Why I Sleep Better with the Nasuni File Data Platform

When I started as Director of IT Infrastructure at Kleinfelder, a global architecture, engineering, and construction firm, our file storage infrastructure was built around traditional servers in 100+ offices. All the data was siloed on those local servers. We had backup and recovery solutions going to the cloud through a third-party service, but if one of those servers failed, all that data would all of a sudden be inaccessible.

As IT managers, we’re ultimately responsible. If our employees can’t access the files they need, that’s on us. So, I was constantly worried about whether the backup and recovery solutions were good. Yes, the backups should be fine, but we all know this isn’t a guarantee. And what if we had to completely rebuild the server? Well, that was possible, but it would take a few days to bring all the data down from the cloud. That meant the office would be down for multiple days. Again, that would fall on me and my team. And if multiple offices went down because of a distributed ransomware attack, our employees would be offline even longer.

As the manager ultimately responsible for that data, these scenarios had me really, really worried. They kept me up at night. So, we upgraded, and in this post I’ll explain why I sleep better with the Nasuni File Data Platform.

First, we modernized our infrastructure with Azure Files and Azure File Sync, then later upgraded to the Nasuni File Data Platform for its added capabilities, scale, and high-speed collaboration technology. This move to the cloud really changed the game for me and, of course, for Kleinfelder. Now I don’t have to worry about data not being backed up or the backups not being good. The data is always in the cloud. The filers on-site are just caching appliances. The local copies of those files are just that – copies. The gold or master versions of our file data is safe.

Nasuni details the other reasons we adopted the platform in their case study. We consolidated and simplified our complex, sprawling file storage and data protection infrastructure that had slowly built up over 30+ years. Our IT team can now control everything through a single pane of glass. Kleinfelder’s people can collaborate across offices thanks to Nasuni’s rapid file synchronization and file locking. This has helped our practice evolve by supporting a more collaborative workflow that makes better use of our network of 3,000+ employees. This has been great for Kleinfelder as an organization.

But getting back to my original concerns with backup and recovery solutions, once we moved to Azure and then Nasuni, I was able to sleep better at night because the data was making it to the cloud. I didn’t have to worry about backups.

This “sleep better” theme is a consistent one for Nasuni. You’ll see it pop up in other customer stories and hear it in user group meetings. But it’s not just marketing. It’s true. Everyone in IT today is worried about ransomware, for obvious reasons, and one of the really cool things about the Nasuni platform is that it’s intelligent enough to know when a ransomware event is happening and alert you. Then you can basically black-hole the source IP. Recovery is fast because you’re not restoring or rebuilding entire servers as you would with backup. You’re simply pointing back to previous versions of your data before it was modified. That gives us a real sense of confidence, knowing we can just go back to any point in time. We don’t have to worry about being down for days or more as we wait for a restore and rebuild servers. That is very, very comforting.

Again, Nasuni has more details about our story, and why we rely on their platform, in their case study. But if you’re on the fence about moving to a cloud-based solution that turns your servers into caching appliances, I can tell you that it does work and that you should move forward. As a steward of your organization’s data, and the person who is responsible for that data, you’re going to have the peace of mind knowing that you don’t have to worry about tapes or local backup and recovery solutions. Ultimately, we switched to the Nasuni File Data Platform to have more capabilities, but the value of the data protection built into the platform is hard to undersell. I know I sleep better at night, and that’s a huge ROI.