Zetta Scalabytes Blog

The Zetta Founders’ Story: From Netscape to Cloud Storage

2012-05-11T21:35:44Z

It was at Netscape, in the early days of the internet, when co-founders Lou Montulli and Jeff Whitehead first worked together and began to notice how the amount of their data was constantly growing, but the process for adding storage and protecting that data wasn’t improving over time.

“Zetta is a company that’s trying to revolutionize storage,” is what Lou says at the beginning of the video above — but what does a revolution in storage look like?

The 3 things that make Zetta unique:

1. Recovery Optimized Backup

Data that’s backed up to Zetta is ready to be restored at a moment’s notice because it’s identical to the data on your company’s network and individual endpoints. Your data is never converted to a proprietary backup format (like with appliance-based solutions) or just dumped into buckets (like with that South American river storage).

2. Bandwidth Conserving File Change Detection

Included in Zetta’s cloud storage service is the lightweight software agent we call ZettaMirror. It detects byte-level changes to your individual files and then sends just those changes up to Zetta’s data centers. This feature is very important when buying more bandwidth is cost prohibitive, or just not available.

3. File Transfer Using WebDAV

Your company’s files are efficiently transferred over the internet thanks to WebDAV, a data transfer protocol that works on HTTP, just like the internet itself. When potential customers first start a free trial, one of the most common reactions is being shocked at how quickly their data gets to Zetta. WebDAV is a big part of that speed advantage.

Zetta is made from the ground up to be a better kind of cloud storage for SMBs – not extra features bolted on a consumer-grade service and not part of the old enterprise appliance paradigm.

When Lou and Jeff started Zetta they said to themselves, “Let’s come up with something better, let’s come up with something easy, lets’s come up with something that never fails.” Go ahead and take a look at the service they built, and let us know what you think.

11 Features to Look for in an Online Server Backup Solution

2012-05-09T17:54:45Z

Here’s the situation many SMB IT directors are facing when they come to us — their business has critical data that needs to be backed up offsite but the existing server backup solution has technical limitations or cost restrictions. Usually they have about 2TB of data — a mix of files with important IP, and data from SQL, Exchange, and web servers.

Their goal is to add functionality and simplify the tasks around backup, so IT staff can concentrate on building and supporting services that forward business goals.

They know that investing in tape backup isn’t the right choice and that “hybrid cloud” solutions based on appliance hardware just mask terrible data transfer performance.

Depending on the environment & budget, Zetta Data Protect may be the right choice. Even when we’re not, this is the advice we give to IT Directors on what features to look for when selecting a cloud backup service:

1. Ease of Set Up

The backup agents should install in minutes and then require only a few clicks to establish the appropriate policies.

2. Multiple OS Support

Most online backup services support Windows laptops and servers. A more complete service also supports Linux and Apple’s Mac OSX.

3. Lightweight Agents

To minimize the disk and CPU load on servers and laptops the software backup agent should be very light. To reduce the amount of network traffic, there should be agents for each device that can detect any changed files or blocks and send only those changes to the backup site.

4. Automatic Validation

The service should include immediate verification of all backups when they occur and regular bit-by-bit checks on the backed up data to ensure it will restore properly. Any restores also need to be validated for accuracy.

5. Data Deduplication

The backup vendor should provide data deduplication so you are not paying to have multiple copies of a file backed up.

6. Multiple Backup Instances

The backup service should create multiple copies of the data and offer to store it at more than one data center so that whether a disk, a rack or a whole data center goes offline, you still have instant access to your data.

7. Ease of Restoration

Single files and folders should be able to be restored by just dragging them from backup onto the server or laptop. Restoring entire servers should be as simple as mounting the drive from backup.

8. Browser Access

Both administrators and users should be able to access the backup through a browser rather than having to load and learn a specialized backup interface.

9. Self-Service Restoration

There is no reason for IT to get involved when a user accidentally deletes a file. End users should have permission to see and restore their own files from the remote location but not be able to view, access or alter any other files.

10. Multi-Platform Support

The files should restore to any platform, not just a duplicate of the server that created it. This gives the customer greater flexibility in upgrading systems or using alternate equipment at a DR location.

11. Reporting

The backup vendor should provide daily reports of all backups as well as regular SSAE-16 service audits to maintain compliance with existing standards.

