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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 »

January 11, 2012

5 Cloud Backup Accessibility Questions

Jeff runs corporate marketing for Zetta. Prior to Zetta, Jeff was VP of Marketing at Pivot3 and VP of Marketing at Pillar Data Systems.

Cloud Backup Accessibility Accessibility refers to how your company — and other authorized parties — can access its cloud backup data. After all, the whole point of enterprise online backup (aside from regulatory compliance) is to be able to access the backup data when you need it.

So in evaluating cloud backup vendors, in addition to asking about performance, security, and price, it’s important to ask about cloud backup accessibility, for various retrieval scenarios. For example:

Can users recover individual files or email messages — or entire directories — directly, without having to go through the help desk?

Can a system administrator initiate a large retrieval via their mobile device?

Can the backup provider quickly put a large retrieval — one that would take too long to download across the network — onto a hard drive or storage appliance and ship it?

Can IT connect the backup to other cloud services?

1. Who Can Access Backups?

Individual consumers access their own typically single-user, single-machine account. But a company backup can be supporting anywhere from a few dozen to tens of thousands of machines, drives and users, not to mention multi-person workgroups, and server data like email and SQL databases.

So it is important to know whether access is restricted only to IT staff, or whether end users can access their backups — and whether it’s possible to limit end-user access to read-only, with no delete privileges.

Similarly, it is important to know whether you can access your data from any web browser (e.g., on a computer or mobile device), using the passwords; or (increasingly unlikely) just from the site and original computer.

And is it possible to access the backup service via a smartphone, tablet or other mobile device, either to view or download files, or to request a larger restore?

One access option from Zetta is web-based retrieval of individual files or whole directories by anyone so authorized, including the individual data user.

And with the Zetta system, access is always authenticated and logged, and is auditable via customer viewable logs.

2. How Easy is it to Access my Data?

Can authorized users easily reach and navigate backups? How easy or hard is it to find files — does the service allow you to find files by searching file names or file contents?

Once files or directories have been selected, how quickly are they available? If files need to be rebuilt (e.g., incremental updates applied to the original baseline save), does that take seconds? Minute? Hours?

Once the data is available, does the user need to download it to access it, or can the cloud-based data be accessed — mounted as a live remote drive or directory — directly by applications?

With Zetta, data is stored in native file format exactly as it exists on the original server, preserving familiar file paths for easy access. The file structures at Zetta can be browsed via the web or mounted and accessed directly by a remote server or desktop for a near instant and seamless recovery.

3. Can Data Be Physically Shipped for Larger Restore Requests?

Unless you have a superfast connection between your site and the backup service, large restore requests — say, a terabyte — may take unacceptably long to download. (Assuming you can’t remotely mount the restore.) This is particularly if the restore needs to go to a remote site with a comparatively lower-bandwidth Internet connection.

Here, couriering a hard drive, or even a NAS appliance, may be faster. Does the backup provider offer this option? If so, what does it cost? And how is the shipment secured, e.g., what encryption options are there, and how are encryption keys conveyed? Is the drive in a physically protected, secured container?

Zetta provides options for disk-based transfer of data into or out of the Zetta environment. In almost every case, however, clients find that with Zetta optimized data transfer, it’s just as quick, or quicker, to move the data over the network with as much as a terabyte moving per day.

4. Are Older Versions of Files Available?

Many backup services support journaling, versioning, or other ways to preserve older views of files and filesystems. If you think you may need to look at versions that may be months-to-years old, be sure to ask whether this is possible — and how easy or difficult, and quickly or slowly — this can be done.

Zetta provides a comprehensive and easily browsed or mounted snapshot tree for instant access to past versions of files. Optionally, the volume can be “locked” to prevent deletion of file versions, insuring compliance with retention policies.

5. Beyond the “Backup Silo” — Can Other Cloud Services Access My Backup?

Historically, backups were only requested by IT or end users. But many cloud applications are set up so they can interact with each other. Can you enable another cloud service to access your backups? For example, can you point a cloud-based virtual-machine image of one of your servers at the backup, for quicker, zero-CapEx Business Continuity / Disaster Recovery?

With Zetta’s file mount capability, virtual servers can directly mount the Zetta file system for direct file access.

As you can see, understanding the accessibility parameters for a backup service can — and should — play an important part in selecting a cloud backup provider for your company. Because you don’t just create backups, you are likely to want to use them.

To learn more and explore other aspects of the cloud backup decision and to download a copy of the Cloud Backup Decision Guide, visit the Cloud Backup Decision Center.

Tags: cloud backup, cloud backup access, web-based access
Posted in Cloud Storage, Data Backup, Data Protection | No Comments »

January 09, 2012

5 Cloud Backup Security Concerns

Jeff runs corporate marketing for Zetta. Prior to Zetta, Jeff was VP of Marketing at Pivot3 and VP of Marketing at Pillar Data Systems.

Cloud Backup Security Cloud-based backup services are a great match for companies, particularly small-to-medium sized businesses (SMBs) whose IT time is already stretched thin, and larger companies with remote and branch offices (ROBOs) in need of automatic backup.

