Panzura vs Nasuni vs Resilio: In-Depth Comparison

There are many ways to store and replicate file-based data. One popular option is using a Global File System (GFS) instead of NAS or a file server attached to a SAN.  Some of the players in the GFS space include Panzura, Nasuni, CTERA, among others.  Each of these solutions is based on a hub-and-spoke architecture. 

Resilio offers a different approach. Through its peer-to-peer (P2P) architecture, Resilio provides fast and resilient unified access to all of your files and folders, across any location—using your choice of storage (file, block, or object).  Resilio is also cross-platform, WAN optimized, and omni-directional, giving you the flexibility to cache and synchronize files in any direction, on-demand or in real-time. All operations can be fully automated through an API, via scripting, and through the management console.

In this article, we’ll review and compare Panzura, Nasuni, and Resilio, so you can determine which provides the capabilities you need, with regard to:

• File access

• File synchronization

• Security and data protection

• Management and automation

• VDI profile sync and disaster recovery

Want to learn more about Resilio? Please schedule a demo to see Resilio live in action!

While similar, the 3 solutions have big differences. Depending on your use case, you’ll want to consider key features such as architecture, WAN acceleration, caching efficiency, and reliability.  

It’s also important to consider each vendor’s capabilities in terms of file synchronization, low-latency access across remote sites, automation, and security. Each is crucial for streamlining hybrid cloud workflows, especially in remote and hybrid work scenarios.

While Nasuni and Panzura can be categorized as global file systems, Resilio offers a highly reliable and efficient alternative for global file caching, replication, and synchronization. When combined with your storage platform of choice, Resilio is a superior alternative to Panzura and Nasuni. 

Unlike Panzura and Nasuni, Resilio offers capabilities such as:

• Synchronizing files in real-time or on-demand in any direction.

• Scaling organically to support thousands of endpoints spanning any number of locations and file-based payloads of any size and type.

• Transferring and synchronizing files in any direction, instead of only hub-and-spoke. While Resilio can be used in a hub-and-spoke, you can also transfer and synchronize files bidirectionally (two-way) and N-way, in a full mesh. 

• Leveraging any IT infrastructure (on-prem or in the cloud) and storage type (file, block, object, DAS, NAS, SAN, and more).

• Optimizing transfers over any network, regardless of distance or quality using a proprietary WAN acceleration protocol.

• Providing bulletproof reliability and Active-Active High Availability.

• Extending on-prem resources to the cloud by using an object storage gateway. This enables low-latency access to files while optimizing productivity and minimizing data egress costs.

Organizations in game development, engineering, manufacturing, media & entertainment, and more use Resilio Connect for fast and efficient global file caching and delivery. To learn more about how Resilio, please schedule a demo with our team.

Panzura vs. Nasuni vs. Resilio: Multi-Site File Synchronization Capabilities

If your organization requires near real-time collaboration among employees across multiple sites and/or speedy applications, then your multi-site file synchronization and access solution needs to replicate and synchronize file-based data quickly and reliably across networks of varying quality and latency.

Slow, hub-and-spoke replication can result in:

• Unnecessary wait times and delays.

• Longer user login times for VDI deployments. 

• File conflicts when updates or file changes don’t reliably sync across your environment.

• Workflow interruptions as employees wait to receive files and updates.

• Unacceptable recovery point objectives (RPOs) and longer recovery times (RTOs) for disaster recovery.

The ability of any multi-site hybrid cloud synchronization and access solution must provide fast and reliable replication; business requires fast and predictable replication irrespective of low-quality networks.

Nasuni File Data Platform Replication

Nasuni is a global file system that was originally designed for small-to-medium-sized businesses to sync data between a small number of endpoints and cloud object storage (though it has since expanded to enable synchronization between multiple sites and cloud object storage). It promises fast sync for remote collaboration, VDIs, backup and disaster recovery, and more. 

Like most global file systems, one of its shortcomings is its replication architecture. Nasuni replicates file data via a hub-and-spoke architecture. This replication topology consists of a hub server and several remote servers. The remote servers can’t share data directly with each other. All transfers must first go to the hub server, which then replicates the data to each remote server one by one.

Hub-and-spoke replication is:

• Potentially slow: Since replication only occurs between two servers at a time, syncing multiple devices must flow through hub and then out to each spoke.

• Potentially unreliable: The hub is potentially a single point of failure. While there are ways of obtaining high availability for the hub (UniFS), if access to it fails, or it becomes unavailable, this delays synchronization for every other endpoint (spoke) in your system.

