Nasuni Reviews

Our use case at the moment is for our file storage for all our London offices. It's for our London editorial teams, our London business units, and also our college.

We tend to keep it up to date in terms of the version. We're pretty much only a week or so behind a certain release because we know how easy the upgrade process is and we also know how successful the upgrades are. We've never had to roll back any upgrades. We've never experienced any issues with the upgrade process. So, we always keep it on its latest and greatest.

We're currently only using it in our London offices. We have our backend storage, which is AWS at the moment. It's about 100 terabytes of S3 storage, and in front of the S3 storage, we have three physical filers. Two of them are in our London offices and one is in our colocation data center. We have a virtual filer as well, which is running on our Nutanix hypervisor. 

It's pretty much all cloud. The on-premise is pretty much just a cache. They're just filers. They're just for the speed. We're a media and publications house. So, we need our files quite close to us so that we have a cache of those files, and our editors can access those files quickly and responsively.

When we purchased it years ago, we could only get it on Azure, but because we are 99% AWS, it was better that we moved over to have our costs in line with our other AWS spend.

It replaced multiple data silos and toolsets with a single global file system. The main reason for purchasing Nasuni at the time was that it took out so many tiers of other technologies that we were running at the time. We had on-premise file servers. We had virtual file servers, and we had replication going from three or four different sites and that replication was going to colocations. We had tape backups. We had physical backup storage. There were multiple vendors we had to deal with. We had multiple contracts. We had outer support, hardware, and software. By bringing in Nasuni, which was pretty much full cloud-based technology, we managed to remove heaps and heaps of infrastructure, and management as well. Previously, the management was like a day job of checking backups and checking the replications running and things like that. They weren't even replicating over to the other side. Nasuni changed all of that. We were instantly making one copy straight to the Cloud, and it was available and protected. It was definitely very important for us. It was probably our biggest project at the time. It fitted perfectly into our disaster recovery process and plan. It was something simple to work with, and we didn't have to deal with those workloads. 

Some of the benefits were obviously the cost savings from not having to manage and have so much infrastructure in our colocations. Our editorial teams felt secure knowing that we had forever backups of their files. We have to have multiple copies of our publications, files, photography, and things like that, and whenever we've spoken to the departments about how secure their data is, we just tell them, "Things are never going to get lost here. We've got multiple copies. It's forever."

It offers a single platform with a 360-degree view of our file data. Having the dashboard or a single pane of glass means that you're not moving between different management GUIs. It's very important that everything you need to know and see is there.

It provides file storage capacity anywhere it’s needed, on demand, and without limits. We pay for a set amount, but there have been times when we've gone over that amount, and we've continued to work. We just spoke to our account manager and we could spin up more data. Our invoice changes because we're using up more storage, but it's there on-demand, and we use as little and as much as we like.

It's easy to configure it to support organizational changes. We have changed. Our organization has changed over time, and we've continued to make changes to the product. Although Condé Nast is a global company, we were working as 12, 13 different entities in that company. We've now merged all our offices together, which meant more people wanted access to UK data. We've now got people from the US, India, European countries, and all other areas of the globe accessing that data. It was simple to make configuration changes so that those users could access the data via their domain or via their active directories.

It does continuous file versioning for us. The files are always protected in AWS S3, and they're also protected from ransomware, which I believe Nasuni guarantees. It's not something that we configure or switch on. It's just something that's been mentioned to us by the account managers.

There is snapshot retention. There are snapshot schedules that you can set on each share or file level. You can set up whatever level you want to set for the schedules. We sometimes have our scheduling done once an hour, so we can make changes back to an hour. There are forever snapshots from day one of a file appearing.

It has increased our productivity knowing that we can restore things in an instant. We've never had any complaints from any users about bringing back the wrong type of files or not being happy with a file that we've brought back.

It has helped eliminate on-premises infrastructure. We had a number of physical file servers and physical storage and backup infrastructure, and it was also the same in our colocation where we were replicating our entire infrastructure. We managed to remove tons of on-premise hardware and virtual machines just because we could install Nasuni. In terms of the effect of this reduced infrastructure footprint on our costs, one of our higher costs would've been the rack space at our colocation. That's a massive cost reduced from our monthly outgoings.

