Panzura CloudFS & Symphony

My use case for Panzura CloudFS  involves having multiple offices in the United States, and we use it to share all our file structure between the offices.

Panzura CloudFS has helped to increase the network resilience by 100%. It helped us with our growth, and we have had double-digit growth for years now, and they were able to help us achieve that.

What I appreciate the most about Panzura CloudFS  is that it just works; it provides enterprise-level application across all our offices and simplifies administration. Since the product works so well, we don't have to have a lot of issues or downtime. It helps us to be more efficient and more productive. 

We've been able to increase network resilience. We've had double-digit growth for years now, and Panzura helped us achieve that.

In terms of improvements for Panzura CloudFS, I would like to see the Edge feature. I would love for that feature to be usable for our company and our employees.

I have been using Panzura CloudFS since 2016, so nine years.

The stability of Panzura CloudFS is good.

The scalability of Panzura CloudFS is very good.

I have contacted the support. The quality of support from Panzura CloudFS is good; the speed is good, and they have knowledgeable staff.

Positive

The initial deployment was long with the amount of data we have. It was not difficult, it was just lengthy due to the amount of data that had to be sent to the cloud. 

For the deployment of Panzura CloudFS, the number of people required really depends on the size of the company. We had two people working on our deployment.

Panzura CloudFS takes care of all the maintenance. We just schedule the outage with them.

We saw the benefits of Panzura CloudFS immediately. Our remote offices were able to share files immediately after the product went live.

The pricing of Panzura CloudFS is relevant, and their pricing is comparable to other competitors. What you get is fair pricing.

I have tested out alternatives to Panzura CloudFS in my career, however, Panzura CloudFS is the number one product we used.

I would say to a colleague who prefers using big-name software companies that Panzura CloudFS is a solid solution. It's a solution that works, it's priced appropriately, and their support is good. 

On a scale from one to ten, I rate Panzura CloudFS a ten.

My use case for the Panzura CloudFS  solution is especially for cloud storage.

We can add S3  storage as well as any cloud storage without any limitation. We get file collaboration since we have different locations with people in the same team who need to upload their logs or program files into a single shared folder. This is a very good product. The file locking mechanism and collaboration features are so good. Especially for snapshots and backups, they do not consume a lot of memory, and with this file collaboration, we can access any location in any folder using different filer names or access points. For example, I have devices in India, APAC, Australia, Russia, and the USA. When I move to Russia, I can change access from India to the Russian access point. If I go to the EMEA location, I can change it. If I'm going to Spain, I can change to the Spain access point while still accessing my shared folder sitting in India. They also avoid network hops. For instance, if I'm in India but need to access data in China or Spain, it simplifies the process and enhances collaboration.

It provides a single storage solution. It is easy to manage storage. We can connect to a Panzura filer in a collaborative way using the ring method. The consolidation capabilities are excellent, especially in terms of connectivity topology.

For collaboration, Panzura CloudFS is the best, though it is a little costly. If you prefer lower prices, there are alternatives such as NetApp  or EMC, but for collaboration, Panzura CloudFS excels. Furthermore, the quick restore feature is also commendable in case files are corrupted or deleted. Vendor support can assist in restoring files efficiently even when large amounts of data, such as 100 GB, are involved.

The impact of Panzura CloudFS on our security posture is good. The vulnerability and security teams prepare reports, and we collaborate on fixes for reported vulnerabilities, with Panzura providing patch releases. 

The best features of the Panzura CloudFS  solution include collaboration, which is my top priority and top feature. No one else provides this as effectively. Even though NetApp  is a big player in file storage, they do not offer this level of collaboration. Additionally, you can change any access point. Everything is simplified, meaning any user with basic storage knowledge can work on Panzura CloudFS due to its user-friendly menu.

We have seen improvements such as data compression, which is really good. It effectively manages hot data. Files accessed frequently are stored and synchronized across different locations. For instance, if an application server is hosted in the USA, users in Canada can access files swiftly without latency because hot data is synchronized to their local systems.

It also offers good auditing capabilities. In case of file deletions or permission changes, they can monitor everything, such as who did what, from which IP address, which system they connected to, and at what time. They can grab all the data. 

It is a little costly. 

The NFS service needs development. While Windows and SMB are effective, the NFS service shows some lag, making it a pain point for our many clients who use Linux devices.

