F O R P R A C T I C A L I T B U Y E R S

Five Cloud Backup Case Studies

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

If cloud backup sounds too good to be true, then deployment will lead to

disillusionment. That’s been the path of many IT organizations looking at

cloud backup and DR-as-a-Service. This paper will provide tips – based on

case studies from real IT organizations – for practical IT buyers on how to

select and deploy the right cloud backup and DR solution for your

environment.

This paper’s goal is to cut through vendor fluff and focus on real life

IT experiences.

W H I T E P A P E R

THE FIVE FACTORS OF EVALUATING CLOUD BACKUP SOLUTIONS

Practical IT buyers shopping for cloud backup face the challenge of finding a solution that has the right mix of performance, functionality, security, and cost for their specific environment among hundreds of vendors offering similar solutions.

The reality is that cloud backup solutions vary widely, from enterprise-grade cloud-based services like Zetta.net to consumer-grade products and basic online storage.

The case studies below show how IT managers successfully overcame the five real-world challenges of cloud backup vendor selection:

Cloud PerformanceRapidly growing data needs faster backup and recovery speeds to reduce downtime and to back up more data in established backup windows.

Functionality vs. PriceNew technologies have introduced ways to significantly cut costs while adding functionality like archiving and DR.

Server vs. Laptop BackupBacking up server data is significantly different from laptops. Servers typically have larger data sets, more OSs to support, more data types that require a unique backup approach (for example, SQL, Exchange, VMware, Hyper-V, and NetApp), have more critical data, less tolerance for data corruption, and higher priority during DR situations.

SecurityWhat is the right amount of security for your environment? Enterprise data usually requires 256-bit encryption and SSAE 16 audits.

Central & Remote Office BackupWith the growing number of remote offices and branch locations, traditional backup software and appliances are rapidly becoming impractical in terms of complexity, costs, and IT resources. Enterprise-grade solutions that enable server backup to existing on-premise storage and a secure cloud—as well as archiving and DR without the need for appliances—deliver the right balance for organizations looking for complete data protection that can scale with them.

Here are experiences from five organizations that chose to deploy enterprise-grade cloud backup, DR, and archiving in their environment to address these challenges.

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Performance: 2.7TB Server Recovered in Less Than 24 Hours

Performance is the Achilles heel of practical cloud backup in the real world. “Fast backup” is a common claim in vendor materials, but the reality is different. Taking advantage of available free trial programs is the only way to evaluate the real performance of different cloud backup solutions.

The results of this performance test between Zetta, Mozy Pro, and Carbonite Business show that even for a small dataset like 150GB of SQL data, the time until the backup job completes varies significantly.

Group Photographers Association (GPA) is a professional photo lab specializing in the manufacturing of products like trading cards, plaques, and posters for youth sport leagues. GPA has a lot of data. “In addition to email and SQL databases, we have product designs, office data, system images, and snapshots for both server and client machines.” says Randy Paul, GPA’s IT manager. “The SAN has 40TB of disk array storage and a Microsoft Hyper-V server cluster sitting on top of it,” says Paul. “The images, which are the lifeblood of the company, are huge, and we get thousands of new images every day.”

GPA deployed Zetta’s 3-in-1 backup in their environment after losing 1TB of RAID storage in early 2012, and losing confidence in their existing D2D backup solution.

Then GPA experienced another disaster recovery event. “We had a catastrophic failure on a line-of-business server involving about 2.7TB of data,” recalls Paul. “Fortunately, we had begun protecting it with Zetta, and I had just built the new SAN infrastructure. So, we were able to put a new server there—and the actual restore downloading took just under 24 hours with a 100Mbps connection.”

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150GB OF SQL DATA:

Zetta: 1 hour, 5 min.

Mozy Pro: 3 hours, 18 min.

Carbonite Business: 100+ hours

PERFORMANCE TEST RESULTS*

* Performance test conducted in Zetta labs using identical data sets

C A S E S T U D Y

C A S E S T U D Y

3TB Server Recovery in 24 Hours

See the Rest of This Case Study:zetta.net/case-study-gpa

ORGANIZATION: Group Photographers Association

USE CASE: SQL server backup, laptop backup, disaster recovery

PERFORMANCE EXAMPLE: “We had a catastrophic failure on a line-of-business server involving 2.7TB of data. With Zetta the recovery took under 24 hours.”

– IT Director, GPA

Cloud Backup Performance Makes a Difference: Group Photographers Association Quickly Recovers Critical Server

The performance GPA benefited from was generated by a mix of patent-pending technologies, and standard features in Zetta’s 3-in-1 backup, disaster recovery and archiving:

WAN-traffic OptimizationZetta’s backup and recovery software uses a local backup catalog to make sure each file is sent to the cloud data centers only once.

Multi-threaded Data TransferData is sent using parallel threads to eliminate the bottlenecks of single-threaded transport solutions.

