back to article Pour $25m in its coffers and the local NAS box gets it. That's backers' hope for public cloud type Nasuni

Wannabe killer of on-premises NAS boxen Nasuni has just wolfed down $25m in funding to spread its message and open up new offices. Chief technology officer Andres Rodriguez said of his firm's business: "It's a very financially driven model and required a lot more money than we expected." The storage company's pitch is that a …

  1. Peter2 Silver badge

    The storage company's pitch is that a fast access local cache with public cloud back-end object storage can provide local NAS access speed, the immense scalability that local boxes can't deliver

    But isin't the entire point of having a NAS box onsite that it's free once for the decade or two after you've bought it?

    as well as cloud economics.

    Ah. I see why this is a think. So instead of buying a product that you can run until a part dies, you can move to renting it offsite perpetually, initially for a knock down price which is then stepped up considerably as time goes by.

    1. K

      "Ah. I see why this is a think."

      Umm no you don't. If you have a relatively static requirement for storage (i.e. it's not growing by TB's every month), then a simple NAS or Fileserver is sufficient - These are intended for companies who hoard data (because it "might be useful one day").

      The purpose of it is to provide fast local storage, but remove the size limitations and complex backup requirement - If you purchased a 10TB NAS, then exceed this, you either have to purchase a JBOD or a whole new NAS. With Nasuni style devices, only hot data is kept locally, in addition, you can forgo the requirement of back-up infrastructure (tape, dedupe etc) and make use of S3 and Glacier.

      Another use case (at least for similar appliances) if you are a globally distributed company, you can have multiple appliances connected to the same S3 buckets - so they effectively provide a Global DFS and local cache.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "...only hot data..."

        Translates to "don't keep a complete backup on site, buy it from us."...dirty. Or you can look at it like you have 1.5 backups... dirty. Or, even if this was free, you don't have a backup period unless this company has it... dirty. Just... dirty.

        At that point I'd just get a cheap web host and copy data X days old to it. Of course, why you wouldn't just increase your NAS size is beyond me. This company sounds like it's preying off the ignorant with FUD, but that apparently works well for the bean counters.

        This service, while not identical, reminds me of the time I thought I could get away with only backing up modified files to a floppy. Yes, I thought this once, at least until the non-modified files were expunged to make room for more modified ones. Guess how that turned out. 1.5 backups actually equals .5 backups.

        1. hoola Silver badge

          Backup?

          Where, in the article does it talk about backup? DR yes, but that it availability with hosting in different regions. That is not backup.

        2. K

          "why you wouldn't just increase your NAS size is beyond me"

          Because a lot of IT teams don't have the capital budget, rack space or staff to constantly keep adding additional capacity.

          even though you say that, I know from experience, managing a storage array on a daily basis (and this would consume a substantial amount of your day), if gets old and boring very quickly.. after 2-3 months, you'll be left begging for a set and forget solution!

  2. Jove Bronze badge

    Trust

    Placing trust in a start-up?

    A first assessment would be that the owners of the business are clearly not up to the job.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Trust

      They're far from a startup - I recall talking to them at least 6 years ago, unfortunately it was way over my budget, I ended up using Cloudberry to send data to glacier and a schedule script to delete stuff that was more than X months old.

      1. Jove Bronze badge

        Re: Trust

        Beg your pardon, but if it is still dependent on venture capital, it is a start-up with all the associated risks.

  3. arctic_haze
    Black Helicopters

    The NSA box is for free

    Everything for our safety!

  4. bish

    Planning

    "It's a very financially driven model and required a lot more money than we expected."

    Whoever signed off on the $25m must be reading that quote and weeping. It's the 'a lot' part that tips it over the edge from 'slightly concerning' to 'amateur hour'.

    1. Jove Bronze badge

      Re: Planning

      Indeed.

  5. twister68

    S3 doesn’t always mean public cloud

    Their solution works for local on-prem cloud storage solutions too, so you can build your own 3 Geo (or single or hybrid) cloud at a price point way better than AWS for example.

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