This is the list of features to look for in a online server backup provider. Beyond these, you also want to make sure that the vendor is one that focuses on providing complete business-level backup services, not just a bunch of disk space, and has the expertise needed to optimize a solution that meets all your current and future needs.

Implement a Practical Web-based DR Strategy in 10 minutes

2012-05-03T20:19:23Z

The team at Computer Technology Review recently asked us to contribute an article about web-based Disaster Recovery services. The article is online now and covers why DR is important for mid-sized businesses, the 3 essential elements of these services, and the 7 specific must-have features.

The Key Takeaways:

- DR is important for mid-size businesses because they lack the resources of large enterprises so they need something that combines the ease of consumer online backup with enterprise-grade features.

- The 3 essential elements of DR are: data granularity, no on-premise appliance, and client side flexibility

- The 7 features of the best DR solutions are: multi-platform support, ease of set up, web-based access, ease of recovery, end-user recovery, lightweight software agents, and automatic validation

What didn’t get addressed in the article is the tendency of IT teams to put off implementing a real DR strategy. Even though data loss events are constantly making headlines and natural disasters continue their predictable unpredictability, a comprehensive – and tested – plan to recover data is not in place in 47% of mid-sized businesses.

Why do so many companies delay disaster preparations? Maybe because it’s hard to imagine how easily you can get data securely offsite without trying it. With Zetta, it takes 10 minutes and you’ll see the benefits immediately.

Here’s the quickest way to get started:

1. Head over to the 15-day Free Trial page and register
2. Choose a subset of data to test – your My Documents folder for example
3. Watch how fast that data gets to Zetta’s secure data centers using WebDAV
4. Try a test recovery and see how quickly that same data would be recovered in a disaster
5. Add more data to your volume as time, effort, and the budget allows

Complete these 5 steps and your company’s data will be immediately protected in an enterprise-grade data center and available for instant restoration should you ever need it. According the analysts at Aberdeen, mid-size businesses experience an average of 3.5 data disaster events per year, so chances are you’ll need it sooner rather than later.

Security Practices All Cloud Backup Vendors Should Follow But Don’t

2012-05-01T17:55:57Z

Companies that want to add cloud backup services to their data protection strategy sometimes hold off because of concerns about security. These concerns take the form of questions like:

• Once data leaves my premises, can someone unauthorized see it?

• Can someone change my data?

• Can I meet my compliance requirements if my data is stored in an online service?

If cloud backup vendors can’t answer these questions in the right way, an IT director is compelled to go through the expense of purchasing and maintaining their own backup servers, disk arrays, tape libraries and appliances, along with all the security software, protocols and audits needed to keep everything secure.

Unfortunately, keeping data onsite is not necessarily any more secure than having it in an offsite data center. Every week there are news reports of data being stolen from a bank, credit card company or retailer, not to mention breaches of secure government servers.

What’s important is what security systems are in place, not where the data is stored. This is especially true for organizations that have compliance requirements like:

• The health information privacy and security rules of the Health Insurance and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA)
• Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) data security and privacy rules.
• Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) regulations on access to student data.
• Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Rule 17a-4 which “requires that the electronic storage media preserve the records exclusively in a non-rewriteable and non-erasable format.”
• Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) Section 404 on auditing internal controls over financial records.

To keep ahead of hackers, it makes sense for small and medium sized firms that lack in-house security and compliance teams to use a secure cloud backup service like Zetta. The must-have cloud backup security features are:

1. The data is encrypted both in transit and at rest.
2. The data is stored using advanced RAIN-6 (Redundant Array of Independent Nodes) that ensure that even if two entire storage nodes go down, not just two disks, the data is still available.
3. File level hashing to validate that all the data is free of corruption so it can be restored when needed.
4. Storage in SAS70 Type II data centers under audited service procedures.
5. Data immutability and preservation procedures for compliance with regulations such as SEC Rule 17-4a.
6. Service Auditors to the Statements on Standards for Attestation Engagements No. 16 (SSAE-16) certified service
7. User and group level access control to limit data access.
8. Authentication and logging of all access to your data.

When a backup service provider offers this level of data protection, it can be safer to move backup offsite than keeping the service in house. With such a service, even small business can achieve enterprise-level security and reliability, all at a fraction of the cost of hiring in-house experts.

Has remote office backup become a nightmare?

