Zetta.net Refreshes DataProtect, Its Cloud Backup and Recovery Service

Zetta.net has announced a new version of DataProtect, its cloud-based online backup and data recovery service. With the new release comes a multitude of changes.

"Zetta.net 3.0 is a complete rewrite and relaunch of the company’s offerings, which target the small to medium enterprise with features that include security and high-speed recovery of data from the cloud," says Jim Bagley, a senior analyst and business development consultant at Storage Strategies NOW. "Key to the functionality is the use of the Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning protocol, which is much more efficient than the Network File System/Common Internet File System protocols used in the initial Zetta versions. The company uses two cloud data centers to store data from both client and server devices. Data is deduped and encrypted in flight and at rest."

The new release offers SQL and Windows Systems State file protection; soon, protection will be extended to Microsoft Exchange Files. Version 3.0 will continue to provide support for unstructured data files, VMWare and data restore to dissimilar hardware. Other new features include support for Macintoshes, as well as the Windows and multiple Linux platforms that were already supported. Data transfer speeds are up to 10 times faster using features such as a local metadata cache, deduplication and advanced network data compression.

Less than a week ago, Quantum announced a software platform to help customers take advantage of cloud-based data protection using its vmPro technology and newly launched virtual deduplication appliance, DXi V1000. Storage architects are rightly concerned about back-end storage costs and data transmission costs, says Kevin Tolly, founder of The Tolly Group. Quantum's new cloud service addresses these issues by providing sophisticated deduplication before the data hits the cloud, which can dramatically reduce the amount of data that must be transported to the cloud and, subsequently, stored in the cloud.

Dell also beefed up its data-protection portfolio earlier this month with the acquisition of AppAssure and its 6,000 customers, service providers and partners worldwide. Replay4, its product software, can perform three critical data-protection functions--backup/restore, archiving and disaster recovery--in a mix of physical, virtual and cloud environments, eliminating the need to run traditional backup jobs through a continuous backup protection process.

Other new features in Zetta.net 3.0 include wireline compression, the ability to throttle functions based on the time of day, and the ability to exclude certain files from backup, says Chris Schinn, VP of product management. With the enhancements, performance can be improved by up to 10 times compared with the performance of the previous version, the company says. The service is aimed at small to midsize businesses that might not have IT people on staff to perform such functions.

Like many other backup and disaster recovery products and services, Zetta.net includes the ability to produce snapshots, or backups that can be used to restore an organization’s data more quickly after an outage. 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. The ability to protect Microsoft Exchange data files will be added in a future release, according to the company.

The service is available now with a typical configuration priced at $950 per month for up to 2 terabytes of storage space. Zetta.net currently has 120 customers that generate 4.8 billion file syncs per month, with what the company claims is a 100% success rate for recovery. The service is software-based and requires no hardware such as appliances.

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