What is our primary use case?
Primarily, we are an AEC firm that utilizes Panzura CloudFS for our file structure for our AEC applications, such as AutoCAD, Bentley, Revit, and various applications that are very chatty in a normal environment. We take advantage of Panzura CloudFS's traveling file locks to create a global namespace for our entire company. We have about ten or eleven filers throughout our region that support the function of the traveling file locks and enable us to use chatty AEC applications.
How has it helped my organization?
We have an authoritative copy of all of our data in one bucket in AWS. Any updates that are done travel almost instantly around to our controllers with metadata accessing that. For everything written, the filer will go to the cloud and update the authoritative copy of anything in our 27 terabytes.
Its ability to provide granular snapshots has been very good. We have used them quite frequently through the previous version tab in Windows. The snapshots have a time setting where they can be available for 30 days, 90 days, 100 days, or 120 days a year. That is our call to make that adjustment. They assisted us early on in the deployment with the settings which has been very convenient because several times, users come to us saying that they trashed a file. We can go and drill down. It is very user-friendly.
Panzura Data Services is a product that we utilize, and it allows us to drill down and search throughout our entire data structure. It has been very handy for seeing files and being able to get the files, but we do not have the auto feature that goes with that. That was rather expensive. However, Panzura Data Services has been useful to us. It is like a search tool.
We could see its benefits immediately. We deployed a master filer or controller that was on-site, which is now in the Azure cloud. We put up one filer in Atlanta and immediately saw the speed at which the files could be opened in a remote scenario. It was as if you were sitting locally in your LAN. The file locks perform as they should, which is important because those file locks travel around between the filers. When a user goes to a file and opens it, it belongs to the user. All the time, everybody else knows that the file is open. It is like a local scenario in the global namespace.
What is most valuable?
Primarily, it is the way Panzura CloudFS handles the file locks and the way these filers, along with the authoritative copy of all our data, which is about 27 terabytes located in an AWS bucket in the cloud, operate. There is a master filer that handles all the subordinates. Having the filers on-site at our larger offices enables our engineers to cache metadata at that location. It enables them to work anywhere, but it looks like they are in the same LAN. There is no degradation of speed because these filers have cached the data, and they are constantly swapping metadata and updating with each other, which is a very attractive method of getting us to use these applications.
It has been very easy to use. The assistance of support has been excellent. Over the years, I have seen their ease of use improve significantly. They are offering new products within their system. They have committed to that track and have not strayed. They have gotten better and better over time. In the beginning, there were always buggy issues. When something was bleeding edge, it had to be worked out, but they got through that. We stuck with them, and it has become a good global file system for the company.
What needs improvement?
It has not reduced the data storage cost. We have been trying to come up with a plan internally to archive project data at a certain time frame. However, our data continues to grow, so at the point of 25 terabytes, we had to buy another 25 terabytes license to exceed that threshold. It would have been nice if they had offered them in increments, of 5, 10, 15, or 20 terabytes than having to get a whole chunk of 25 terabytes again for licensing purposes, which is a little costly. It would be nice if Panzura offered data in increments instead of 25 terabytes per license.
They have done a pretty good job of development from the point of offering new products. Pricing seems to be high for certain things, such as the audit feature of Panzura Data Services. It would be nice to see who deleted that 100 gig of data out there. They should make the pricing plan more attractive for a company of our size. We have almost 700 employees over the southeast from Texas to Florida and up to Tennessee, so we are a pretty big region.
For how long have I used the solution?
We got Panzura early on while they were still kind of young, around 2015.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We have not seen any stability. As they developed more PZOS versions, the stability has gotten better. There were times with file lock issues between filers, causing various anomalies, but with their ongoing development, these issues have improved.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is very easily scalable. The latest version, 8.0.2, has better ease of decommissioning filers and bringing new ones online, and we get great assistance from dedicated people assigned to that task. We get them to help us deploy it with us as we do it. It is kind of handheld, which is nice.
How are customer service and support?
Their support has been excellent. When we have a priority-one issue, we typically receive a call within 20 to 30 minutes. They are responsive if you have a file lock issue or you are experiencing downtime. I usually open a ticket on the portal, and they get back in a very timely fashion. The engineering team helps with version upgrades and deployments.
I would rate them an eight out of ten. The reason for that is that we have had circumstances in the last few years where we did run into some bugs with the operating system, and they took a long time to resolve them. Several of our files were zero bytes with no data and not recoverable. That happens with any company. They had an issue with the development in one of the versions of their operating system. They call it the PZOS operating system. However, I still enjoy the support from Panzura because they are very responsible.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
In the early days, Riverbed products were used for WAN caching but were not a complete solution. This was in the 2000s and early 2010s, and it is refreshing to see a developed solution like Panzura.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was somewhat easy and difficult. Panzura dispatched a person to be onsite with us for a week. This was an intense time since our EMC SAN was nearing full capacity, requiring us to quickly transition to the cloud. They helped us understand Panzura's functionality and commitment. It saved us from that saturation point of the on-site on-prem storage.
It does not require any maintenance per se. We are pretty set in the way where we do our file shares and things just work. Once it is up, it runs. If there is an issue with the filer going offline, we can have problems with the users who are on that file. Files get locked and become read-only, but that is just the way the system works. That is more of a support issue requiring getting into the call and opening the case. They are very responsive at that point. That is just the nature of how Panzura is developed or is running. If you lose a filer and people have files open, they become read-only, so you could save them locally and use them until that filer gets back online, snapshots catch up, and metadata spreads around. I would not call it maintenance; it is more support-initiated.
What about the implementation team?
Panzura had one person on site to get us going out of the gate and probably two or three support staff in the backend alongside a sales team.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
If we exceed 25 terabytes license, we do not have the option to go for 5, 10, 15, or 20 terabytes. If I want to add 10 more terabytes at a time, we do not have that option.
The pricing seems high on certain products and features, such as the audit feature of Panzura Data Services. They should consider more attractive pricing for companies of our size. The renewals are yearly, but the pricing is a little high for us.
What other advice do I have?
To someone who prefers using big-name software companies, I would say that Panzura's attention to detail and support have been very good. The support function from the backend has been very good. The engineers I have worked with while deploying new filers, moving them, or decommissioning them have been good. They do a lot of work from the backend including version upgrades. They stage on the backend for us to upgrade all of our filers at one time. Their support has been excellent. It means a lot to have that kind of support in our environment.
I would rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.