2012-04-26T17:40:44Z

Remote office backup should be a fairly straightforward process, in theory. Just install a tape drive at each office and assign someone at that site to keep an eye on the backup, change the tapes as needed, and forward them to the main office.

In the real world, however, there are problems with determining who at the office has backup as an additional duty. Then, since it is not that person’s main job, he may forget. Or he goes on vacation. Or he gets sick. Or he is out visiting a customer. Or he has a rush job the boss is pushing him to complete. Or…

An alternative is to set up a centralized backup strategy, but the costs can spiral out of control. You need to license backup software that can remotely configure and monitor all the backups and additional servers or disk space is needed at the head office. Each remote office needs its own backup appliance. Maybe you need to add routers, switches and bandwidth at the head office and WAN acceleration appliances at the branches. And don’t forget to add in all the time spent managing all this new gear.

Rather than going through all this expense and trouble, a better approach might be use an online backup service provider for these remote locations. From the service provider’s perspective, every customer is a remote office. It’s a whole business model based on building the infrastructure and services to backup remote offices. With Backup-as-a-Service you’re able to:

• Remotely install and configure backup on the remote office servers and laptops within a few minutes.

• Eliminate backup hardware and licenses for the remote office.

• Avoid having remote personnel monitor backups.

• Never purchase, change or ship another tape.

• Set and manage all permissions and policies from the central office.

• Have remote workers restore their own corrupted or deleted files without having to call the help desk.

• Keep on budget, since headquarters doesn’t need to add servers, storage or network capacity to accommodate branch offices.

While most companies find it easiest to move all backup to the cloud, if you already have a working backup system in the main office you may want to keep that in place, and just send data from the remote offices to the cloud.

For an example of how to use cloud backup to protect a remote office, take a look at the case study for international payments firm Acupay.

6 Reasons Why a Backup Appliance is Unnecessary

2012-04-24T03:09:00Z

The data center hardware industry’s new trend is marketing appliances which combine computing, software and storage in a single box to replace discrete components.

One of the areas where appliances get discussed a lot is backup. These are known as Purpose Built Backup Appliances or PBBA solutions. According to IDC estimates $2.8 billion worth of PBBAs shipped in 2011 with 771,488 TB of capacity for an average cost of $3,629 per TB in hardware alone.

On-premise appliance-based backup solutions have some advantages for large enterprises, but for SMEs they can’t beat online backup for at least 6 reasons:

1. Upfront Appliance Costs

With an appliance, you still need to purchase the hardware and software, plus pay for any ongoing support, licensing or maintenance contracts.

You either oversize the appliance to accommodate planned growth or have to add more appliances as storage capacity increases. With online backup-as-a-service, on the other hand, all you do is pay for current capacity needed.

2. Appliances Need Upgrades and Refreshes

With an appliance, you still need to spend time keeping up to date on the latest changes in server and backup technology and you have to routinely replace your hardware as it ages or to meet new needs.

With online backup, the vendor has that responsibility.

3. Buying Multiple Appliances

It’s risky to rely on a single backup instance. Additional appliances are needed at multiple locations for disaster recovery and high availability.

With backup-as-a-service, the vendor maintains the additional copies so that if a device, a rack or an entire data center goes down, your data is still continuously available. For example, Zetta uses a unique RAIN-6 architecture to insure high availability for our customers.

4. Virtualized Backup

With PBBAs, your backup is still tied to a particular piece of hardware in a particular rack, in a particular room. With online backup, the backup is virtualized among multiple devices and data centers so there is never a single point of failure.

5. Completely Eliminating Tape

When using a PBBA, you still need to offload the data to tape for offsite archiving.

With Zetta, every backup is available for instant online restoration for a period of at least seven years and even longer if you require it.

6. Higher Burden on IT Team

An appliance simplifies backup, but still requires trained specialists to monitor and manage the backup and restoration processes.

With backup-as-a-service, staff can be freed up for other tasks.

These are the 6 best reasons for small and medium sized businesses to consider online backup for real enterprise-grade data protection that’s really affordable.

Testing Zetta: Storage Switzerland Reviews Our Cloud Backup Solution

2012-04-17T18:18:47Z

After a few weeks of testing our cloud backup service, Storage Switzerland published a review of Zetta DataProtect yesterday. In their words, the service is: “impressive – easy and reliable and certainly worthy of strong consideration.”