Nasuni’s best practices recommend setting your sync intervals to every 5 minutes. But in Nasuni’s hub-and-spoke model, each endpoint only updates after every endpoint in your environment syncs to the cloud. So if you have ten endpoints configured to sync every 5 minutes, it will take 50 minutes to update every endpoint. And as your environment scales, syncing updates takes even longer.

Another drawback of Nasuni is that it requires the cloud.  If for any reason the cloud becomes unavailable to a remote site, or you choose to move away from the cloud, your data will either not be accessible or require a long and complex migration process.  Nasuni’s proprietary file system, UniFS, contains information such as metadata about all of its contents.  This will be lost moving to another file system, without a complex migration process. 

Assessing your performance requirements is critical to success.  To improve replication speed over long-distance WANs, Nasuni uses data compression, multi-threaded replication to object storage, and deduplication. While these tactics help, they don’t sufficiently address many of the challenges inherent in transfers over WANs and other unreliable connections — such as varying degrees of packet loss and network congestion. And Nasuni’s deduplication is performed at the chunk or object level — usually at a default of 4MB chunks — resulting in less efficient cloud data storage, WAN bandwidth utilization, and local caching.

All of this is to say that Nasuni will suffice for:

• Small-to-medium-sized deployments between just a few endpoints.

• Use cases where replication speed is less of a priority.

But for larger use cases where data locality (i.e., keeping files accessible near remote users) and real-time synchronization are critical, then Nasuni is not a good option.

Panzura CloudFS Replication

In terms of replication speed and WAN transfer, Panzura CloudFS is a bit better than Nasuni. It was originally designed for fast-paced, enterprise workflows.

Panzura replicates data using a combination of hub-and-spoke plus peer-to-peer transfer. This enables faster syncs to occur via:

• Periodic “Burst Syncs”: Each endpoint syncs with the cloud object store every 60 seconds.

• Direct peer-to-peer connections: If any endpoint wishes to work on a file that’s been updated by another endpoint but has not yet synced to the cloud, it will update the file via a direct peer-to-peer connection with the endpoint that owns the file.

• Sync priorities: Panzura uses quality of service traffic shaping to optimize network traffic. You can configure it to prioritize higher-priority traffic (i.e., mission-critical files) while lower-priority traffic waits to sync.

Panzura optimizes WAN transfers similarly to Nasuni, via data compression, multi-threaded transfers, and deduplication. But Panzura’s deduplication is performed at the block level to achieve maximum efficiency by transferring only the smallest chunks of data.

Panzura is a better option for large deployments where near-real-time collaboration is important.  But like Nasuni, Panzura is also locked into a hub-and-spoke architecture and doesn’t provide the flexibility to transfer or synchronize files directly from edge-to-edge or user-to-user, without first going through the hub in the cloud. 

Resilio: Real-Time Replication at Scale in Any Direction

Resilio offers a software-only solution for enterprise use cases where data locality and real-time data replication across a large number of endpoints is a priority. It provides the fastest, most reliable sync for large deployments (i.e. large files, large numbers of files, and/or large numbers of endpoints), such as: 

• Multi-Site NAS Replication and Sync
• VDI profile sync
• Disaster recovery
• Remote and distributed collaboration
• Hybrid and multi-cloud synchronization
• Synchronization at the edge (and far edge)

Resilio accomplishes this through:

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Synchronization

While Resilio can be configured in a hub-and-spoke architecture, it replicates data using a distributed peer-to-peer replication architecture that provides high-performance synchronization, multidirectional synchronization, and organic scalability.

Resilio Transfers and Synchronizes File Data 3–10x Faster Than Traditional GFS Solutions

In Resilio’s P2P replication architecture, every endpoint can sync data directly with any other endpoint without the need to first send data to a hub server. And all endpoints can work together to sync data simultaneously.

This effectively provides each endpoint with the power of a data center, and enables you to utilize the resources of each endpoint and distribute the network load across your entire environment.

When syncing files, Resilio uses a process known as file chunking to break files down into multiple chunks that can transfer independently of each other. Each endpoint in your environment can work together to share file chunks concurrently.

Imagine you want to sync a 50 GB file across five endpoints. Resilio can split that file into five 10 GB chunks. Endpoint 1 can share the first chunk with Endpoint 2. Endpoint 2 can immediately share that first chunk with any other endpoint, even before it receives the remaining chunks. Soon every endpoint will be sharing file chunks simultaneously, allowing you to sync all five servers at once.

