Jan 28, 2021
The premise of Nasuni is disconcerting in its simplicity: why not use the seemingly infinite capacity of the cloud to power a global enterprise file system, without the hassle of managing backend c…
seen from Russia
seen from United States
seen from India
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from Egypt
seen from Australia
seen from Russia
seen from Taiwan
seen from China
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Malaysia
seen from Singapore
seen from Sweden
seen from United States
The premise of Nasuni is disconcerting in its simplicity: why not use the seemingly infinite capacity of the cloud to power a global enterprise file system, without the hassle of managing backend c…
Global NAS history & NASUNI
Nasuni Available in Azure Marketplace
To drive application development and shape business strategies
This is a Press Release edited by StorageNewsletter.com on July 8, 2020 at 2:25 pm
Jump right to our comments
Nasuni Corp., announced its file services platform is available for purchase in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, an online store providing applications and services for use on Azure.
Its customers can now take advantage of the productive Azure cloud platform, with streamlined deployment and management.
Nasuni file services allow customers to accelerate their migrations to Azure with a file services platform built for the cloud. Powered by a global file system, Nasuni modernizes primary and secondary file storage by consolidating NAS and file server silos to cloud storage, delivering infinite scale. It also provides built-in backup, global file sharing, disaster recovery and local file server performance. By combining all this functionality with the economics of the Azure cloud, the firm is able to provide file services at half the cost of traditional file infrastructures.
“Nasuni helped us transition to working remotely during COVID-19 because it provides easy access to data consolidated from all 22 of our offices and ultimately stored in Microsoft Azure,” said Charles Douglass, director of information technology, McKim & Creed, Inc. “We’re accessing our data through a variety of methods, including directly from workstations, remote-control tools and remote desktops, depending on the specific application. No matter which tool we use for the job, Nasuni gives us a common backplane for easy data storage and retrieval.”
“We’ve been a very close Microsoft gold partner, and we’re pleased to further advance this great collaboration by making our solution available in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace,” said Will Hornkohl, VP of alliances, Nasuni. “It’s now even easier for enterprises who rely on Azure to use the cloud for file storage and get infinite scale, built-in-backup and local performance for half the cost of ownership of traditional on-premises NAS.”
“Through Microsoft Azure Marketplace, customers around the world can easily find, buy, and deploy partner solutions they can trust, all certified and optimized to run on Azure,” said Sajan Parihar, senior director, Microsoft Azure Platform, Microsoft Corp. “We’re happy to welcome the Nasuni file services solution to the growing Azure Marketplace ecosystem.”
The Azure Marketplace is an online market for buying and selling cloud solutions certified to run on Azure. It helps connect companies seeking innovative, cloud-based solutions with partners who have developed solutions that are ready to use.
Nasuni’s file services platform is available in Azure Marketplace.
Our Comments
With this Nasuni announcement, it's the time to cover the holy grail of file storage i.e global file service that so many players have tried to solve for years.
For decades there was a lot of tentatives to address the need. Different evolution and contributions to reach the current market landscape are identified:
Geo distributed file services with Transarc, DCE DFS, Andrew File System or Coda to name a few, and even WebFS.
Network file management/network file virtualization with Avere, Acopia, Attune, Autovirt, Neopath, Rainfinity, Nuview. Many of them got acquired or disappeared.
CDN has also played a key role and some storage pioneers tried to leverage that model, it was the case of Storigen, Scale Eight or Acirro, all acquired.
Cloud gateway with some players from the previous category adding S3 back-end path with Panzura, Nasuni, CTera Networks and a few others.
WAFS, WAAS, WAN acceleration and optimization and now SD-WAN can offer some interesting models for some applications. You find here essentially network centric companies.
Global file service and established gateway players again with Nasuni, CTera Networks, Panzura, Morro Data and NetApp.
A major change transversal to these few technologies and solutions is the cloud that appeared and gained importance since AWS introduced S3 in 2006.
A lot of players are not developing successfully a file system on top of S3 or other object storage service. The reverse is true, adding a S3 layer on top of a NAS is super common, helped by open source product like MinIO for instance.
Main challenges are the data consistency, their integrity, their propagation with the changes, the automation of the file service itself, the file presentation and globally the mandatory to deliver a single file system image. It also requires that the service is able to scale i.e with large capacity, billions of files and hundreds of sites.
Nasuni represents one of the two leaders - the other one being CTera Networks - in the global file service category. Other players are more confidential such as Panzura, with lots of promises but mysteriously acquired by Profile Capital, Morro Data, NetApp via the recent Talon Storage acquisition for SMB (the protocol not the market segment) and FlexCache for NFS or even Peer Software. We can even list here SoftNAS now Buurst, even more hidden under its new name, JuiceFS, ObjectiveFS or LucidLink. Datomia seems to hit a wall and their website disappeared. BridgeSTOR, founded by John Matze, developed also a product named Coronado but the company seems to be inactive.
