Nasuni Management  Console. One of the server administrators for Nasuni follows a few quick steps to restore that file. We've had to do that several times, and it has been a very straightforward process.

In addition, the snapshotting, which is our backup, has made Nasuni extremely easy when it comes to maintenance. It's a set-and-forget type of operation. With that snapshot continually running and always capturing the latest data, it's providing a backup at that point. It's very straightforward in terms of the impact on our IT.

The snapshot functionality and the unified file system are definitely the most valuable features for us. The UFS allows everybody across the organization to see the exact same data at the same time, instead of having different file servers with different structures on them, and that's mission-critical. We have different branches throughout our organization that have to act on that data. When it's uploaded to Nasuni and it's snapshotted out to all locations, each one does something specific with that data. It has to be consistent across the board, with multiple people accessing it. We have to make sure that everybody's on the same page.

I would like to see improvement in the training Nasuni provides. Compared to some of the other vendors out there, like Microsoft, where you can find how-to videos, Nasuni only has a lot of PDF documents that you have to go hunting for. It's workable, it certainly isn't a problem, but video walkthroughs would always be helpful. Microsoft offers that a lot for its infrastructure.

We've been using Nasuni for about six years.

Early on, there were some concerns, but over the last couple of years, the stability has been flawless.

It seems that if we were to have to scale out, it would be a very straightforward and simple process.

We have a couple of hundred technicians who connect to Nasuni, and on our engineering team there are 30 to 40 people who are retrieving and relying on the data that's coming in.

In terms of maintenance of the solution, it's taken care of by our infrastructure team that consists of three to four members of our IT team, but it does not require full-time attention. They handle administrative duties, assigning access to folders and directories. It uses Microsoft's NTFS permissioning and they add members to the group. It's not really Nasuni maintenance, it's actually the directory structure that makes up the day-to-day maintenance. There is also quarterly maintenance when we provide software and security updates, and that's a very straightforward process.

We have no plans at this time to increase our usage of Nasuni, but the potential is always there. It really has served its purpose in our particular use case scenario.

Over the later years, I would definitely give their tech support a nine or a 10 out 10, as they've been responsive. Early on, when we were implementing, it was a little bit of a challenge, but in recent years, which is what matters, they have been excellent.

We didn't use a solution before Nasuni. We just had a legacy file system, legacy Windows Servers on a standard network.

The initial setup was straightforward, but we had the assistance of a product specialist that they assigned. They held our hand through the whole implementation process. It could have been complex, but the product specialist came out and gathered our requirements and made the whole process very straightforward. They walked us through the whole implementation process, including how to set a filer up and the proper way to configure our file system for our scenario.

The configuration portion was very straightforward. After shipping out the filers to each of the locations and getting the hardware set up, the configuration process took just a few days. But the process took a bit of time because we were transferring large amounts of data from our legacy systems over to Nasuni. That wasn't really a Nasuni issue, it was a bandwidth issue with the amount of data that had to be transferred. That ended up taking closer to a month but through no fault of Nasuni.

Our implementation strategy was to move all data from the legacy system over to the Nasuni system. We then had to train all of our technicians on how to use that system. It was a straight cut-over from legacy to Nasuni.

Licensing for the data is something that is handled on a yearly basis. Pricing is calculated per the number of terabytes to be utilized with Nasuni. We're in the 60 terabyte range. We have to keep in mind our cloud storage costs. Although that's unrelated to Nasuni, Nasuni consumes cloud resources.

There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

The original business unit did do some investigations but I don't know which products they looked at. When Nasuni offered to do a pilot, they ran through a pilot with it. I don't think the other vendors ever got that far with us. Nasuni stood out as soon as the pilot was kicked off.

Get together with a product specialist, as we did, so they can walk you through the process based on your use case scenario. That's what they did when implementing it for us, which made it very easy. There is no way we would have been able to configure this on our own, without that support at the very beginning. It's a completely different type of technology. But they handled it and performed the knowledge transfer very well and it was easy to take over supporting it once it was working.

We haven't really had to use Nasuni's on-demand abilities. We renew our storage capacity once a year for a fixed price. We're not continuously changing that. We have to contact Nasuni and get an estimate on any price increase for additional demand.

We've been running in the same configuration the entire time, but if we had to make any changes it would be very fairly straightforward. It's all done within a central management console that communicates to all the hardware appliances and filers in the cloud.

And while Nasuni has not eliminated on-premises infrastructure for us, because we use hardware filers, it has the potential to do so. We have to have our data in the data center to create that local experience for the end-user. If we were to push those filers up into the cloud, we'd be looking at more latency, perhaps, due to network connections. We're using their hardware appliances by design, as opposed to putting them in the cloud, as we're dealing with very large files.