Multidirectional Synchronization

Nasuni can only sync files one-way — i.e., between any endpoint and the cloud file store. Panzura can sync endpoints to the cloud file store as well as directly between peers — but this peer-to-peer sync only occurs when an endpoint wants to update a file that has not yet been synced to the cloud.

Resilio’s P2P sync enables it to sync files in any direction, such as:

• One-way: You can perform one-way syncs for cloud backup or data migration.

• Two-way: You can keep any two endpoints in sync for collaboration across sites.

• One-to-many: You can distribute files or updates from one server to multiple endpoints, such as when distributing software updates or sharing data with a fleet of remote vehicles.

• Many-to-one: Consolidate data from multiple remote endpoints onto one server for backup, edge and IoT data ingestion, or collecting data from a fleet of vehicles.

• N-way: Keep hundreds or thousands of endpoints synchronized concurrently.

N-way sync is a key component of Resilio’s ability to provide the fastest, most reliable sync speeds for multi-site collaboration, disaster recovery (which we’ll discuss more later), and other scenarios. By syncing data across all endpoints simultaneously, Resilio keeps data available locally to all end-users no matter where they’re located.

Organic Scalability

As stated earlier, Resilio was designed for large-scale, enterprise needs. It can sync:

• Files of any size: Resilio can quickly sync GB and TB-sized files, such as large images, video, and text files.

• Large numbers of files: Resilio’s engineers successfully synchronized 450+ million files in a single job. 

• Any type of file: Organizations in industries such as engineering, construction, media, and gaming use Resilio to sync different types of files (such as 3D models, telemetry data, photogrammetry, raw data, game-builds, etc.).

With hub-and-spoke solutions, adding more endpoints increases the time it takes to sync your environment. But with Resilio’s distributed mesh synchronization, every endpoint in your environment can work together to sync files, allowing you to organically scale your environment.

This means that adding more endpoints only increases sync speed and resources (i.e., CPU, bandwidth, etc.), and more demand inherently creates more supply. 

Resilio can sync 200 endpoints in roughly the same time it takes most hub-and-spoke solutions to sync just two.

Through a feature known as horizontal scale-out replication, you can cluster endpoints together to pool their resources and increase replication speeds linearly. Each endpoint can already reach speeds of 10 Gbps. Our engineers have tested clusters and reached speeds of 100+ Gbps per cluster (though there’s no limit on how fast it can go and you can create even larger clusters).

True Real-Time Synchronization

As stated earlier, it typically takes 5 minutes for Nasuni to update most endpoints, and many Nasuni users report waiting 15–20 minutes to access files. While Panzura offers near-real-time replication, this can still create delays that inhibit data-intensive workflows.

Resilio, on the other hand, eliminates these workflow bottlenecks by providing true real-time synchronization. Resilio uses optimized checksum calculations (identification markers assigned to each file that change whenever a change is made to the file) and notification events from the host OS to immediately detect and replicate file changes (it syncs only the file deltas).

So anytime a change is made to a file, that file change is immediately synchronized to every endpoint in your system — allowing fast remote collaboration, fast updates and access for VDI profiles, reliable data recovery, and more.

A Proprietary WAN Acceleration Protocol

Syncing data across remote sites requires the utilization of WANs and, in some cases, unreliable network connections that drop in and out. Transfers across these networks are plagued by varying degrees of packet loss, latency, and poor bandwidth utilization.

While the tactics used by Nasuni and Panzura (i.e., compression, deduplication, etc.) help, they don’t sufficiently address these issues to provide fast, predictable transfers over WANs and unreliable networks.

Resilio uses a proprietary WAN acceleration protocol known as Zero Gravity Transport™ (ZGT) to optimize transfers over any network, regardless of quality. ZGT intelligently analyzes the underlying conditions of a network (such as packet loss, latency, and throughput over time), and maximizes bandwidth utilization by adjusting to these conditions in real-time.

ZGT fully utilizes the bandwidth of any network via:

• A congestion control algorithm: ZGT uses a congestion control algorithm that constantly probes the RTT (Round Trip Time) of a network and automatically identifies and maintains the ideal data packet send rate and a uniform packet distribution over time.

• Interval acknowledgments: ZGT doesn’t wait for acknowledgments to send each data packet, unlike other transfer protocols. Instead, it sends acknowledgments for groups of packets, which minimizes network traffic.

