Panzura CloudFS

We purchased Panzura to alleviate the issue of high latency between different sites for an engineering firm. We completely replaced our file storage at each site with caching servers instead and it is being utilized by the entire company. We found cost savings in not having large amounts of redundant storage at each location and instead using Azure Blob Storage.

Panzura works well for companies that have a high amount of data with cross site collaboration being done. The caching ensures you don't need huge investments of storage at each site and the cloud storage ensures high availability over what can be done locally. Also helps eliminate duplicate data across sites and/or small variations in the same data.

Panzura is used as are primary file system with 44TB of data shared across 30 offices. The main problem Panzura solves for us is real time file locking. It's also a very efficient tool for backup and recovery.

I believe Panzura can fit into any company structure.

Panzura CSGs are being used in conjunction with Cleversafe to create a national DFS structure for access by thousands of users. This puts information at the fingertips of numerous staff members across the country as multiple similar cases are litigated. It also provides IT a easier method to implement both disaster recovery via Panzura replication and 30 day local backup/restore capabilities via snapshotting.

Decent WAN connectivity is required. If I was working oversees at a vSat connected office, Panzura would be of limited use. Other than that, for any hardline connected sites, with a 10mb connection or better (more is always better, as is true for most things in life) a pair of Panzura CSG devices can immediately provide some piece of mind.