External reviews are not included in the AWS star rating for the product.
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.
The feature I have found to be most valuable is the revision control of the files. If somebody deletes or accidentally makes a wrong change to files, we can go back to the revision history and restore the previous versions. That is a very good feature that we rely on. A minor file recovery, when we receive a help desk ticket from an employee claiming files are either missing or corrupted, usually takes less than 10 minutes.
We're able to provide file storage capacity anywhere it’s needed, on demand, and without limits. It provides the capacity we need now.
And Nasuni has built-in antivirus and anti-malware features, which we appreciate a lot. Although we have an endpoint security antivirus solution, you cannot be too careful. Another layer of security is really appreciated. We rely on that, and Nasuni constantly sends out alerts when it detects suspicious files on the system for us to clean up. That is a very good feature.
It's also quite easy for IT to manage. It's a very feature-rich platform. However, it is not too difficult to administer compared to other platforms that we have used in the past. Even when there is a new person in IT, when we train them on how to handle Nasuni and use its features. It's not too difficult.
We explored the Access Anywhere option because we need that type of feature for our international users, but the additional costs put us off. And to my knowledge, deploying Access Anywhere is not as easy and straightforward as we would like because you still have to deploy a physical or virtual filer to each site. Either way, you still need another layer, the filer, to enable Access Anywhere.
We have multiple offices and Nasuni replicates the changes pretty fast. When users from one office save their changes, their peers in another office can see the changes within minutes. Of course, this is an area for constant improvement and we hope that they can still reduce the amount of time it takes to replicate changes. The minimal wait time used to be much longer but they have improved it. They implemented something called Global File Acceleration that accelerated the replication and we appreciate that a lot.
Replication depends on a lot of factors, such as a site's internet speed, bandwidth, and congestion on the network. However, we hope the Nasuni team continues to strive for faster replication and makes it more efficient.
Another issue is that you can configure each filer to have web access. This is different from the Access Anywhere feature. You can create a web portal for a filer where a user can log in using their Active Directory credentials. We would like to enable multi-factor authentication for this type of web access to the filer. Relying only on Active Directory credentials is still not safe enough. We are using Duo multi-factor authentication and we would like to see Nasuni integrate with Duo so that we can further secure the access. To my knowledge, although I could be wrong, they don't have that yet.
In addition, Nasuni relies on a reseller, a middle-man. Our reseller is a company called SHI, and I am not happy with SHI's performance. I expressed this to our Nasuni account manager. I told him that every time we want to order a Nasuni filer, we have to go through SHI, but the performance has just not been competent and our point of contact has not been knowledgeable. Often, things have not been handled properly. SHI, on a scale of one to 10, with one being the lowest, would be about a 2 or 2.5. It fails miserably. The purchasing process, the shipping of new equipment, has actually wasted a lot of time and the inefficiency and delays all cost money. Nothing is wrong on the Nasuni side, rather it's all because of the reseller.
I have been using Nasuni for almost four years.
The reliability, compared to the past three platforms we have used, is very good. It is the most robust solution we have used, by far. It is very stable and definitely an enterprise-level solution.
We have about 450 users of Nasuni and our company is growing. If we open new office space, we will definitely consider adding an on-premises Nasuni filer, depending on how big the office is.
Nasuni's support is excellent and our account manager is great. If any ticket sits there for too long or I do not get the answer I am looking for, all I need to do is talk to our account manager. He will help escalate the ticket or he will locate an engineer to speak with me or our IT staff directly to get a clear answer. I would give their support team a very high score.
Positive
All our data on Nasuni is in the cloud, on AWS, but we do have an on-prem cache called filer.
Setting it up is not too difficult. It did not take that long. From zero to go-live with the Nasuni file system took around 60 days.
In terms of our cloud migration process, back in 2019, right after the ransomware attack, we salvaged as much good data as possible and put it on Nasuni. The cloud migration took a good five business days to fully migrate any good data that wasn't encrypted to the Nasuni AWS cloud.
We don't have a big IT team but maintaining Nasuni does not take a whole lot of resources.
It was just our It team working with the Nasuni engineers. And fast forward to now, every time we want to add an additional Nasuni cache filer, it's done in-house, and it takes between four and eight hours of work.
We definitely have a very good ROI.
The pricing is fair. It's an enterprise-level solution so it's not inexpensive. But when we grew to a certain level, we could no longer rely on what we call "mom and pop solutions", like Synology. For a small business that is just getting started and needs a file system, Synology is great. It's very affordable. But when you grow to a certain size, it can no longer handle the demand. Nasuni is one level up from that.