• Delayed retransmission: Rather than transmitting lost packets after each acknowledgment, ZGT retransmits lost packets in groups once per RTT to reduce unnecessary retransmissions that consume precious bandwidth.

Because of ZGT, Resilio can transfer quickly, efficiently, and reliably over any type of connection — such as VSATs, Wi-Fi, cell (3G, 4G, 5G), point-to-point HF, and UHF.

To learn more about Resilio’s optimized WAN synchronization, read our WAN optimization whitepaper or try our transfer speed calculator.

ZGT enables Resilio to transfer data 100x faster than existing solutions, and reliably sync data even when connectivity is poor. Organizations can use Resilio to transfer data from the edge and at the far-edge (such as at sea or in areas with underdeveloped network infrastructure).

Bulletproof Reliability Features

Resilio includes other features and capabilities that make it the most reliable and fault-tolerant file synchronization solution available, such as:

• No single point of failure: Since every endpoint can share files directly with each other, Resilio eliminates single points of failure. If any endpoint or network goes down, the necessary files or services can be retrieved from any other endpoint in your environment.

• Dynamic rerouting: Resilio automatically reroutes around downed networks and endpoints to reliably deliver your data to its destination to maintain data availability and allow you to meet deadlines.

• Automatic retries and checkpoint restart: Resilio automatically retries all file transfers until they’re complete. And when a file transfer is interrupted, Resilio performs a checkpoint restart to resume the transfer at the point of interruption.

• Cryptographic data integrity validation: Resilio preserves data integrity across all endpoints using cryptographic hashing of each file chunk and each complete file.

• Caching and offline access: You can cache data locally at each endpoint, allowing you to still access files when networks go down. During these network interruptions, files can also be shared across LANs. And when the internet connection is reestablished, Resilio automatically syncs files across your entire environment.

Panzura vs. Nasuni vs. Resilio: Cloud Storage Gateways

The primary objectives of cloud object storage gateways is to:

• Enable access to data stored in the cloud and on-premises from a single, unified interface.

• Enhance productivity by providing fast access to files for remote, multi-site collaboration.

• Minimize the costs of storing and accessing data in hybrid cloud storage environments (in particular, data egress costs that are incurred when downloading data from the cloud).

Nasuni, Panzura, and Resilio Connect all offer object storage gateways as part of their hybrid cloud solutions. While each of these solutions provide unified access to data from remote sites, you should choose the solution that best suits your specific needs, enhances productivity, and minimizes hybrid cloud storage/access costs.

Nasuni File Data Platform Gateway Features and Capabilities

The Nasuni File Data Platform provides file synchronization and an object storage gateway all within a unified administrative experience. 

The gateway features work through Nasuni Edges — efficient virtual machines that provide up to a 98% cache hit rate — that are deployed on NAS devices and file servers that connect to cloud object storage. Nasuni Edges provide:

• File access: Nasuni is a cloud-native solution that stores data in cloud-based global file systems. Nasuni supports access to files through SMB (CIFS), NFS, FTP/SFTP, and HTTPS protocols.

• Caching: Nasuni caches frequently accessed files locally, and uses data and metadata analysis to predict the file data that’s most likely to be accessed.

• Global file locking: You can lock files so only one employee can edit a file at a given time.

While Nasuni’s file gateway is more cost-effective than traditional on-premises or cloud storage solutions, it doesn’t include any extra features that help mitigate the costs of transferring and accessing data via the cloud.

Panzura CloudFS Features & Capabilities

Panzura provides access to files through Panzura CloudFS. Panzura caching nodes (VMs) are deployed on each endpoint, connecting them to your object storage and enabling fast access to data remotely. Data access is controlled through your Active Directory, which reduces configuration and management overhead.

Panzura Edge prioritizes:

• 3rd party collaboration: You can share files directly via expiring links, configurable passwords, download prevention, and other security methods. And you can establish secure locations for 3rd parties to upload data.

• Personalization: You can personalize your documents via watermarks, using your domain and company logo, and customizing elements of your user interface with CSS.

• Security: Admins can limit the number of downloads for shared files, automatically expire shares, and prevent downloads. Panzura Edge also provides unique features for monitoring, preventing, and fixing unauthorized data access or leakage.

• Caching: Panzura caches data locally via SmartCache (frequently accessed files) and Auto-Cache (caching files based on rules you define).