It has simplified infrastructure purchasing and support requirements. We have a single provider for our file storage and file backups. It has simplified purchasing and management. It has enabled us to be more proactive with other projects. We don't have to manage all that old infrastructure. It has enabled us to move forward.

It's a lot simpler and more cost-effective as compared to buying fixed assets through hardware refresh.

We needed a solution that would allow our 12 offices to collaborate from one central location of active business data that is continuously synchronized and backed up. This is the problem that Nasuni solved for us.

Our environment includes Nasuni's cloud-based file storage called UniFS, and at each site, we have a filer on-premise. Our normal SAN/NAS refresh cycle at each office location was 3 to 5 years. This IT work involved a lot of time, effort, and cost involving research, planning, and deployment of the properly sized SAN/NAS. With Nasuni, this hardware refresh cycle has literally stopped. Our capacity now scales on-demand.

Prior to Nasuni, each office had its own on-premises file server and there was no real collaboration on a single set of data. We had data silos operating independently at each location and when we would win a project, it was very difficult to collaborate between offices. Nasuni came in and looked at all our offices and data within our workflows and made the requisite recommendations. In the end, all of our active business data was consolidated and synchronized into one universal ‘global’ drive that was automatically backed up every 15 minutes and accessible by all staff in all offices.

With Nasuni, we have been able to replace multiple data silos and toolsets with a single global file system, which is important to us because we have been able to consolidate several different products and solutions. Prior to Nasuni, the normal mode of operations in IT was to employ several products to use with critical business data. For example, we have to store it, back it up, think about disaster recovery, and think about how different employees collaborate on the same data at the same time. Each of these problems required different products.

Nasuni solves your storage, backup, disaster recovery, and file sync/collaboration needs in one product/solution.

Thankfully, we have not had to use it for a ransomware attack or disaster situation. But the risk of data loss due to a ransomware attack is significantly mitigated knowing we can restore our data to within 15 minutes of the last Nasuni ‘snapshot’. We also use Nasuni on a weekly basis for simple file restores. With Nasuni, in two clicks you can restore a file. 

Prior to Nasuni, we had a completely separate software package that we purchased for data backups. This is not required any longer. As such, our IT environment is simpler and more cost-effective.

We don't use Nasuni exclusively for VDI but we do have VDI components. This is very important to us because we've been using VMware for almost 20 years.

With regard to the simplicity of management, the Nasuni Management Console makes everything very simple. Related to that is the support that we received during our implementation, as well as the ongoing support that we get whenever we have any questions about configuration or otherwise.

Nasuni has helped to simplify infrastructure purchasing and support requirements, starting with the fact that we no longer do our regular SAN refresh every three to five years. Also, we are now dealing with one vendor, rather than multiple vendors for our storage solution.

Anybody that knows about storage products will understand how they just fill up because users create more data than you have a plan for. A storage upgrade is a big IT project and we haven't had to do one for almost three years. Having the benefit of being able to forgo one of these projects saves us hundreds of hours each time.

When compared to having to do SAN refreshes, Nasuni contributes positively to business agility. When you have to plan for an IT update project, it requires time and effort. With Nasuni in place, that need goes away because the technology automatically backs up the data, synchronizes it, and maintains version control for disaster recovery. From that perspective, the business is much more agile.

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 use case specifically is to allow our engineering staff in different offices to be able to work collaboratively on the same projects at the same time. Also, another important feature for us is the ability to recover or restore data from any point in time in its history.

We have Nasuni Filers deployed at each of our offices in the US and another location in India. Nasuni is used by our engineering staff and where production engineering data is stored.

The cloud is used for synchronization from site to site as well as for backup and storing all our snapshot historical data.

We use different cloud providers for different things. Currently, hard Nasuni data is in AWS.

