Zetta Scalabytes Blog « This blog is focused on sharing best practices for enterprise online backup and disaster recovery from Zetta's founders and leaders. Zetta Scalabytes Blog

May 17, 2012

When Pixar Deleted Toy Story 2 – How Cloud Disaster Recovery Makes a Hero of IT

Nick is Zetta's Corporate Reporter, and has been writing and telling stories about technology with blogs and social media since the days when the BBS reigned.

The video above tells the story of the day that someone at Pixar accidentally ran the “RM*” delete command on the Linux and Unix workstations that held all the Toy Story 2 data. The work of 30 people over a year was deleted in :20 seconds. As tends to happen in data disasters, the local backup system had also been failing for a month without being noticed, so the film was gone.

In the end, a local copy of the data was found on the technical director’s personal laptop at home, and the movie went on to earn $500 million at the box office and a rare 100% on the Tomatometer.

What can we learn from Pixar’s scenario that can benefit other mid-sized enterprises with large amounts of critical data?

1. The Importance of online /cloud backups

The list of reasons not to rely on local backups is long. It includes physical damage like floods and tornadoes that destroy primary data sources and backups at the same time, as well as human errors like in this Pixar case.

2. Use replicate and sync to ensure that the whole file system is replicated in the cloud

When critical data, like graphics and video effects files, are accidentally deleted, they need to be recovered quickly so people can get back to work. The best way to do this is with a replicated file system in the cloud. Having backup data in a proprietary backup format doesn’t help when it’s time to recover that data for use.

Additionally, any solution that doesn’t let you instantly check the validity of your backups should be considered a deal-breaker. Basically, this means all tape backup systems.

3. Recover quickly via the Internet to dissimilar hardware, even if the datacenter is down

When you’re dealing with a live disaster recovery scenario, as opposed to a recovering a single file or folder, having web access to replicated backup files that remote employees can work from means business can continue.

4. Importance of multi-platform support

The era of the all “Windows shop” is quickly ending. A backup solution simply must support Linux and Mac OS in addition to Windows. Zetta for example, supports 18 platforms, including 11 different versions of Linux, 5 versions of Windows, and 2 versions of Mac OS.

5. Importance of supporting remote users and offices

VPNs and ad-hoc FTP servers have been a few of the somewhat reliable and secure options for backing up data from remote locations in the past. The evolution of enterprise-grade cloud solutions, like Zetta, now allows you to backup data from remote offices and users in minutes, without the hassle of VPN connections, appliances or servers.

The importance of having a recovery optimized backup can’t be understated. When three little characters like “RM*” can erase $500M worth of data, that little monthly fee for cloud backup becomes worth it for the peace of mind alone.

Tags: data loss, data protection, disaster recovery, online backup
Posted in Cloud backup, Disaster Recovery, online server backup, Server Backup | No Comments »

May 10, 2012

The Zetta Founders’ Story: From Netscape to Cloud Storage

Nick is Zetta's Corporate Reporter, and has been writing and telling stories about technology with blogs and social media since the days when the BBS reigned.

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.

Tags: Cloud Storage, Enterprise Cloud Storage, Zetta Data Protect, ZettaMirror
Posted in Cloud backup, Cloud Computing, cloud offsite backup, Cloud Storage, Zetta Company | No Comments »

May 09, 2012

11 Features to Look for in an Online Server Backup Solution

Nick is Zetta's Corporate Reporter, and has been writing and telling stories about technology with blogs and social media since the days when the BBS reigned.

Security Breach
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.

Tags: cloud backup solutions, disaster recovery, online server backup, Zetta Data Protect
Posted in Backup-as-a-service, Cloud backup, cloud offsite backup, Compliance, online server backup | No Comments »

May 03, 2012

Implement a Practical Web-based DR Strategy in 10 minutes

Nick is Zetta's Corporate Reporter, and has been writing and telling stories about technology with blogs and social media since the days when the BBS reigned.

Security Breach
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.

Tags: data backup, data protection, disaster recovery
Posted in Data Protection, Disaster Recovery, Offsite Backup | No Comments »

May 01, 2012

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

Nick is Zetta's Corporate Reporter, and has been writing and telling stories about technology with blogs and social media since the days when the BBS reigned.

Security Breach
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.

Old Fashioned Data Security
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.