Shift to Consumption-based Model, No-Cost Basic and Licensed Service Options, Delivers Observability and Visibility That Scales With Every CloudFS Implementation
Panzura has released the second generation of Panzura Data Services to provide all Panzura customers with observability and visibility over their data, and more agile consumption-based pricing that flexibly supports them and scales as they grow. Panzura Data Services is a powerful SaaS data management solution that offers a single, unified view and management of enterprise data, whether it is stored in the cloud, on premises in a data center, or at the edge. It also offers search and audit capabilities that allow users to see and find files across their entire data storage footprint.
Panzura Data Services is now available in two tiers. Complementary Basic service is now offered to all users of Panzura CloudFS, and new paid Licensed tiers are fee-based according to the number of concurrent users.
The new model makes it easier to get started, and ensures that each customer pays only for the value they derive from the solution rather than the amount of data capacity under management. It provides an attractive option for growing companies looking to scale their hybrid-cloud infrastructure in the future, and helps them understand when increased or decreased usage is valuable to them so they can throttle up or down if necessary.
All users of CloudFS will have access to alerts and monitoring via the Basic service, and can license individually the unique search and audit capabilities of Panzura Data Services via the Licensed tier. This allows them to get even greater value from their Panzura investment according to their specific needs.
“The second generation of Panzura Data Services allows organizations to manage their unstructured data differently than the exclusively capacity-based paradigm of the past,” said Panzura’s chief innovation officer, Edward M.L. Peters, Ph.D. “Now, they can go beyond an exclusively storage-based approach and separately license access for value-added functions such as enhanced audit and search capabilities. This allows them to easily access the value embedded in their data and provides for enhanced decision making.”
Additional improvements include support for high availability (HA) nodes, as well as other storage nodes under management, for a view of an entire storage footprint. Automated configuration and management around registration of CloudFS nodes, and expanded audit data retention, are included in this release of Panzura Data Services.
Second-generation Panzura Data Services also introduces a preview of configuration and management services, available to both Basic and Licensed users, which speeds up connection status detection of CloudFS nodes. Configuration management capabilities provide new inventory management tables, and a new Dataset View offers a list of customer datasets which are the authoritative data sources for a CloudFS deployment. A new CloudFS Node View allows users to access an inventory of all CloudFS nodes.
Basic Tier
The new Basic tier of Panzura Data Services is available to all CloudFS users. It provides access to Pulse—which monitors and reports on key metrics for the CloudFS network—and configurable alerts triggered when storage, system and cloud thresholds are exceeded and may require attention.
Basic users can see an inventory of their CloudFS components, and a summary of their operational status. They can view a list of all plugins for the nodes which are registered on Data Services, and information such as software version, last and next scan time, and operational status regarding communications with Data Services. A preview of upcoming configuration and management capabilities, which will be available in subsequent Data Services updates, is also available.
The Alerts service provides scheduled reporting and real-time custom alerts on the metrics available in Pulse. These metrics include user activity, data movement and cloud connectivity, allowing administrators to see what’s happening in their network at a glance. Reporting and custom alerts for node performance deliver real-time notifications about anomalous behavior within the global file system, and allow admins to gain visibility into changes in usage patterns. Users can specify and configure the channels through which they prefer to receive their alerts, for example via Slack or Microsoft Teams, or via email or SMTP.
Quotas allow admins to trigger notifications as configurable storage thresholds for individual users or user groups. Disaster recovery capabilities in the Panzura global file system delivers the ability to instantaneously roll back files to a previous, granular state prior to accidental deletion, or file corruption at the hand of ransomware and other malware exploits, with no data loss.
Licensed Tier
The Licensed tier for Data Services offers separate licensing for Search, Audit and Audit Retention. The Search license is applicable to all storage rings and provides up-to-the-second results and insight into the entire global file system including recovery services, quota services and data analytics. The Audit license allows users to track and audit file opens, changes and access, find renamed or deleted files and recover them with just one click.
Global search enables search and data analysis across all connected file systems, including Panzura and other compatible Server Message Block (SMB) and Network File Sharing (NFS) file shares, for files, directories and snapshots. To provide this functionality, Data Services ingests the metadata of files and directories from connected file shares, including CloudFS, NetApp, and EMC Isilon according to a periodic schedule, and indexes them into a searchable database.
Audit functionality is provided by ingesting file logs in near real-time, providing a one-click view into user actions taken on files such as read, write, delete, move or update permissions. The Audit Retention license provides for 180 days of data-log retention, which is double the amount previously offered. Multiple licenses can be purchased to cover longer data-retention periods.
For more information about Panzura Data Services go to panzura.com/products/data-services/ or contact sales@panzura.com.