• File locking: Panzura offers two types of file locking for remote collaboration: global file lock (which prevents two employees from working on the same file simultaneously) and byte range lock (which locks only portions of the file, so multiple employees can work on different parts of the same file or dataset).

While many of these features enhance collaboration, Panzura Edge (like Nasuni) doesn’t provide additional features that enhance productivity, minimize cloud, or mitigate the costs of transferring and accessing data.

Resilio Connect Object Storage Gateway

As part of its solution, Resilio Connect offers a turnkey storage gateway that provides access to data stored in any file, block, or object storage — on-premises or in the cloud. Through Resilio agents deployed on on-premises endpoints, you can transform your NAS/DAS/SAN devices, file servers, desktops, and mobile devices into flexible storage gateways.

The Resilio file gateway runs on any server as a VM or physical server, allowing you to use your choice of desktop OS (Windows, Linux, Unix, or MacOS) and enabling users and applications to access files via SMB or NFS.

You can use the Resilio gateway in one of two models:

• As a central gateway in your office or remote sites.

• Directly from an end-user’s workstation or desktop.

It supports any S3-compatible cloud object storage, such as AWS, Azure Blobs, Google Object Storage, Ceph, MinIO, Cloudian, VAST Data, Cloudian, Weka IO, and more.

But the key differentiator between Resilio’s storage gateway and competing solutions lies in the features and capabilities that enable organizations to seamlessly integrate object storage into their file-based workflows while also optimizing cloud storage costs. This includes: 

Selective Caching

Local caching is done directly on the endpoint. Any device with a local file system can be a storage location.

Unlike other solutions that only cache frequently accessed files, Resilio enables you to cache frequently used files or any file you choose based on your needs and workflow. This enables you to enhance productivity by providing fast access to mission-critical data while also minimizing data egress costs.

Full or Partial Downloading

Users can download full files and folders. Or, if needed, they can download just the portions of files/folders they need. This reduces data egress costs by minimizing the amount of data that is downloaded.

Selective Synchronization

You can control which specific files/folders are synchronized to which specific endpoints. This enables you to ensure files are only synchronized to select endpoints (such as in situations where only privileged employees require access to privileged files) — a capability that’s ideal for remote work scenarios that require granular access over how and where files are synchronized. Syncs can occur in real-time or on a fixed schedule.

Policy-Based Automation

You can create policies that govern how files are automatically synchronized, downloaded, cached, and purged. By automating these processes, you can free up employees to focus on their tasks.

Proxy Server

Through Resilio’s proxy server capabilities, you can obtain granular control over who is allowed to access certain files on machines and which scripts are able to run on specific machines. This enables you to effectively and securely collaborate with 3rd parties.

Overcoming Latency

Resilio’s P2P replication architecture and WAN acceleration technology enable you to overcome latency through blazing fast data transfers and full-utilization of bandwidth across any distance.

Unified Access to Data

End-users can browse and access files through the same unified interface that operates much like popular file management tools (e.g., Microsoft OneDrive, Windows File Explorer, and Mac Finder). 

Panzura vs. Nasuni vs. Resilio: Management and Automation

You should not have to adapt your hybrid cloud workflow to your file sync and access solution — your solution should be able to adapt and optimize your workflow.

A good hybrid cloud sync and access solution must:

• Support your current IT infrastructure, so you can avoid spending on new hardware and software.

• Enable you to control your environment and how files are synced/accessed from a centralized location.

• Automate file sync and access processes to optimize your workflow.

• Integrate with the tools your team uses. 

Nasuni File Data Platform Management and Automation

The Nasuni File Data Platform is a fairly flexible hybrid cloud solution that connects data between on-premises storage and a cloud-based global file system that operates as the single source of truth. It supports:

• NAS devices and file servers.

• Major public cloud platforms (such as Azure Blobs, Amazon S3, and Google Cloud Platform) as well as multiple private cloud solutions (such as Dell EMC ECS, Pure Storage FlashBlade, and NetApp StorageGRID).

• Microsoft Windows, Linux, and macOS operating systems (with advanced support for extended macOS file attributes and metadata).

• Integrations with leading design apps (such as AutoCAD, Adobe Creative Cloud, BIM360, and Revit), workflow management tools (Siemens Teamcenter PLM, Azure Power Automate, and Work), and other popular applications for engineering, design, workflow, reporting, and auditing.

The web-based Nasuni Management Console allows you to manage, provision, and report on snapshots, volumes, recoveries, Nasuni Edge appliances, file shares and more — all from one centralized location.

