4 Reasons Hybrid Apparel Relies on Nasuni’s Global File System

For the last four years I’ve been managing storage, infrastructure, networking, and pretty much anything aside from the help desk for Hybrid Apparel, a creative design and manufacturing firm. Hybrid makes licensed apparel for some of the world’s most recognizable brands and retailers. The company’s main operations are in California, but Hybrid works closely with factories around the world, so we knew we needed a true global file system.

Nasuni recently published a case study detailing how Hybrid Apparel is benefitting from their platform, but I’d like to distill that story to four reasons I prefer Nasuni.

#1. I don’t lose sleep over file storage and data protection anymore.

Before we deployed Nasuni, file storage and data protection were a persistent headache. Users were manually moving files and folders when they ran out of capacity and our recovery solutions were unreliable. The last thing I did on a Sunday night was check on the old storage systems. First thing Monday morning? I checked on it again. Little worry throughout the weekend as well. It was bad.

With Nasuni, Hybrid has a platform I don’t have to worry about. It doesn’t require my attention, so I can focus my time on higher-value projects for the company. I touch the system so little that I must remind myself how to interact with the Nasuni Management Console if someone has an issue, need to make a change, etc. It’s giving me back the ability to sleep at night.

#2. We’re getting a complete suite of file services in one platform.

When we first started looking for a new solution, we evaluated various vendors, but once we started talking to Nasuni, and exploring all the file services that come with the platform, the conversation changed. I’d been thinking about a solution that would keep your cold data in the cloud and your hot data local, but present them both on the same share, and I realized Nasuni was what I have been envisioning in my head and so much more. Storage, backup, ransomware, and more were all covered. All that, and we have had no issues with performance — our users and creative teams have not complained once.

#3. We’re saving money at scale.

Nasuni was an easy sell internally, but it wasn’t just because of the services. The Nasuni solution is cloud-agnostic, so we had our choice of hyperscaler, but once we explored pairing the Nasuni File Data Platform with Google Cloud, the question was settled. Factoring in our projected storage costs and egress fees, there is no way I could do anything close to what we’re paying now with Google Cloud and Nasuni given everything we’re getting in return. We’re seeing significant cloud cost savings.

#4. It’s stupid easy.

The case study outlines more of the benefits of our deployment, but there is one other anecdote I’d like to add that didn’t make it into the story. Recently something went wrong with the server that was hosting our backup filer — what Nasuni calls an edge appliance — and it was lost. Obviously, no one wants that to happen, and Nasuni had assured me that standing up a new one would be easy, but you can never really be certain until you try.

Once we got the host server back online again, the process seemed straightforward, but I opened a support case for a sanity check just in case to make sure I had everything set up correctly. From the time I downloaded the image from account.nasuni.com to the point at which everything was back and I could serve clients was only around an hour — and that includes opening the support case. Without that step it would’ve been even faster. I’m seriously flabbergasted by how stupid easy this was to get going. Seriously. That is impressive engineering, and I’m looking forward to exploring what else we can do with Nasuni in the years to come.