Nasuni Reviews

We have one physical filer on-premises and six virtual filers.

Our primary use case is as a NAS service, and we use it for all of our companywide drives. It contains home drives, department drives, file sharing, etc. All of our end-users put their data on these drives.

Nasuni offers us file storage capacity anywhere it's needed, on-demand, and without limits. We have not had any issues on the filers where we run out of cache space rapidly. This is important to us, especially at our remote offices where we are running virtual to filers. It's nice to know that there is enough storage there for end-users to download or cache as many files as they want, without filling up the filer and data being removed from the cache.

This product gives us a single platform with a 360-degree view of our file data. I can look at all of our data and I have the ability to recover all of our data from a single console. Navigating our data is fairly simplistic and as far as the end-users are involved, it's nice to know that they can share data across multiple filers.

Nasuni has not eliminated our need for on-premises infrastructure, but it has certainly reduced it. Our whole NAS environment is much simpler and easier as far as updating and upgrading OS versions of Nasuni. The main point is that the ease of use of the product is great.

The most valuable feature is that we have redundancy in our data. It's nice to know that it is cached both locally on the filters, as well as stored on that cloud.

We take snapshots every 15 minutes and it's nice to know that we have many versions of our data backed up.

Nasuni recently implemented a health system for filers. However, it needs better visibility because it lacks data and an explanation, or reasoning as to why a particular filer may be unhealthy. Similarly, when we receive an error on a snapshot, a little more detail as to what failed in the snapshot, and why, would be helpful. Essentially, on the learning side, there is some room for improvement.

We began using Nasuni in the spring of 2017, just over four years ago.

This solution is very stable. Knock on wood, I don't think we've ever had any particular issues with our physical filer or with the virtual filers, and we've never really had any failures with our data not being available.

With respect to scaling, it's very easy to increase or decrease as you like. We are a construction company and we do have a couple of Nasuni desktop-size filers that we have deployed to job sites a couple of times. When they are done with the job site, we've decommissioned the filers and implemented them at other job sites.

Overall, it's very easy to scale. We currently have seven filers and our license is set at 25 terabytes. This is something that I do see increasing because right now, we're at 23. When our license next renews, which may be in December, we may decide to increase it by five or ten terabytes. I don't foresee us increasing the number of filers, although that could always change.

I work with the support fairly often and for the most part, it's pretty good. I have had a couple of instances where the technicians were not very reliable as far as waiting for them to get back to me. However, I won't say that they weren't helpful.

Overall, rating from a one to ten, I'd give them an eight or nine. Some of the technicians could be more responsive, which is an area for improvement in this regard.

In our environment, Nasuni has helped to replace multiple servers with a single global file system. Our old environment consisted of between nine and twelve servers, and now we're down to seven. The number has not drastically decreased but it is a lot simpler to use.

Our previous environment was an HP LeftHand solution, and when I started with the company, I knew nothing about it. I was learning on the fly. It worked, but it was very difficult to update to the latest OS version. Or, if I had to implement new firmware or things like that, it was a lot more difficult.

The primary reason we switched from our previous NAS environment was that it was five or six years old. It was somewhat difficult to manage, especially when it came to updating the hardware and the software, et cetera. Nasuni just makes the whole process easier. Updating the actual virtual and physical server or filer is basically a one-click operation.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. I worked with a Nasuni technician on the initial setup and it was very clear when it came to moving our data from the existing NAS environment to the Nasuni environment.

The time it took for the actual setup of the filers was pretty short, but getting all of the data into the Nasuni environment took longer. That depended solely on our side, as we needed to work with all of our departments to get their data transferred over. In total, it probably took us between three and four months to complete. The bulk of this had nothing to do with Nasuni.

The strategy was simply to get off of our old NAS environment and get all of our department data moved over to Nasuni. At that point, we also had it stored in the cloud.

There are two of us who maintain the environment, although it is primarily me. I have a coworker that will help occasionally when it comes to updating the filers in the environment. However, it is mainly me who takes care of it.

My manager at the time was the one who selected Nasuni and I wasn't part of the group that was selecting new environments or new products at the time. That was in the initial stages of my employment at the company.

That said, I don't remember us looking at a lot of other vendors when we were seeking to replace our NAS environment.

We are currently running Nasuni version 9.0.7 and are waiting to upgrade to version 9.3.3. It's available, we just have not upgraded yet.

If I had a colleague in another company who had concerns about migration to the cloud and Nasuni's performance in that area, I would tell them that the migration from our NAS environment to Nasuni was quite simple. I used Robocopy to copy our data from the existing environment to Nasuni and it worked well. It was just a matter of copying the data to our physical filer and then it would automatically take snapshots and send them to the cloud. For me, overall, it was quite simple.

When we first started, they had a different migration tool and I don't think it worked as well as we wanted it to. They may now have a new tool that works better than Robocopy.

My advice for anybody who is considering this product is that it works great. It does what we need it to do and the process of administering it is very simple through the Nasuni Management Console. I would recommend it.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

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 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 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.