I have been using the Panzura CloudFS solution for the last five years, and I have been supporting it for the last three years; I am a manager of those products. Their service is so good. We have not had any bad experiences with them.

I would rate the stability of Panzura CloudFS an eight out of ten.

For scalability, I would rate it a nine out of ten. 

I cannot provide the exact number of users accessing the solution. However, I have noted that Panzura's metadata cache works efficiently from the backend EC server. Thus, unlimited users can access the system without issues. Even 1,000 users can connect simultaneously unless there is a problem with the internal network.

Their technical support is excellent.

Positive

The deployment of Panzura CloudFS is not complex. It uses an OVA file format, and although it requires careful configuration following vendor instructions, anyone with basic storage knowledge can manage administrative tasks easily after a few days of familiarization.

Implementation of Panzura CloudFS is quick; it sets up very easily and does not take long.

The implementation does not take more than half an hour with the setup of computer resources and installation of the OS; adding new devices to a ring does take more time, as metadata synchronization occurs based on the network speed.

Panzura CloudFS can be deployed in both cloud and on-premises environments without limitations. Two to three years ago, there was a discussion about compatibility with seven different S3  storage providers. I know AWS  and Google are compatible, though I'm unsure about how Azure  works.

It can be deployed hybrid, which I heard is possible, and we are certain that cloud deployment works fine; so far, we have not faced any latency issues, and on-premises deployment also operates smoothly.

Panzura CloudFS saves us a significant amount of time frequently. We utilize huge storage capacity here.

I cannot detail how much Panzura CloudFS has reduced our data storage costs since it varies per customer and environment. Overall, it is quite costly compared to NetApp and similar solutions.

I cannot compare Panzura CloudFS directly with other vendors accurately; while NetApp has more features for NFS service, especially in security, Panzura excels in collaboration and its cloud file service; however, its NFS service lags in various aspects, with room for improvement.

I would recommend Panzura CloudFS to other users for its collaboration features and access points, but I advise caution regarding NFS service issues that require improvement, especially for Unix-based critical applications. However, for teams using Windows machines, my experience has been greatly positive.

Overall, I would rate Panzura CloudFS an eight out of ten.

My use cases for Panzura CloudFS  include syncing it as file storage for primarily lab data. We are a biotech life science company, and we are using it as a target to write data that comes off lab machines, accessible from user workstations if needed, and syncing it to the cloud due to our sizable cloud presence.

I appreciate that Panzura CloudFS provides granular snapshots. We are using versioning and snapshotting. There have been times when somebody deleted something and we had to go back and grab it. It has worked well.

Panzura CloudFS has helped increase my organization's network resilience because we have copies of data cached locally and everything in an object store in Azure , which we've replicated to a DR cloud site that we test every year. It has been performing as needed during our failover testing.

We realized the benefits of Panzura CloudFS after a couple of months. It was really helpful because of the ease. Once we got everything set up and all our data migrated over, it was pretty seamless without any outages for the whole two years.

It has been easy to manage after everything was set up; it just goes, and with the auditing plug-in, we've had to pull some auditing reports, but that's been pretty easy as well. Managing my data using Panzura CloudFS is easy.

We got the Detect and Rescue feature on our last renewal, and while we've gotten some alerts, we haven't delved into a lot of the functionality yet.

What I appreciate most about Panzura CloudFS  is that it really solves the problem we had when we moved all our server workloads to Azure , reducing our on-prem data center footprint sizably. We don't have to maintain a huge on-prem storage array, which is nice. It just works, and we haven't had any issues this whole time. A couple of times, maybe random questions have popped up, but their support has been very good to work with. They engage quickly, so that has been good.

One area for improvement regarding Panzura CloudFS is moving away from on-prem or local Active Directory. We're exploring a transition to Azure AD  or Entra ID, aiming to keep the product functional without heavy reliance on the local Active Directory.

I have been using Panzura CloudFS for almost two years now.

In the two years we've had Panzura CloudFS, we haven't experienced any outages, showing that it's been stable.

I believe Panzura CloudFS is scalable; we have made a couple of changes to enhance scalability that have worked. We considered expanding to multiple filers in other buildings, and we found it easy to achieve scalability.