We use it for VDI. VDI is the direction that we are going throughout the company for consistency and user experience for DR and DC capabilities. Having the Nasuni Filers be a central element supporting the VDI solution has enabled us to have all our engineers work collaboratively in a very tightly integrated total solution.

It is very rare that we need to make significant changes to the Nasuni infrastructure to support organizational changes. On a day-to-day basis, there are new projects added across various design teams in the company. Those can be set up in seconds in Nasuni. It is just very easy to work with it. In essence, setting up the basic file structures just looks like another volume that has been shared on the network. Through the console, we can configure Global File Lock permissions for how those files can be accessed from site to site.

Nasuni is replacing our old file-sharing system based on StorSimple, a Microsoft appliance that uses server message block technology. SMB enables you to store a range of file types. You can store Office files and various file types that require this technology. They are application-related files that interact with executables, such as INI files, library files, etc. 

Now, Nasuni is fulfilling StorSimple's role as the multipurpose storage solution for our application-related files. It isn't storing documents like Office 365 files, PDFs, email, VIZIO, etc. We can keep those files in SharePoint.

The management console runs on a private cloud, but Nasuni hosts the file servers on an AWS public cloud. We have around 12,000 users, but the active user base is approximately 5,000. Various departments access Nasuni, including HR, finance, legal, and occasionally C-Suite executives. 

Our insurance and banking operations use it because they have managed and user-developed applications that use Nasuni and require SMB technology. It stores all the files apps need to run. Reports, documents, snapshots, and things like that are also stored in the same place in Nasuni. That's the appropriate use for it, but some users are misusing it. For example, some people are using unified storage instead of SharePoint. 

We have less downtime and fewer trouble tickets from users who cannot access their shared files. Nasuni has reduced the friction and noise associated with file management because the devices are more reliable. 

When we were using StorSimple, we had at least two priority-one incidents in which business-critical applications were affected. Those were serious problems, and we were required to notify the regulator. We haven't had any critical failures since we started using Nasuni. 

Our previous solution was noisy and awful. Now, it's quiet and smooth. We don't hear anything. I don't have precise figures, but the percentage reduction in issues must be huge. Storage was a problem for everyone, from the CIO to the engineers. We don't hear the same complaints. When we get tickets, they're not related to reliability. Our tickets mainly relate to access issues where the end-user doesn't fully understand the self-service or automated components.

StorSimple was complex and out of control. Nasuni is relatively simple, so even I can understand it. It's easy to manage, and we're happy with it operationally. 

Nasuni is adaptable to organizational changes. For example, if we did a merger or acquisition, we could easily add another volume or file-sharing instance. Nasuni could accommodate a rapid expansion or merging of data. I don't think Nasuni would make removing file shares any harder or easier. That comes down to how well the shares are named and whether we can identify who owns them. There's not enough metadata about the organizational unit on the shares to help us, so it would still be a bit of a manual process.

We couldn't just say that we're selling off this business unit that owns these, so we need to ready them for migration out of Nasuni to the host of the next organization that's taking over. There's not enough metadata on the shares to tell us. However, we could identify those using a different tool. We could analyze the data and identify the owners. That's no problem. And if we could link those to business units being sold, isolating or tagging those for migration wouldn't be that hard.

The continuous file versioning is excellent. We have a refresh cycle of around five minutes. If there were a ransomware attack, we could roll it back to as recent as five minutes ago. We typically wouldn't discover ransomware attacks too quickly, but we have that enabled, and it's handy. 

Users can also roll back files to a previous version if they know how. Otherwise, they will need to raise a ticket to notify us when a file has been corrupted, or there was an unauthorized change. Nasuni creates lots of versions and works pretty efficiently. It snapshots only the differences, so the storage doesn't get out of control. 

With continuous file versioning, we don't need to worry about timely backups and restorations. We trust Nasuni to do their full backups in an environment we can control. It's a contracted service-level agreement, so we don't need to test it, and we have no desire to. We have tested the disaster recovery process in a training scenario and will do it in production eventually. That's scheduled for later this year. It will probably be in Q4. I believe the tests we've done in training fairly represent what should happen in production if we need to restore. 