You can use Nasuni’s API to automate all data management functions via scripts or 3rd-party workflow solutions.

Panzura CloudFS Management and Automation

Panzura CloudFS functions similar to Nasuni. Data is stored in a cloud-based global file system that operates as a single source of truth (though Panzura also supports cloud mirroring for copying data to multiple clouds simultaneously), and linked multiple on-premises devices in offices or at remote locations.

Panzura supports:

• NAS devices and file servers.

• Major public cloud object storage platforms (such as AWS S3, Google Cloud Platform, and Azure Blob) and private object storage (such as IBM iCOS  and Cloudian).

• Windows and macOS operating systems.

• Integration with popular engineering solutions (such as Revit and AutoCAD) and other tools your team already uses via the Panzura API.

Through Panzura’s management console — known as Data Services — you can:

• Search and audit files by file name, user, and user action.

• Restore damaged or deleted files to previous versions.

• Monitor file and endpoint analytics (such as most frequently accessed files, storage consumption on each endpoint, and more).

• Monitor file system health metrics such as CPU usage, data movement, cloud connectivity, and more.

• Control each cloud and on-premises endpoint.

You can use Panzura’s API to automate all data management functions via scripts or 3rd-party workflow solutions.

Resilio Connect Management and Automation

Resilio Connect provides the flexibility to support any IT environment and hybrid cloud use case, centralized management, and powerful automation capabilities.

Install Flexibly on Any IT Infrastructure

Resilio Connect is an incredibly flexible solution that you can install on your existing IT infrastructure. Resilio uses open file formats and universal standards, so it doesn’t lock you into any specific hardware or software vendors and you always retain control over your data.

As we said, combining Resilio with your storage of choice makes it an ideal alternative to Panzura and Nasuni. Fortunately, Resilio is extremely flexible, so you can use with just about any:

• Cloud storage provider: You can use Resilio Connect with your S3-compatible cloud object storage of choice — such as AWS S3, Google Cloud Platform, Azure Blobs, Wasabi, MinIO, Backblaze, Cloudian, NetApp, Weka IO, and more.

• Device: You can install Resilio agents on desktops, laptops, NAS/DAS/SAN devices, file servers, mobile devices (Resilio offers iOS and Android apps), IoT devices, and virtual machines (such as VMware, hypervisors, and more).

• Operating system: Resilio supports many operating systems, such as Windows, MacOS, Linux, Ubuntu, Unix, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and more.

Granular, Centralized Management

Resilio provides granular control over your replication environment and hybrid cloud workflow through one centralized location. Through Resilio’s Management Console — which can be accessed through any web browser — you can:

• Create set-it-and-forget-it sync jobs that occur automatically, and even control which files sync to which specific endpoints.

• Create, control, and monitor replication jobs.

• Oversee active jobs via real-time metrics and reports.

• Adjust replication parameters, such as data hashing, disk I/O, file priorities, and more.

• Adjust bandwidth at each endpoint, and create profiles that govern how much bandwidth is allocated to each endpoint at certain times of the day and on certain days of the week.

• Create job policies, such as purging files from a cache after a certain number of days, syncing metadata, and more.

• Review a history of all executed jobs.

• Automate troubleshooting processes, such as file conflict resolution.

Powerful Automation Capabilities

You can automate data sync and access processes to enhance workflows, increase productivity, and minimize management time and the need for human intervention.

Through Resilio’s powerful REST API, you can:

• Integrate with popular tools your team is already using, such as media tools (Adobe Premier, DaVinci Resolve, Avid Media Composer, and more), engineering tools (Revit, AutoCAD, CSI Sap2000, and more), management tools (Microsoft SCOM, Splunk, LCE, etc.), development tools (TeamCity, Jenkins, etc.), and more.

• Script any type of functionality a job requires using three types of triggers: before a job starts, after a job completes, and after all jobs are complete.

Security Features Comparison

Data security is critical for hybrid cloud deployments to protect access to your files/network and prevent data corruption or interception. 

Most file sync and access solutions don’t include built-in security, forcing you to invest in 3rd-party security solutions and VPNs. But Nasuni, Panzura, and Resilio Connect all include native security features that protect your data.

Nasuni File Data Platform Security

Nasuni protects your data using features, such as:

• AES-256 encryption for data at rest and in transit.

• Ransomware detection and mitigation capabilities that are deployed at the edge to defend against cyber attacks.