It also simplifies things, in terms of cash flow, if we want to expand our Nasuni solution. Nasuni does include fixed assets in the form of the on-prem cache filers. They are basically Dell servers. But the solution is straightforward for our budget and cash flow.
The cost is pretty stable year over year. We allocated part of our annual budget to make sure we cover our Nasuni overhead costs. It's easy to forecast what it's going to be.
Before we went with Nasuni, we tried three different products for file system replication: Synology, Global File System, and PeerGFS. They were not enterprise-level and did not work out. They each have their own problems that are too significant and led to a lot of business impact.
We have recently been exploring using SharePoint as our collaboration platform so that certain files would be stored on SharePoint. But I can still see Nasuni serving as our primary file system. While you can collaborate on the cloud, when a project is done you have to move the files to Nasuni for the security of the backups.
I would advise that if a company is similar in size to RRC, Nasuni is definitely worth considering. Whatever cloud solution you are heading toward, make sure it has the same type of security and backups that Nasuni provides. Anything less than that would be a step down from what we have today. I don't see a lot of economical cloud solutions out there that can rival the solid backup that Nasuni provides.
By default, Nasuni stores files either on Microsoft Azure or AWS. They allowed us to choose. We chose AWS because we are more familiar with it and because our company, RRC, also has a global workforce. We put it in the cloud so that our foreign workers could access the files. We have a big workforce in Asia and South America. We went with the cloud system to ensure that the access and performance were up to standard. We cannot afford any latency when our global workforce tries to use the file system.
We don't use the solution to provide file storage capacity for VDI environments. We tried VDI from different providers before, and it just did not work out. It mainly came down to two things. One was the cost per user, which was still a bit too high. At that time, it just didn't make sense for us. The second issue was that our engineers rely on AutoCAD, and when using VDI, the graphics in AutoCAD are not as smooth as when they are on a physical computer in front of them. The latency and lagging were a bit too much for our engineers.
In terms of reducing on-premises infrastructure, right now our workers are requesting to work from home more, so our offices have fewer workers coming in. The trend is that fewer and fewer of our users rely on the on-prem Nasuni cache filers. When they work from home, they have to dial in to our data center via VPN. In the next 12 to 24 months we may have a new set of worker dynamics and, at that time, the on-prem filer will have to be relocated to optimize access. But it's hard to predict what our workforce distribution will look like a year or two from now.
We are using it as a file share server. The solution is for CIFS and Windows file shares. We have boxes deployed in different environments, including on-prem and, in a few locations, it's in a virtual image.
We provide support to our customers and are currently managing more than 200 devices.
We use it at the global level and it supports a 360-degree view of the data.
It's also easy to deploy. Before, with hardware, it was not possible to deploy things as quickly, but because Nasuni is available in the cloud, as well as via a VDI image, you can deploy it quickly.
Another benefit is that our RPO and RTO are very much reduced. If a user has deleted something, we can provide the latest backup. For example, if they deleted something at 11 AM, we have the backup available from 10:55 AM.
It also helps eliminate on-premises infrastructure. All the data is stored in the cloud, either in block or S3, and that means you do not need large storage hardware in your data centers. You just need an internet connection to connect with the device. That will save costs on space, air conditioning, and power.
And it will reduce your capital cost, with only OpEx contributing to the costs.
The most valuable features are the
Nasuni has the capability of taking a snapshot every five minutes. If a user has accidentally deleted their data, we can recover it from the snapshot and provide the latest data to the user. It's a really great feature, one that is not provided by other vendors.
The solution is very important for us because of these features, as well as because there is a cloud version, virtual image, and the physical box.
It also replaces multiple data toolsets with a single global file system.
Also, for provisioning file storage, because Nasuni is a cache device and doesn't store any data—all the data is stored in the cloud—you can provision as much as is needed, spinning up instances as they are required. That means that even if a customer has heavy data requests, we can fulfill them in less than 24 hours. We just spin up the instance, connect it, and it's available for use.
And for some users who are accessing data on-premises, we are able to provide file storage capacity for VDI environments.
Nasuni also has an embedded feature, an antivirus, which will automatically scan for issues with any file. If a file is infected, it will not be saved on the disk.
Access Anywhere is also a great feature, allowing you to access data from your mobile and from your desktop.
And suppose a disaster happens. Nasuni's metadata is available within 20 minutes, meaning you can deploy the new instance and map the data, copying the data from the cloud.
The only issue we face with Nasuni is from the performance perspective. Sometimes, when we deploy a Nasuni device, it doesn't meet our requirements. It's a capacity-planning issue.