I would give the support for Panzura CloudFS a ten out of ten because they are responsive and helpful. We wish many other companies we deal with were as good.

Positive

I haven't used any alternatives to Panzura CloudFS. We looked at a few other products before our decision, but those were mostly demos and not used live in production.

The initial deployment of Panzura CloudFS was easy. We worked with professional services who helped map it out and deploy and configure a handful of our filers while a migration team handled moving all the data, making it a straightforward process.

The full deployment of Panzura CloudFS took about 3 to 4 weeks from when we started setting up the filers to when all the data was migrated over. Slow transfer speeds affected the migration time.

After the deployment, Panzura CloudFS does not require any extensive maintenance. We've done a couple of upgrades as routine maintenance and a little reconfiguration after about a year for better resiliency, which was more of a business need than a product change.

For the deployment of Panzura CloudFS, we needed two or three people on our end.

It's competitive. I don't know what competitors are charging, but they have been very transparent, which is nice, and we've negotiated to avoid percentage increases.

To a colleague who prefers big-name software companies, I would say that Panzura CloudFS just works. I feel there's only one name that jumps out in their space. Many people don't fully understand the space they operate in, so it would be beneficial to just take a look and give it a try.

My overall rating for Panzura CloudFS is a nine out of ten.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We got Panzura early on while they were still kind of young, around 2015.

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.

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.

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.

Positive

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

My organization's storage for our production staff is on-site, and we are spread across 30 offices. This setup makes it much easier for us to workshare between staff and disparate geographic locations.

It took some time to see benefits while we moved all of our data into CloudFS, however, as soon as we had all of our data within the CloudFS container, we start immediately seeing the benefits. 

The core function of Panzura CloudFS , with its synchronizing of files across multiple servers, provides us with a much more efficient workflow for our production staff. 

We do have Detect and Rescue enabled. We haven't had to use the Rescue feature.

Panzura provides very good granular snapshots. We can establish the snapshots that meet our needs, including how often they occur. 

It's easy to manage data using Panzura. It's just like managing any other Windows file system.

We use Panzura Edge in a limited capacity. The use cases we identified have been successful, and we will renew.

Panzura has not increased its data storage costs. The cost of the storage is the same, yet we have more capabilities.

It helps us increase network resilience. We have a primary object library stored in the cloud and have Panzura Mirroring which allows us to place data in a secondary cloud for added resiliency. 

There are a few file types that do not work well with Panzura CloudFS. Specifically, the GIS  data formats, such as a geo database, have been found better kept outside of Panzura CloudFS. However, everything else works very well.

I have used the solution for almost three years.

The stability has been good. We have never had their system crash on us. The only issues we have had have been associated with a power outage that took a server down.

It scales very well. From our original entry with Panzura CloudFS, we have added an additional seven sites, and deploying those additional nodes was very seamless and did not take any effort.

Most of the time, their response time is good. We have had a few tickets that have lingered, and we worked with our technical point of contact to make sure that they were addressed in a more timely fashion.

Positive

We have not used a competitor solution. We evaluated several, however, Panzura CloudFS is the only hybrid cloud solution that we have put into production.

The deployment was easy. They provided us with the specifications we needed. We had to purchase new hardware. That wasn't expensive. Standing it up and managing the environment was very simple. 

The migration we did was part of the deployment. The deployment basically gave us a green field to work with, and then we chose our timeline for putting our data in. Panzura CloudFS did offer to migrate the data for us, however, we used this opportunity to change our file system structure. Part of the data migration process was how we chose to reorganize how we were storing our data.

Migration took about three months. Once that was done, we started seeing benefits.

There is some maintenance in terms of patching or some instances where files can be locked. We have to manage the environment so that locks are cleared. 

To get the environment stood up, we had three or four IT people managing the configuration and initial deployment of the system.

The pricing is fine. It's in line with the industry. It did require us to purchase new hardware, however, that was not overly expensive.

We reached out to several other consulting firms that are similar to half and asked them what their experiences were and how effective it was. Panzura CloudFS had the best track record from the people that we reached out to.

We are Panzura customers only. 

I would advise others to take a serious look at Panzura CloudFS to see if it meets their business needs. It has been a solid product for us, and it was a good fit for the way in which we operate. 

I would give it an eight out of ten.