Panzura CloudFS vs Tahoe-LAFS
Panzura CloudFS
panzura.comTahoe-LAFS
tahoe-lafs.orgSide by side
| Figure | Panzura CloudFS | Tahoe-LAFS |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Distributed File System Software | 7.0 (#23) | 8.3 (#6) |
| Encryption | Panzura states that CloudFS encrypts data at rest with AES 256-bit algorithms and data in transit with TLS 1.3. | The client encrypts each file with a unique key before uploading it to storage servers. |
| Intended users | Panzura presents CloudFS for distributed organizations and names AEC, banking and financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, media and entertainment, and public sector among its industries. | The project describes a typical deployment where each user runs a gateway on their own machine and connects it to storage servers on other computers. |
| Protocols | It serves the same data set over native SMB, NFS, and S3. | The documentation describes HTTP(S) and SFTP access through a gateway, and storage-server communication over HTTPS or Foolscap. |
| Purpose | CloudFS provides one authoritative global file data set in object storage for distributed sites to access directly. | Tahoe-LAFS is a decentralized file storage system that encrypts files, splits them into shares, and distributes those shares across storage servers. |
| Support | Panzura provides a Service Hub for support and says a team can release a lock left by an offline user without a support ticket. | The installation guide directs users who need help with deployment to the tahoe-dev mailing list or Libera.Chat IRC. |
Plans
In their own words
Panzura CloudFS
Panzura CloudFS has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.
Tahoe-LAFS
Tahoe-LAFS is free, open-source software for storing files across multiple servers. Before upload, a client encrypts each file with a unique key. Erasure coding distributes each file as shares, allowing recovery when some storage servers fail; the documented default uses 10 shares across at least 7 servers and can recover from any 3. A gateway checks integrity and ignores corrupted shares. Files can be immutable or mutable, with read-only or read-write access for mutable files and directories. The gateway gives access through HTTP(S) and SFTP, and a REST-style Web API supports programmatic operations. Users can run a gateway or operate a full grid of storage nodes and an introducer. Installation is documented for Windows, macOS, Linux, and BSD. The software is available under GNU GPL version 2 or later, or the Transitive Grace Period Public Licence version 1.0 or later. It is free at free. The public test grid is for experimentation, not reliable or large-scale storage.