I have been working on Nasuni since 2018.
It's stable.
Nasuni's support is very good. They provide solutions on a priority basis.
Positive
It's easy to deploy, hardly taking an hour, on average, and requires minimal staff for both the deployment and management. A single person can easily manage it.
When we have migrated all of a customer's data to Nasuni, none have said that they had much ROI from their then-existing solution. Nasuni is a cheaper solution with good ROI compared to other solutions.
Nasuni should provide small-scale licenses, like a 20 TB license. Currently, the smallest is a 30 TB license. Smaller-capacity licenses would be good for some users and help increase Nasuni's sales.
NetApp doesn't have the same features for managing devices, whereas from the Nasuni Management Console, you can manage multiple devices at the same time. The centralized management is a great feature.
The only disadvantage of Nasuni is due to the fact that all the data is in the cloud. Other devices, like Panzura, have the data in the cloud as well as local copies.
If you're concerned about migration to the cloud, you can use Snowball to move the data to the cloud and then you can upload it to Nasuni. There are a lot of options available.
I can't think of any features that should be added to Nasuni. It's a good product.
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.
Nasuni's security is excellent. The data is chopped up and encrypted. Even if someone manages to intercept the encrypted data, they can't make sense of it because of the way it's chopped up.
Another thing I like about Nasuni is the way it handles private keys. It's like an escrow service, which I find trustworthy. They allow us to manage the private keys. I would think twice if Nasuni had a service where only they could control the private keys. If they had no escrow service, that would also not be ideal. The sole responsibility for the keys would rest with the customer, who may not always know how to manage those keys. If you lost the key, then too bad. All your data is gone and can't be retrieved. I think they've struck a nice balance by allowing the customer to make that choice.
Nasuni provides enough reporting to see what's happening. You can see the number of shares, total volume, issues, conflicts, etc., but it doesn't provide much visibility from a content perspective. For example, it doesn't tell you the data age. When you're trying to sort and filter information, the data creation date is a critical factor. Nasuni doesn't give you that. You can't get a count of all the file types, like the number of PDFs, Word docs, and PPT files.
It lacks some content reporting. Then again, it's doing what it is designed to do. Nasuni provides a management console that lets you do specific functions, and it does those well. However, they haven't tried to include functionality that would be useful to people who want to manage the information at a global level. We have to use another tool for that, but it isn't expensive.
We run scripts that take a month or more to complete because we have a lot of data. It's taking us a long time to get more detailed information on what is in there. It would be handy if Nasuni offered built-in features for reporting on data ages and file types.
Nasuni went into production in the fall of 2022. I became the product owner this month, but I have been training on it since February.
I rate Nasuni's support a nine out of ten. I don't have regular contact with support. My engineers deal with them. I haven't heard any complaints, which is a good thing. If they were getting anything other than prompt, accurate answers, I would hear about it.
The lady who provided the training was excellent. She used to provide advanced tech support but has since shifted to a customer success and training role. She's completely reliable. We know her and like her.
Positive
I wasn't involved in the deployment, but I believe Nasuni was relatively straightforward to deploy. At the same time, there is a lot to learn, and you need to do a lot of configuration. Based on my experience in training, I know there are probably a hundred configuration decisions to make because you have various options. I don't think it was complicated or too difficult to understand.
The deployment required four employees who were involved for several months. You need an architect and some integration people who know how it works with the licensing, provisioning, and automation of the design. After deployment, you only need one full-time person to maintain and administer the platform.
There are cheaper forms of storage, but Nasuni is fairly priced for the functionality it offers. I can get basic file shares provisioned in Azure and pay for the storage and the CPU. The overall cost would be much less than Nasuni, but I would need to build the management console and encryption process, so it would cost a lot to develop that kind of functionality.
Nasuni offers considerable value with its scale and attention to this particular type of storage problem. You pay a subscription per terabyte that is much more expensive than the cost of basic storage. But you need to consider the costs of the entire ecosystem and all the other things like security, encryption, reporting, and scaling. Nasuni provides a complete solution, and they've already worked out all the problems we would encounter if we tried to do it ourselves.
You sign a contract for a specified number of terabytes. If you want to increase that, you have to make a formal purchase for an agreed period. For example, we're at 200 terabytes. Once we approach full capacity, we need to make a purchase order for more terabytes and contract to pay for that for at least two years. It's a formal block approach rather than an elastic on-demand method.
I rate Nasuni a nine out of ten. I recommend taking the training. It was excellent. The presentation was clear, and our trainer was highly professional.