What I would tell a colleague at another company who has concerns about migration to the cloud and about Nasuni's performance is that Nasuni is straightforward. Once you get migrated over to Nasuni and get your data in place, it's a very easy, very secure process to maintain that data, as opposed to having to run different backup agents for particular servers. I would also say that you've got the unified file system, which allows all users at different locations to see the same data, and that is very difficult to do with a Microsoft system. And the snapshot technology is very reliable and very simple. Once it's configured, you can pretty much set it and forget it, with just some basic monitoring of it.

Overall, it has been straightforward and we're very pleased with the Nasuni system. I would definitely give it a high rating.

We use Nasuni for our production files so that they can be accessed from multiple facilities at once. 

It is deployed through VMware. 

One of my first use cases was that it removed two servers and made it a single system and improved the workflow then for that team, which spans multiple facilities.

Once you understand their architecture, it's actually very simple. It's just a very different way of thinking about things. So once you understand that, you realize how simple it is.

The ability to access anywhere, the ease of deployment, and the security are the most valuable features. Security is a big one.

It has replaced multiple data silos and toolsets with a single global file system. This is very important to me. It reduces IT workload by having to manage fewer platforms.

It also offers us a single platform. Having a single pane to view the platform on is wonderful.

Nasuni enables us to provide file storage capacity anywhere as needed, on-demand, and without limits. It means I don't have to constantly be upgrading a built-in solution for a fixed box.

We've used it to provide file source capacity for VDI environments. The security of it is important and the fact that it's object storage, it's immutable, and that it can't be held for ransom. It's a lot smoother than our previous processes that weren't Nasuni-based. A lot of it is done automatically just by the system being in place.

It provides continuous file versioning and helps to eliminate on-premises infrastructure, which lowered our costs. 

Nasuni helped to simplify infrastructure purchasing and support requirements. The single pane of management helps. Having one management console to do everything in, then not having to upkeep the systems in the same way as we would a normal Windows server.

Our capital costs have been reduced because we don't have to buy as much excess capacity. It has been reduced by 75%.

When it comes to business agility and cash flow compared to buying fixed assets through a hardware refresh, it has made it a lot more agile.

Some of their cross-platform features are really good, but it could always use more.

I have been using Nasuni for around seven months. 

I find Nasuni to be very stable and any issues can be quickly fixed.

One of the reasons we bought it was for its ability to scale. 

We have around 80 users at the moment that are production people, but that number is going to change if we continue to grow with it.

It requires one staff for deployment and maintenance. 

We're already using it a ton. It's improved workflows and we plan on expanding a lot more with it.

I would say that they need to make their technical support quicker. I would rate them a nine out of ten.

We used old standard box servers. 

It's very easy to reconfigure, so it makes it easy for fast deployment. This makes us more agile and quick to respond to the demands of management.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. From their side, it took a month. From our side, it took five to six months, but we had other factors that prevented us from doing it in just one month. It really could have been done in a month. It was not the fault of Nasuni.

We worked directly with Nasuni. 

I would advise having a handle on your data or how much data you plan to put into it to be within the price of affording it.

If you use cloud solutions, then there are additional charges to standard licensing. 

We look at things like Hyper-converged infrastructure. 

Given all of the features this offered and its price point, Nasuni was the best. It was far better than even far more expensive options.

End-users won't know that it has a cloud tied into it. So there's no performance hindrance with cloud integration.

The speediest way to implement it is really having your ducks in a row and know exactly what you have that you want to move and work with their team to do it.

You can really have almost everything that you need in one solution.

I would rate Nasuni a nine out of ten. I have been very happy with it. 

We use Nasuni to share data between our sites. It allows us to use a single volume at different sites and different locations, which means that it is easier for us to collaborate. We used to have a small, constant amount of storage space in our server but Nasuni and cloud storage allows us to grow with no limits.

Using this solution has helped us to reduce the time it takes to recover data in the event of a disaster. Moreover, it has lowered our cost of operations and reduced our workload. Our savings through using Nasuni is approximately 35%.

Nasuni has helped us to replace multiple silos and tools sets with a single, global filesystem, which is important to us because we can centralize our data. Having it centralized means that we can secure it easily, as well as provide granular access to users.

Nasuni provides us with file storage capacity anywhere, on-demand, and we have no limits. Every month, we generate a report to see how our capacity has grown and I can say that it is not a problem in our company. Having no limits is important because we used to have a small and constant amount of storage space. Even now, with the reporting, we can analyze our consumption and limit our storage costs through monitoring.