Let’s dig into more of their specific comments, and why they might be relevant to your organization’s data backup and recovery needs:

“One simple goal – get critical data offsite as simply and reliably as possible.”

Having an offsite copy of the really important data your organization generates everyday is an obvious advantage in scenarios ranging from a file server crash to a datacenter power failure. Tape backup solutions are not simple and consumer-grade online backup services are not reliable, but we’re happy to help achieve your “one simple goal.”

“Many cloud backup providers force the user to implement another piece of backup hardware.”

A unique feature of Zetta’s backup solution is that there is no appliance to buy, install, and manage in your datacenter. This means there’s no single point of failure like with an on-premise appliance. It also means lower TCO, since you never buy a unit – not to start with and not to “upgrade” with more storage later.

“A significant advantage for backup administrators needing to deploy across multiple offices or remote users.”

Another benefit of being appliance-free is that Zetta can backup all your remote offices easily with no extra fees. Even if an intern tried to backup all 5 seasons of Mad Men in HD she downloaded, it would be less than 300GB and barely move the needle on your monthly bill.

“A variety of methods to recover the data, the simplest being to mount the backup volume as a file system and drag back the files.”

The unique ability to recover files from a browser window is something that makes life so much easier when the inevitable data loss event occurs. All the files, directories, and databases are there and ready to use.

“Backend infrastructure more like that designed for primary storage and better able to handle growth.”

Zetta’s enterprise-grade data centers are SAS 70 Type II and SSAE 16 certified. These auditing standards are proof of how seriously we take data protection and availability. Consumer-grade services can’t and won’t offer this level of security.

The team at Storage Switzerland sees a lot of backup solutions, and they think Zetta is, “easy and reliable and certainly worthy of strong consideration.” Since the best way to consider a backup service is to try it out, we’re offering a 15-day trial here.

Great Cloud and Online Backup Solutions are Made, Not Born

2012-04-13T05:35:12Z

It was an honor today to find Zetta included in InfoStor’s 6 Great Cloud and Online Backup Solutions. The companies featured are a mix of consumer and business solutions and we’re thrilled to be compared with a legendary product like Symantec’s Backup Exec.

Of course, Zetta is unique on the list for being the only true enterprise-grade solution for SMEs. What makes Zetta’s DataProtect unique?

1. Enterprise-grade Performance, Redundancy, Security, and Support

We say “enterprise-grade” performance because of the speed of both backup and recovery you’re able to achieve using Zetta’s sub-file level technology and multi-threaded data transport over the internet. If speed is an important criteria for your organization, we challenge you to sign up for a free trial and test us against any other online backup provider.

2. Redundancy Across Disks, Nodes, and Datacenters

The DataProtect solution offers RAIN-6 (Redundant Array of Independent Nodes) redundancy technology, which stripes your data across independent computers keeping it safe whether there is a network, power supply, memory, or disk failure. RAIN gives rise to greater availability of the backup service, so it’s always there for backing up or restoring your data.

Zetta customers also have the option for their data to live in both our West Coast and East Coast datacenters.

3. Real Data Security

All Zetta customer data is encrypted at rest in our SAS70 Type II certified and SSAE 16 certified datacenters. This means compliance with many different industry data availability standards. Consumer-grade or white-labeled backup products are nowhere close.

Included in your monthly fee is 24×7 live support from our friendly engineers here in Sunnyvale, CA. They tend to solve issues really quickly then go back to building epic Star Wars Lego sets.

4. Appliance-Free

As Steve Jobs famously said, “If you see an appliance, they blew it.” Well, he said it about iPad competitors, but the meaning is true for enterprise cloud backup services.

5. Zetta Is Made For SME

If your organization has 2TB to 50TB of data to backup offsite then Zetta is the best choice you can make. Since Zetta is delivered as a managed service, there’s never a charge for the number of clients or plugins like SQL, Exchange, or VMware. And absolutely no bandwidth charges. Ever.

2 Totally Different Ways To Do SQL Server Backup & Recovery

2012-04-11T00:19:06Z

This post is about how traditional database backup products work and how Zetta’s new SQL server backup feature, which is part of our DataProtect solution, does the job in a distinctly different way. Both the solution and this post were created because finding a database backup solution for a medium-sized organization is painful.

Database Backup Using “Full, Differential, and Log” Modes

Most traditional database backup products use “full, differential, and log” based backup modes. So, what do these terms mean?