Nasuni was recently elected as a storage unicorn illustrating a growth being one of the few top file storage vendors with Qumulo and VAST Data. Pure Storage could be listed here as well.
Nasuni has made some interesting design choice. They adopted a star topology meaning that the master is the cloud, the central repository being always the reference. Immediately it means there is no data divergence created by any to any type of dialogue across remote sites. As soon as data reach the central place, it is propagated.
Second, the firm relies on a log structured file system, named UniFS, on top of object storage where various file versions are kept. This is by design. UniFS means Unified File System and it works in a append only mode and every change in a file is a version. Also the number of versions is infinite. Each file is immutable stored on a durable storage back-end. Object storage could be Azure, AWS, GCP or on-prem. And Nasuni service is listed on Azure and AWS marketplace.
Edge sites are views of the central site by caching data locally. It represents the other element of the puzzle talking to the central engine via a specific Nasuni protocol. This is an other value of the product. The architecture provides a global file locks at the file level, not sub-file.
The approach has the beauty to collapse primary and secondary storage into one entity exposing storage to applications and receiving data copied in this unique storage lake.
Such solutions are judged by the cache hit ratio as it translates immediately in QoS. So LRU algorithms and derivatives are paramount here. The product doesn't protect data by itself as it relies on object storage that offers high durability level but versioning provides a sort of time addressable storage model.
The solution is priced by capacity under a subscription model. As of today, we count more than 100PB under Nasuni control and it continues to grow at a rapid pace.
Such solution targets several use cases:
Consolidate NAS and file servers,
Multi site file sharing and collaboration,
Edge and ROBO,
Cloud NAS,
Data protection with integrated backup and DR.
Product is composed by UniFS, Edge Appliances, physical or virtual, a management console, the Orchestration Center, core element for data propagation and global file locking and the Analytics Connector.
Nasuni confirms that the global file service in their cloud-native flavor represents a new battlefield for file storage vendors and we anticipate some moves in the next few quarters as it is a real hot segment. Remember it's the holy grail for file storage.
Read also: Nasuni Available in AWS Marketplace Organizations can leverage cloud-based file services with consolidated billing, license management, and flexible consumption with AWS. February 10, 2020 | Press Release
Fed Up with Legacy NAS? Look to the Cloud for Help
New @klmacomber Blog: Fed Up with Legacy NAS? Look to the Cloud for Help
Cloud object storage services stand to alleviate many of the challenges associated with on-premises file storage. The storage manager no longer needs to worry about capacity planning, storage systems do not need to be purchased and deployed every three to five years, data no longer needs to be migrated across those systems, and valuable data center floorspace does not need to be procured.…
View On WordPress
SlideShare: Overcoming the Shortcomings of Legacy NAS with Microsoft Azure
Latest SlideShare: Overcoming the Shortcomings of Legacy NAS with Microsoft Azure
Most organizations use Network Attached Storage (NAS) to store data, but the modern workforce and organization expect more capabilities than what the typical NAS can provide. Also, as organizations themselves become more distributed, the idea of a single centralized file server with users tunneling through virtual private networks won’t scale. The common alternative, putting a NAS in each remote…
View On WordPress
The Requirements of Next Generation File Servers
New @georgeacrump Blog: The Requirements of Next Generation File Servers
File servers used to be a way for users to share information within the organization, typically within the same building. Organizations of all sizes use Windows File Servers to meet this requirement. Times have changed and the need to collaborate continues to increase encompassing more users and locations. Traditional file servers can no longer keep pace with these demands.
Users, and in fact…
View On WordPress
What to Look For in a Modern Global File Collaboration Solution
Latest @klmacomber Blog: What to Look For in a Modern Global File Collaboration Solution
Exponential growth of unstructured data and the advent of the distributed enterprise push the boundaries of traditional network attached storage (NAS) arrays. The need for more scalable and less expensive storage capacity that is centralized and globally accessible is driving many enterprises to both on-premises and public cloud-delivered object storage solutions.
Click To Register
However, there…
View On WordPress
Creating Enterprise Ready Global File Collaboration - Nasuni Briefing Note
New Note by @georgeacrump: Creating Enterprise Ready Global File Collaboration - Nasuni
There are several global file collaboration vendors on the market today. These solutions are designed to replace legacy network attached storage (NAS) systems. As the global file collaboration moniker implies, these systems allow the widespread distribution of files. The solutions typically leverage cloud storage as a central storage point and as a means to distribute data to edge devices located…
View On WordPress
StorageShort: How to Overcome the Fear of File Deletion
New StorageShort: How to Overcome the Fear of File Deletion
The statistic that 85% of data in most data centers has not been accessed in the last year is often cited, and for the most part it is very accurate. Organizations create more data than ever and retain that information for a long time. Clearly some of this data can be deleted, but some of it legitimately needs to be retained to meet legal requirements, reference requirements or to monetize it.…
View On WordPress