The most valuable feature is disaster recovery. We can fully recover a site in two hours.

In the event of a problem, such as a storm that is affecting our operations at one site, we can restore the data at another site and begin working again.

Nasuni is easy to manage, and I would rate it a nine out of ten in this regard. We were using a manual solution in the past, and it was a major challenge for the company.

We use the continuous file versioning feature, although we limit the snapshot retention. This feature is very helpful for users who have deleted files, or experience file corruption. Our current system requires a user to open a support ticket so that we can provide them assistance to restore the lost data. In the future, we plan to give each user the ability to do this on their own, although it's not easy to do because we have a lot of users and it's not a very secure approach to give them all access.

Our IT operations spend approximately one hour verifying the backups to ensure that everything is ok. In the past, prior to continuous versioning with Nasuni, this was not an easy task and we had a lot of difficulties determining whether it had been done properly or not.

The performance of the filesystem could be improved.

We began using Nasuni in 2019 and this is our third year with it. It was not in production this entire time but it is now.

Nasuni is not a stable solution.

This is a scalable product.

Our deployment method depends on the size of the environment. In our largest environment, which is our headquarters, we deploy this solution on a physical server because we can provide the highest performance that way. In our smaller sites, we deploy it on a virtual machine.

We have five people who work regularly with the product, including one monitor and four engineers.

There is a lot of information openly available about the product on the Nasuni Blog and through technical support. I would rate the support a ten out of ten.

When we open a case, the response time is very fast and the engineers are professional. They have strong skills in informatics and are good at solving problems hands-on.

In the past, we used a manual solution. This meant that we had to verify daily to ensure the backups were done properly, and check to make sure that the data was available. We had other tasks that included things like maintaining the backup hardware and the required cartridges. Overall, the system was very bad and presented major challenges. For example, we needed about 24 hours to recover from a disaster.

We switched in part because it was much faster to use Nasuni but also, we had issues with storage limitations. We were storing all of our disaster recovery backups on one server and for example, we would consume one terabyte for the month. We needed an on-premises server for this and had to worry about things like security. These are no longer issues for us and overall, Nasuni has been beneficial.

We had some issues when it came to installing Nasuni, although we worked with their support and ultimately we were able to resolve them. Our plan included deploying six Nasuni instances per week and the full implementation took us about two years to complete.

I was not with the company prior to implementation, so I am not sure what other products, if any, were evaluated.

Based on my experience with the product, I can recommend it. If one of my friends or colleagues at another company were concerned about migration to the cloud and Nasuni's performance, I would provide them benchmarks that I have that show why I am very satisfied with Nasuni overall.

The biggest lesson that I have learned from working with Nasuni is that you have to work with bigger companies if you want to learn and grow your own business. For us, one of these companies is Nasuni.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We are using it for enterprise file storage. We have its latest version, and it is a hybrid deployment. The actual storage or data resides in the Azure cloud, but you access it either through VMs or hardware that you deploy on your premises. 

With a shift to more remote work during this past year, we deployed a new instance of Nasuni in Azure. This allowed us to be more flexible and support remote work better. We wouldn't have been able to do that with legacy file storage.

The global file locking feature is valuable. The ability to quickly deploy new sites is also valuable.

Room for improvement would be the speed of replication of new files. I would also like to see cloud mirroring.

I have been using this solution for three years.

It is very stable.

It is very scalable. We have about 750 users of this solution. Most of them are technical staff, so they'll be engineers or similar knowledge workers.

It is currently being used company-wide. We plan to increase its usage in the future. We are planning to move some additional data onto it, but we are also evaluating to move subsets of the data from Nasuni to other file storage.

Their technical support is very good. They are definitely above average.

We previously used Windows File Servers, PeerLink, and FileShares. We switched for several reasons. The main reasons were better global file locking, better stability, and better backup and restore.

It was straightforward, and it took days, which is fair for a solution like this. 

It was done in-house in coordination with the software vendor itself. Our experience with them was very good.

It is also very light on maintenance. We don't have any dedicated staff for the maintenance of the Nasuni system. It would be just very minimal time here and there.

I believe we have seen an ROI.

It is around $850 per terabyte per year. Any additional costs that you would incur are for the local caching devices that you'll need to access Nasuni. You kind of provide your own virtual machines or compute to access the data. You also pay for the object storage. So, there are three parts to it. There is the Nasuni license per terabyte. You would also pay for the actual object storage in the cloud, and then you would pay for virtual machines to access the storage.

I would advise others to be careful and pay attention to rightsizing the filers. They should also be aware of certain applications that have requirements that are difficult to fulfill with Nasuni.

I would rate Nasuni an eight out of ten.