In selecting from the growing number of cloud backup providers, one important topic to examine is cloud backup security — what technologies, policies, and procedures does the provider use to ensure that your data will be safe? In other words, “What are you doing to ensure nobody else can see or steal my data?”

Secure From What?

Keeping your backup data safe includes:

Protection against “sniffing” (eavesdropping) as it goes from your machines to the backup cloud
Protection against electronic theft
Protection against physical theft
Protection from storage hardware or software glitches
Protection against physical events

1. Securing Data in Transit

“Data in motion,” a.k.a. “data in transit,” refers to data being moved over a network, versus “data at rest,” which means data residing on a storage media or device.

It is impossible (or close enough to impossible) to guarantee that the network devices and links in a connection are physically protected against electronic “eavesdropping.” Therefore, data in motion has to be protected via encryption, so that any captured traffic is unreadable by unauthorized parties. This can be done one or more methods:

Encrypting the data by the backup client at the source (gives rise to password and/or key management problems)

Using a data transfer protocol that offers an encrypted mode (for example, sFTP, FTPS, and Secure WebDav over HTTPS)

Using a secure tunnel such as an IPsec VPN.

Make sure your backup solution provides a guaranteed, enforced method of data encryption.

2. Protecting Against Electronic Theft

Once your backup data has arrived at the cloud provider and stored (become “data at rest”), how secure is it from being accessed by unauthorized parties — either internally, e.g., by provider employees, or by network intruders, malware attacks, etc?

One feature to look for is “logical partitioning” within the cloud service. Virtualization and other techniques can ensure that your company’s access point to the service is just for you.

Encryption should also protect your stored “data at rest,” insuring that even in the unlikely event of the datacenter media being compromised, the data itself is unusable. Zetta encrypts data at rest so that when hard drives fail they can be repaired or replaced instead of physically destroyed.

3. Protecting Data From Physical Theft

If the data center is not physically secured, your data is still at risk — unsecured drives or storage systems could be stolen.

Physical security includes locked doors and video surveillance, for example. Look for facilities that have received operational certifications like SAS70 Type II or the new SSAE-16 SOC 2, which reflect they meet validated best practices for administration operations.

In the case of Zetta, we not only use facilities that are under SAS70 Type II auditing, but also have our storage service procedures under SAS70 Type II (to be SSAE-16) auditing.

4. Protecting Data From Storage Hardware or Software Glitches

Backups ensure recovery from problems with the primary copy of the data, but backups, too, need protection. Hardware and software are subject to failures, but proper technology can also be used to prevent many failures, or avoid data loss caused by failures.

For example, Zetta uses a combination of continuous data validation plus advanced RAIN technology so that the backup data is protected.

To ensure the preservation of data integrity, Zetta software performs ongoing integrity monitoring and remediating. Zetta employs consistent use of strong cryptographic hashing via SHA1 at the file level and CRC at the chunk level, and constantly monitors these on writes, reads and at-rest, rooting out potential data corruption and proactively self-repairing — without impacting performance.

And where traditional RAID-6 encodes data across separate disks, Zetta’s RAIN-6 software takes this one step further, encoding the data across separate computers, to further reduce the potential impact of any failure, e.g. for more than just failed disks. This approach yields a level of redundant protection not available even in enterprise storage hardware.

5. Insuring That Physical Events Do Not Destroy Data

Like all buildings, data centers are potentially subject to damage from weather — like flood, winter emergencies, hurricanes and tornadoes — or earthquakes, power outages, accidents, and other events.

Backup data centers are often situated in low-risk areas, and the physical plant “hardened” to withstand and survive most events, keeping your data safe and secure.

For extra security, cloud backup services may have multiple sites, replicating your backups — a backup for the backup, as it were.

Before you select a backup provider, don’t just ask about performance or price. (But do ask about these as well.) Find out what security they offer — and what certifications they have validating their claims.

Zetta provides complete cloud backup security addressing all five of these concerns. For more information and to examine the other cloud backup decision points, visit the cloud backup decision center.

Tags: cloud backup security, data protection, data theft, encryption, SAS70 TYpe II
Posted in Cloud Storage, Data Backup, Data Protection, Disaster Recovery | No Comments »

January 05, 2012

Is Cloud Backup Right for You? Four Key Factors…

Jeff runs corporate marketing for Zetta. Prior to Zetta, Jeff was VP of Marketing at Pivot3 and VP of Marketing at Pillar Data Systems.

Is Cloud Backup right for you? Cloud backup isn’t necessarily the only or best choice for everyone. But cloud backup offerings continue to expand their capabilities and gain market acceptance. More providers are offering cloud backup services, and many companies, particularly those still using tape or disk-to-tape (D2T) are taking a closer look at their current backup solutions, to see if cloud backup makes more sense.

Navigating the array of providers and offerings to find the ideal solution for your needs can prove challenging. Many solutions are consumer or SOHO oriented, and lack business grade features. Other solutions billing themselves as enterprise provide more of a toolkit rather than a turnkey solution. Depending on your needs, you may need just backup, or your requirements may include compliance or business continuity/disaster recovery solutions. Zetta, for example, is a provider of enterprise online backup and disaster recovery.

