Nasuni Reviews

We need a traditional file server-type solution while reducing all of the complexities around the management of it.

Using Nasuni enables us to provide file storage capacity anywhere and on-demand, without limits, which is important to us because we're quite a distributed company and we have lots of different remote locations. We don't have enough storage to have a server on each site, so it's really beneficial that we have easily accessible, centralized storage. The bottom line is that it's easy for us to support lots of different remote users in one simple solution.

Nasuni gives us a single platform with a 360-degree view of our data, which is important so that we know the size of our estate and the amount of data that we hold. As a construction company, we have to retain data for 10 years, or sometimes more. This means that having a central platform that can control our data and ensure that it is intact, is extremely valuable for the way we do business.

Although we are using Nasuni in a cloud environment, it has not really affected the costs of our on-premises infrastructure. This is because we were relatively ahead of the curve, so our previous file solution was already in the cloud. However, it was just more complicated with multiple servers. They were Windows Servers that had to be managed by us. These have been reduced into two single devices but there is no change in terms of on-premises hardware.

The most valuable feature is the simplicity of the backup and restore functions.

The performance is good for everything from the backups to the file copies, to the mobility.

We use the continuous versioning feature and although we have not had to recover from a disaster, it has given us the confidence that if something like a ransomware incident should occur, we have the ability to restore to a previous safe version. We are also confident that we would have the technical solution and support to ensure that we do not have a bad experience or a negative impact on our business.

One thing to consider is that Nasuni will have the same limitations that a traditional file storage solution will have, although that is because they are taking the place of a traditional architectural model. For example, Office 365 supports collaboration on documents such as Excel files and Word documents, but because Nasuni is a traditional file server, in that sense, it can't make use of that functionality.

I have been working with Nasuni for just over one year.

We have had no problems in terms of stability or availability.

The limitations to accessing file data in our environment are related to our networking, and it's not something that can necessarily be overcome when we have sites that are on 3G or 4G connections, that do not warrant having on-premises hardware. When those networks go down, that's where we will face limitations, but we've never had any limitations with regards to Nasuni itself. 

With respect to being able to support organizational changes, it is very quick to expand and support new parts of our business. The infrastructure is already there and it's scalable. This means that creating new business units and storage for those business units is really quite simple, especially once you've documented the very few basic steps that you need to take to create a new file storage unit.

Being a construction company, I'm always told that our two biggest technical requirements are print and file. File is one of the biggest and most important technologies without our business and in that capacity, Nasuni is being used every day by everyone throughout the business.

At this point, we are fully using it for all of our data storage and as our data requirements grow, the data we input into Nasuni will grow.

In general, they have done a very good job of architecting the product, designing for scalability, and educating customers on how you can scale. To this end, I can't foresee any way that they could improve what they currently do.

My experience with support was very positive. I had 24/7 support and there were moments when I had to contact them out of hours. The only negative experience when contacting out of hours was that they had a call handler, who wasn't able to put you straight through to a technical person. You had to wait for a call back before you can get support.

Overall, I would rate their support a nine out of ten.

Prior to Nasuni, we had a traditional file server set up, and it included multiple servers. With Nasuni, it brings it all together into one solution. This consolidation helped to reduce and move some of the management overhead.

Compared to what we did before implementing Nasuni, it reduces the vast majority of management. With our traditional server, we had to do updates, including Windows updates, hardware repairs, and regular maintenance. We had to be concerned about running out of storage space and thus had to plan ahead to increase or replace hard drives or storage. We would also have to factor in other things such as an operating system upgrade, from Windows 2016 to Windows 2019. With Nasuni, we don't have to consider any of those management overheads. It's all self-contained in the way it's run and managed.

If our previous solution was managed well, backups and restores can be relatively smooth and simple, although that involves a fair amount of management. With Nasuni having such a powerful backup and restore functionality, we find all of the positives of an advanced backup and restore solution, but with very few of the management overhead negatives.

Continuous versioning helps to provide a good experience for our users in cases where they lose files or something becomes corrupted. Lots of users don't want or don't need to understand the technicalities behind the scenes. All they know is that if something gets deleted or just disappears, they want it returned. The value for us is really felt by IT in this case, when we can return those files to users confidently and quickly. That's where the real value comes in for us.

The initial setup was very simple. We had lots of support directly from Nasuni.

Our deployment took approximately a month and a half to complete. The process began with building the infrastructure and then implementing it in the IT department. From there, our strategy was to start with the smaller departments and ramp up to the bigger departments with larger existing data storage requirements.

Our in-house team was responsible for the implementation.

We have definitely seen a return on our investment. The old file infrastructure took lots of human intervention to maintain and expand and repair. One way that we've experienced a return on investment is that we haven't needed to hire additional staff. Furthermore, the current staff has been able to focus on different areas of the business.

I was not involved in the product investigation stage and am not aware of what other products were evaluated.

Nasuni appears to be constantly releasing new features or new functionality which, although at this point we don't use, gives us a potential in the future to expand or improve our offering to the business.

If I had a colleague at another company that was concerned about migration to the cloud and Nasuni's performance, I would tell them that if they're happy with the architecture, being a traditional file server type of design, then I would fully endorse Nasuni as a product. In particular, for the ease of migration and the performance thereafter. 

We have definitely gained insight from using Nasuni. For example, understanding how big our estate is in terms of data is something that we didn't accurately know before. We also have insights into how quickly the data we store is growing.

My advice for anybody who is looking into implementing Nasuni would be that if you're currently using the traditional file server architecture, then this is definitely an improvement and reduces a lot of the complexities. If you are looking for a future-proof file storage solution, then you would need to consider things around how the new cloud files are being accessed or modified. For example, SharePoint, Google Docs, and Amazon WorkDocs are examples of things that require a different architecture.

Overall, our experience with Nasuni has been positive and it is difficult to say where it is that they can improve.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

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.