• Customer-created encryption keys to protect all endpoints.

• Nasuni Continuous File Versioning® — where snapshots of file shares are taken at predefined intervals (minutes, hours, or days) and stored as immutable versions in the cloud.

Panzura CloudFS Security

Panzura protects your data using features, such as:

• 256-bit military-grade encryption for data at rest or in transit.

• Capturing snapshots of your global file system at predefined intervals and storing them as immutable versions in the cloud.

• Two-factor authentication to authenticate and protect devices.

• Granular control over user and file sharing permissions.

Resilio Connect Security

Resilio includes TPN Blue-certified and SOC2-certified security features that protect data end-to-end, such as:

• End-to-end encryption: Resilio encrypts data at rest and in transit via AES 256-bit encryption.

• Mutual authentication: Before any endpoint can receive files, it must provide a security key — ensuring data is only delivered to approved endpoints.

• Cryptographic integrity validation: Resilio ensures data arrives at its destination intact and uncorrupted via cryptographic integrity validation. Damaged or corrupted files are immediately discarded and scheduled for retransmission.

• Forward secrecy: Resilio uses one-time session encryption keys.

• Permission controls: You can control which users are allowed to access specific files and folders.

• Proxy server: You can use Resilio’s Proxy Server capabilities to block other devices from accessing or running scripts on your devices (or just accessing certain parts of a device) — facilitating 3rd-party collaboration and work-from-home scenarios.

Panzura vs. Nasuni vs. Resilio: VDI Profile Sync and Disaster Recovery

Organizations that collaborate using Virtual Desktop Interfaces (VDI) need a hybrid cloud sync and access solution that can:

• Deploy on your existing IT infrastructure and work with the virtualization tools you use.

• Quickly replicate data to enable fast VDI login times and ensure all VDI user profiles remain synchronized.

• Provide cost-effective high availability of data across remote sites and data centers in order to meet SLAs as well as support planned maintenance and disaster recovery.

• Overcome the latency of WANs in order to quickly sync data across VDI sites.

• Bring applications and datasets closer to end-users.

If the hybrid cloud solution doesn’t meet these requirements, it can create bottlenecks in your VDI-based workflows by impacting file availability and delaying profile sync/login times.

Nasuni File Data Platform VDI and DR Capabilities

Nasuni File Data Platform enables organizations to deploy virtual desktops across any number of regions, obtaining the scalability, enhanced performance, and cost-effectiveness of hybrid cloud storage and local caching. Nasuni enables multi-site collaboration by syncing data across VDI regions and providing a Global File Lock feature that ensures two employees can’t work on a file at the same time.

Nasuni supports most popular virtualization platforms, such as Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware OVF, EC2, Azure, Google, Nutanix, and more.

However, as described earlier, Nasuni is limited by its replication architecture. Hub-and-spoke replication is slow and unreliable, particularly when syncing large VDI environments, i.e., large files, large numbers of files, and many endpoints. 

And Nasuni’s WAN optimization features don’t do enough to overcome the latency inherent in syncing data across globally distributed VDI sites. These sync issues can diminish VDI performance, resulting in file sync errors, multiple datasets, and slow login times.

Sync issues also impact Nasuni’s disaster recovery capabilities. Nasuni provides backup through continuous file versioning (i.e., snapshots of files taken at predetermined intervals), enabling you to establish RPOs within minutes. But because of its slow replication architecture, Nasuni RTOs can take 15 minutes or longer.

And in addition, each Nasuni filer (i.e., virtual file server) must be within 60 milliseconds of the cloud locking service to reliably use any advanced locking collaboration features. For many globally distributed businesses, this may not be possible.

Panzura CloudFS VDI and DR Capabilities

Panzura supports fewer virtualization platforms than Nasuni. These include VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Nutanix.

Unlike Nasuni, Panzura offers two types of file locks that make it easier to control how employees collaborate:

• Global write lock: This locks files to prevent two employees from working on the same file at the same time.

• Byte range lock: Only portions of the files are locked, so one employee can work on one part of a file while another employee works on a different part.

Panzura’s combination of hub-and-spoke and peer-to-peer synchronization enable it to sync files faster than Nasuni, providing faster and more reliable VDI performance. And it has two capabilities that allow it to provide high data availability for VDI:

• Cloud mirroring: You can maintain an identical, mirrored dataset in two separate cloud object stores. If the primary object store becomes unavailable for any reason, the secondary object store automatically takes over — which means no interruptions to workflows and operations and more streamlined business continuity.