Here is a quick overview of four key factors to look at in selecting the right cloud backup solution for your company: Bandwidth, Security, Accessibility, and Cost. (We’ll go into more detail about these in subsequent blog posts.)

BANDWIDTH

Bandwidth does not just refer the speed of the connection between your site and the backup provider. It also refers to the amount of bandwidth that the backup solution requires. And the amount of bandwidth required depends on several factors, including how much data needs to be uploaded for a backup, and what’s the “backup window” — how quickly does the backup have to be done.

SECURITY

Security includes protecting the data during the local backup process and throughout its end-to-end transport between your systems and the backup service. Security also concerns the digital and physical protection of the backup in the cloud data center(s) — for example, is it safe from natural disasters, network attacks, and live intruders?

ACCESSIBILITY

Accessibility refers to how your company — and other authorized parties — can access the backup data. For example, can a system administrator initiate a large retrieval via their mobile device? Can the backup provider quickly put a large retrieval onto a hard drive or storage appliance and ship it? Can IT connect the backup to other cloud services?

COST

Cost covers what you pay — not just per-month, but also any start-up fees, added costs for small or large restores, and other fees. What may look like a bargain may, when you add up all the fees, turn out not to be one.

In the next several posts, we’ll look at these factors more closely, and suggest some questions that companies should ask themselves and potential backup providers.

For more information and to run our bandwidth assessment tool, visit the Zetta cloud backup decision center.

Tags: Accessibility, Bandwidth, cloud backup, Cost, security
Posted in Cloud Storage, Data Backup, Disaster Recovery | No Comments »

January 03, 2012

Cloud Backup: More Than Just Offsite and Online

Jeff runs corporate marketing for Zetta. Prior to Zetta, Jeff was VP of Marketing at Pivot3 and VP of Marketing at Pillar Data Systems.

Cloud Backup provides offsite and online and more
Just about any business using computers needs backup for its data. (There may be some exceptions, but offhand I can’t think of any.)

Somebody might change or delete a file that shouldn’t have been altered. Data might be scrambled by software errors, power glitches or hardware failures. Hard drives fail. A site might become inaccessible, due to network problems, weather, or other events. Backups let companies recover and regain access to data — and depending on the company’s industry, may be required by regulatory compliance.

But what form of backup should you use? Ideally your data is both offsite, to protect against the broadest range of failures, and your data is online, to allow the quickest recovery. Cloud backup can provide both and more.

“Premises” backups, a.k.a. local backups — backups kept on site — let companies restore large amounts of data quickly and easily. But local backups don’t protect and provide access to data when site-level events occur that damage onsite IT gear and/or keep employees and customers from accessing data. For example, network or electrical outages; weather and environmental occurrences like fire, flood, tornado, earthquake, or snow storm; or deliberate human events like IT theft or vandalism.

Offsite backups provide the security of insulating the backup from on-site circumstances. “Old-school” offsite backups saved data to tapes, which are physically couriered to and stored in a distant secure facility, and, when a backup is needed, located and read. (Assuming the tape can be found and can be used… which is not always the case.) More recently, many companies have turned to optical media or removable hard drives instead of tapes for this approach.

“Online” backups transport the backup data over network links, such as via the Internet, either “nearline” to robot tape libraries, or online, to disk-based virtual tape libraries (VTL) or other storage systems. This lets companies avoid putting their backup data at risk in transit (not a bad idea, given how many backup tapes, CD/DVDs, and hard drives have gone astray).

Some online backup solutions also provide varying degrees of browser-based access to files for recovery or sharing, along with the ability to request larger restores for download or physical shipment. However, this access is generally “silo-like,” meaning the backup is accessible only by the company — either IT administrators or end users.

Today, cloud backup providers are taking online backup several steps further:

Offering not just browser-based, silo-like recovery/restore access, where only the user can access the online backup, but access by other authorized companies and individuals, and also mounted by other servers or cloud services. This lets cloud backups be used not just for sharing and collaboration, but also to connect to BC/DR (Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery) services.

Providing the ease and simplicity of low/no-premises software or hardware, and minimal configuration or administration.

No capex (initial or ongoing capital expenditures), and pay-as-you-go service — pay for what you need.

Simple scaling. All the additional capacity you want is available when you need it.

And for companies who want the speed of local backup with the protection and flexibility of cloud back-up, there is the option of doing both, either separately, or using a hybrid local/cloud combination. Depending on the architecture of the combined solutions, this hybrid approach can add management complexity and costs.

Is cloud backup right for you? To answer that, your company needs to understand and decide its backup needs — and understand the factors that differentiate cloud and other backup solutions. In a series of upcoming posts, we’ll be talking about these topics.

In the meantime, learn more about Zetta cloud-based enterprise online backup and recovery here.

Tags: cloud backup, disaster recovery, online backup
Posted in Cloud Storage, Data Backup, Data Protection, Disaster Recovery | No Comments »

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