Likelihood to Recommend There are few scenarios that it's not well suited for as long as it's either VMware or Agent Based installations. I have not had success with directly backing up a non-Windows file share. I would definitely test the product first if you are not planning to directly backup through an agent.
Read full review 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.
Ryan Lee Enterprise Infrastructure Supervisor
Read full review Pros Quickness to deploy. You will not need an expert to get this up and running. Extremely intuitive interface: Brand new techs can pick this up without much training. Global Accessibility: The cloud interface allows administrators to access their backups from everywhere for quick restores after hours. Read full review Real time file locking Backup and recovery Easy access to all your files Read full review Cons In some of the older version of the software, drilling down to restore a single files was quite the process. It's still a little slow to this day, but improvements have been made. It would be nice to have the ability to spin up a virtual machine directly on the backup appliance in the event of a failed server. At current time you need a Hyper-v or VMWare environment to restore a failed machine to. Once you put the device in cloud control mode, some of your options are limited when you log directly into the local appliance. I personally would like to see all the options remain the same so I can administer the device the same remotely and I would sitting in front of it. Read full review I would like to see more connectors. Tie in to traditional block storage or NAS. Additional cloud connectors to products like Hitachi Content Platform. I would like to see a collaborative product created between Panzura and Riverbed. I envision an almost perfect small footprint ROBO solution where Riverbed provides the compute+WAN optimization and Panzura provides the storage/risiliancy components. Combine the boxes into a single 4U solution and you have a near perfect product for remote offices. Read full review Likelihood to Renew Love the units
Read full review Usability The front-end webpages are basic without to much clutter which makes finding what you are trying to do fairly easy.
Read full review Support Rating They are always quick to get you routed to a tech support person and always get follow up after contacting them. Last experience was amazing, she adjusted my boxes and they perform even better. I cannot say enough about the support. We had some trouble with one of the windows servers leaving the volume shadow copy out there and would fail. They worked with us to adjust and get working. After that it has been months since I have had to do anything with the server to keep the backups running.
Read full review Hands down support is the best part of Panzura. Their techs are always helpful, always knowledgeable, and consistently solve complex problems quickly. You can definitely tell they hire their support folks from the top tier of other companies and they go above and beyond what I have come to expect in terms of support compared to other companies.
Ryan Lee Enterprise Infrastructure Supervisor
Read full review Implementation Rating Work on a backup agent for Mac OS X or any Apple OS.
Read full review Alternatives Considered I'm much happier with how Barracuda lays out their console and user interface. Acronis is a great product and you do get what you expect. But to have a the learning curve personally cut by at least 50% is a great thing to have when it comes to training new members to the IT team and getting them up to speed of our procedures.
Read full review There are several other devices but Panzura is best of class.
Read full review Return on Investment We've had a couple situations where we've had to pull data back down from the BBS cloud and while it can take a while sometimes, we haven't had an issue where we haven't been able to restore something that we needed. Overall it has been very reliable. We've had to implement two other backup systems in addition to Barracuda Backup and dedicate our BBSs to just mission-critical data because we're size-locked in our appliances. Upgrading to larger models is not financially viable at the moment and we can't expand their internal storage or point them to an iSCSI share or likewise. We brought in other systems to handle non-critical and virtual data because of those storage limitations. Read full review Exceptional positive impact on availability - as users move so do their files. Panzura+DFS allowed for simple chargeback models to be implemented. Read full review ScreenShots Panzura CloudFS Screenshots