It has replaced some on-prem infrastructure when discussing hybrid situations involving a private cloud. In this case, we use a private cloud for the management console, and the file storage volumes themselves are sitting on the cloud. Most of the data is not on-prem, but we still have some on-prem infrastructure. It's on-prem because we configure and manage it and control the VM for the management console. 

I think Nasuni is cheaper to operate than our previous solution. We removed some data and plan to eliminate more, so our overall storage footprint will decrease, but it hasn't yet. We're still working on that. That will reduce costs. We had one person managing StorSimple nearly full-time, and two or three people had to frequently stick their noses in it because of the problems. It only takes half a person to manage Nasuni daily. 

We spend a little more because we're cleaning up the ownership and improving our technical state compliance monitoring. We're working with Splunk and are getting the Syslog server configured and reporting correctly, so we need a full-time person.  

Nasuni simplifies infrastructure purchasing and management because we're only responsible for our management console and the Syslog server. We provide that as VMs in our private cloud. The file storage is Nasuni's responsibility, and we pay a subscription fee per terabyte. If we want more terabytes, we ask them. They do the provisioning and expansion and seamlessly match up the volumes. 

We use the Nasuni Filers and Nasuni Management Console (NMC) to manage those Filers.

We have four offices in Los Angeles, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. In each office, we have a Nasuni Cloud Storage Gateway that allows end users in each office to access their data in the cloud. However, that data is cached locally.

It is an excellent solution for collaboration. We are an architecture firm. For example, we may be working on a set of architectural drawings files here in Los Angeles. We save those drawings at 17:00, then those drawings will sync to other offices. When other offices, e.g., China and Shanghai, come online, the data is there and on the network drive. They can continue working on those drawings or meet with clients. They can also access them on an iPad if they are at a job site. So, it is very useful for collaboration on a global scale.

The product integrates with industry standard platforms, like Active Directory. So, it is very straightforward to apply changes to the organization.

If we were hit with ransomware, we would have to know the time of the ransomware, then we can easily recover files using Nasuni Management Console.

It is much simpler to upgrade a solution because the data is in the cloud. You are just upgrading your gateway and pointing it to the cloud. So, it is much simpler to upgrade.

Nasuni is our file system. Our employees including, engineers, designers,  and accounting, store files on the system. And we have the on-prem filer, so the office folks can use File Explorer to browse the drive and retrieve or store files. 

Our remote users usually use VPN to access our files at our data center. At the data center we have one filer for the remote workers to access.

The data protection from Nasuni is extremely important. Back in December 2019, our company experienced a ransomware attack and pretty much all of our data got encrypted by the ransomware. Nasuni now provides backups and an easy-to-restore process in case of this type of disaster. We rely on the backups and restores tremendously. So far, we haven't had to use that feature, but Nasuni ensures that in the case of a ransomware or cybersecurity attack, they are able to restore all the data in the shortest amount of time.

We are trying to consolidate all our data platforms and toolsets with Nasuni as a single, global file system. It's just too difficult for IT to maintain various technologies and platforms. Nasuni serves as a single technology to give us more efficient processes and workflow. It's a good way to consolidate our technology. We're not there yet, where we have a complete view of all our data, but hopefully, in the next 12 to 18 months, we can get a 360-degree view of our users and increase productivity as well.

The continuous file versioning gives us peace of mind. In IT, we can sleep better at night knowing that Nasuni has backups. I actually just looked at the configuration recently because a VP was asking if our data was being backed up and, if yes, how often. It's being backed up daily and the frequency is every 15 minutes, on average. Every 15 minutes it takes a snapshot of our data. Throughout the day, there are plenty of snapshots to restore so that does give us peace of mind.

Unified, global file sharing while reducing costs and eliminating backups.

We had a Nasuni filer in our Texas office. But due to the cold in Texas, power was down for a couple of weeks due to the inability to get fuel for the generator.  The users outside the area could work from home but they could not get to their filer in their Texas office. Since Nasuni stores our files in the cloud, we just setup another filer in the cloud with access to their files and they were back in business.