A full backup is just what it implies — everything.

A log is essentially a list of the changes the database has made since the last full backup. If you have a full backup from, say, 4/1/12 and logs that cover 4/1/12 – 4/10/12, you can take the original backup, and replay the logs, bringing it current to the 4/10/12 version.

A differential is similar to a log based backup, but can be smaller and faster to recover in that it will have some amount of update coalescing, where if a given record (say a daily account balance) was updated over time the logs would contain each discrete value but the differential would contain only the latest version for that record.

With both of these backup types, it’s necessary to restore the original backup and the differential or log sets. This is what makes it less space and network efficient than a pure incremental backup.

Database Backup Using ZettaMirror with Sub-file Technology

Zetta’s lightweight software agent, called ZettaMirror, leverages sub-file technology to scan the database byte-for-byte to find database pages that have changed, and only transmit the pages that have changed up to the Zetta service.

While this is similar to an incremental backup, we actually restore the changes on our end, resulting in the most-recent backup being available and fully formed, ready for restore. Version history is always available via our space-efficient snapshots, going back in time.

The advantage is that it’s, “incremental forever,” handles any update type, and is the most efficient possible format for a restore.

Backup process of a Microsoft SQL database using ZettaMirror:

1) Connect to the database, inquire if it’s in simple recovery mode, or full recovery mode.

2) Using the .NET SQL Server Manager API, cause the database to de-stage any dirty pages out of memory onto disk, and use VSS to create a read-consistent version for the ZettaMirror Job.

3) Scan the pages across the VSS snapshot for changes, then transmit just the changes up to Zetta’s datacenter.

4) Create a named snapshot recovery point for this database on the Zetta volume.

5) If the database mode was full recovery mode and everything was successful, release the snapshot, and truncate the logs.

Because our methodology of always taking full backups, then using binary comparison to derive the change set, the use of Microsoft or other backup utilities will not cause ZettaMirror — unlike most other products — to produce a backup that can’t be restored.

As you can see, traditional database backup and Zetta’s DataProtect service featuring ZettaMirror are really 2 totally different ways to do SQL server backup and recovery. If you’re ready to try the Zetta way in your environment, you can start a trial here. If you have questions or want to learn more, feel free to give us a call or find out more about how it works.

Zetta DataProtect 3.0 Release – Here’s what the Backup & Recovery Industry is Saying

2012-04-06T21:40:58Z

Here at Zetta, we recently launched the 3.0 version of DataProtect, our enterprise-grade online backup and disaster recovery service. Some of the new features added in this release are:

- Support for new data types including MS SQL and Windows System State
- 10x performance increase using metadata cache and network data compression
- Platform support for Apple / Macintosh OS
- Easier operation with “Snap After Sync” snapshot trigger

As part of the launch we presented the new features to IT industry press and analysts. Some of their statements and reactions are below. Since these guys (and ladies) hear from almost every cloud service vendor at one time or another, they tend to have a pretty detailed understanding of the differences between solutions that sound similar on the surface. Here is some of what they said:

“In the event of a disaster, IT can mount a Web drive for direct access to the Zetta cloud. With system state backup, Zetta can rebuild the entire server to dissimilar hardware by reloading the operating system and applying the system state and user data files from the Zetta replica.” [Zetta Launches SMB Cloud Storage Platform]

“The company has developed a bandwidth-conserving code that cuts down on storage and network traffic. A lightweight agent is installed on a server or endpoint — DataProtect is a 100 percent software play, no hardware appliances here.” [Zetta.net Upgrades Cloud Backup Platform]

“With the new version, Zetta.net now includes a feature called Snap After Sync, which gives users the ability to produce snapshots after the system has finished synchronizing.” [Zetta.net Cloud Backup & Recovery Service Refresh Offers 10X Better Performance]

“Zetta.net has transformed itself with version 3.0 and makes cloud data protection and disaster recovery feasible for the mid-market with compelling features, no capital expense and low, predictable operating expenses.” [Zetta.net 3.0 Provides Cloud Services For Data Protection and Disaster Recovery]

More information about our multi-platform and appliance-less online backup and disaster recovery solution for mid-size enterprises is here: Zetta DataProtect

Or, if you don’t care about the opinions of reporters and analysts and just want to try the service to see how it works in your environment, a 15-day free backup trial is now available.