• P2P nodes: Panzura’s P2P architecture means you can configure failover to/from any Panzura node (i.e., endpoint). You can designate local high availability nodes that take over one or more locations in the event of a failure or global high availability nodes that take over an entire file system if the master node goes down.

Resilio Connect VDI and DR Capabilities

Resilio Connect supports a wide range of popular virtualization tools, such as Microsoft FSLogix, Microsoft Hyper-V, Microsoft Azure Windows Virtual Desktop, Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (CVAD), VMware ESXi and Dynamic Environment Manager (DEM), VMware Horizon for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), and more.

Thanks to Resilio’s distributed P2P architecture, real-time replication, WAN acceleration technology, and centralized management, you can:

1. Minimize and Overcome Latency for VDI

Resilio’s proprietary WAN acceleration protocol enables you to fully utilize any network in order to quickly sync files to all VDI sites located anywhere, regardless of distance or network quality. Because user profiles are rapidly replicated, VDI latency is reduced and login times are increased by up to 2x (compared to traditional replication solutions).

2. Keep VDI Profiles Synchronized in Real-Time

All user profile changes are detected and synchronized as soon as a user logs out of their profile.

3. Utilize Full Capacity at All Sites

Resilio’s P2P architecture turns your entire environment into a distributed mesh network. When syncing files across this network, the computer, network, and storage load can be distributed across all sites for faster and more efficient synchronization.

4. Achieve Active-Active High Availability and Hot-Site Disaster Recovery

Resilio’s P2P architecture provides every endpoint in your environment with the power of a data center and effectively turns every endpoint into a backup site.

This allows you to achieve true Active-Active High Availability across large-scale VDI deployments, enabling load balancing and fast failover in support of planned maintenance and Disaster Recovery. If any server goes down, the necessary files or services can be retrieved from any other server in your environment, eliminating single points of failure and allowing you to meet SLAs.

Resilio provides fast, reliable hot-site disaster recovery. Its high-performance replication and high availability enable you to meet sub-five-second RPOs (Recovery Point Objectives) and RTOs (Recovery Time Objectives) within minutes of an outage. It can also dynamically route around outages to maximize transfer speed and ensure your files always reach their destination. 

6. Manage and Monitor Your VDI

Event tracking and monitoring provide visibility across VDI environments of any size. And you can use Resilio’s Management Console to obtain granular control over your environment. 

Use Resilio Connect for Hybrid Cloud Storage and Access

Global file systems like Nasuni and Panzura are useful in situations where you don’t need fast access at the edge or across multiple sites, true Active-Active HA and fast disaster recovery aren’t a priority, and you need global file system-specific features, such as file locking (which Resilio doesn’t provide).

Nasuni falls short in many areas due to its hub-and-spoke replication architecture — though it may suffice in situations where one-way replication between at most two endpoints is good enough.

Panzura’s combination of hub-and-spoke and P2P replication make it a better option than Nasuni for many hybrid workflows that require fast collaboration and high-performance applications.

Resilio Connect is the best option when you need:

• Real-time sync: Resilio immediately detects and syncs file changes across your environment.

• High-performance synchronization: Resilio’s P2P architecture enables you to distribute the load across your entire network and sync data 3–10x faster than other solutions. It also allows you to sync in any direction (one-way, bidirectional, one-to-many, many-to-one, or N-way) and eliminate single points of failure.

• Reliability: Resilio retries all transfers until they’re complete, resumes interrupted transfers at the point of failure and ensures data integrity with cryptographic validation.

• Organic scalability: Resilio’s P2P architecture enables it to scale organically. Adding more endpoints only increases replication speed. You can cluster endpoints together to linearly increase replication speeds to 100+ Gbps per cluster. And you can sync files of any size, type, or number.

• Data locality: Resilio stores files near remote sites, making it easy and fast to keep files with users, VDI profiles, and apps.

• Fast time-to-access: Resilio provides fast time-to-access for distributed file sharing and access, DR, and VDI profiles.

• Flexibility: Resilio supports just about any type of device, cloud storage platform, and operating system. It easily installs on your existing IT infrastructure. And it integrates with popular media, engineering, management, development, and virtualization tools.

Organizations in engineering, manufacturing, media, gaming, and more use Resilio Connect for fast file sync and access in hybrid cloud environments. To learn more about how Resilio can enhance your hybrid workflow, schedule a demo with our team.