No Traffic ThrottlingData transfer speeds are never throttled by Zetta data centers.

SSD and RAM-based StorageEighty percent of recoveries are handled by SSD or RAM memory that responds faster than disk drives.

Another Zetta customer example that highlights the value of high-performance cloud backup is a Midwestern university that lowered their backup time—from 24 hours to 90 minutes—by switching to Zetta from a widely known backup software.

Performance is a critical component of cloud backup that requires testing in the environment where it will be deployed to verify that it works as advertised.

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Cloud Backup: Features That Drive Performance

NEXT STEPS: See Zetta’s Performance in Your Environment

START FREE TRIALGet access to all of Zetta.net’s backup and recovery functionality and customer-only resources.

Functionality vs. Price: Cloud Backup for NetApp Filer Saves $75k

Practical cloud backup buyers are looking to balance complete functionality—on-premise backup, cloud backup, disaster recovery, and archiving—with the cost. Complete backup for the environment of a medium-sized company with SQL, Exchange, Hyper-V, VMware, and NetApp can cost $100,000 to $300,000 and require complicated, multi-vendor backup deployment and management projects.

Nonprofit organization Cook Inlet Tribal Council (CITC) serves Alaska Native and American Indian people residing in Southcentral Alaska through support services including education, employment training, and support for individu-als recovering from addiction and substance abuse.

For CITC offsite, backup and disaster recovery are essential. In addition to the winter snow that frequently disrupts power and internet service, CITC is subject to HIPAA regulations for offsite backup due to the health records from treatment programs.

With about 2.5TB of email, databases, and files on their NetApp Filer, CITC’s small IT group was stuck with expensive, cumbersome, and not-al-ways-reliable choices for offsite backup and DR. IT Director Jerry Kung explains: “We can’t afford a Recovery Time Objective of weeks. We need the financial data up as fast as possible. People are relying on us.”

Provisioning a second NetApp Filer, including the data center hosting costs, third-party software, and a WAN traffic accelerator to minimize network bandwidth charges, would have cost $75,000.

CITC System Administrator Luke Bair describes Zetta’s value to him: “Zetta is a software-based solution, so it didn't require any more hardware. And Zetta offers other software plug-ins that work well with SQL, Exchange, Hyper-V, VMware, and was able to talk to our SAN. These are the key attributes we are looking for.”

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C A S E S T U D Y

C A S E S T U D Y

$75,000 Savings for HIPAA Compliant NetApp Backup

See the Rest of This Case Study:zetta.net/case-study-citc

ORGANIZATION: Cook Inlet Tribal Council

USE CASE:SQL, Exchange, Hyper-V, VMWare, and NetApp backup, disaster recovery, and HIPAA compliance

PERFORMANCE EXAMPLE: “Provisioning a second NetApp Filer, including the data center hosting costs, and third-party software would have cost $75,000.”

– IT Director, CITC

Cloud Backup Functionality: Nonprofit Adds NetApp Offsite Backup and Disaster Recovery with No New Hardware

NEXT STEPS: Get Custom Pricing

GET CUSTOM PRICINGRequest custom pricing from Zetta for your organization’s environment

Avoiding the large capital costs of new hardware made a difference for CITC’s budget. Backup costs for 3TB of data are compared here, with a real-world example from a current Zetta customer. One-year costs for Zetta’s service is 60% lower than a replacement LTO-5 tape system.

Zetta costs 31% less per month and eliminates $17K in new hardware costs.

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Cloud Backup Costs: Reducing Backup Costs by 60%

Enterprise-grade cloud backup delivers on-premise backup, cloud backup, disaster recovery, and archiving for a simple, all-inclusive price that starts at $225 per month and includes:

Software licenses for unlimited number of servers/endpointsAll functionality included (Backup, DR, archiving)Supports: SQL, Exchange, VMWare, Hyper-V, NetApp, System State, Files, Network Shares500GB of secure online storage24x7 U.S.-based support

Cloud Backup – Functionality vs. Price: Get Both

$41,019.52

$16,588.80

NEWTAPE SYSTEM

ZETTA.NET

1-YEAR COSTS SPREADSHEET COMPARISON

31% LOWER MONTHLYCOSTS WITH ZETTA.NET

SAVED $17K IN CAPEXWITH ZETTA.NET

ZETTA.NET

RECURRING MONTHLY EXPENSESIron MountainIT Weekly hours touching/moving tapesSymantec Netbackup software maintenanceIBM Hardware server maintenanceLTO Tape drive maintenanceTOTAL

$750.00 $960.00$165.79 $115.67$150.00

$2,141.46

RECURRING MONTHLY EXPENSES3TB VolumeTOTAL

$1,382.40$1,382.40

CAPITAL REQUIRED––TOTAL

$0.00$0.00

CAPITAL REQUIREDNew Tape DriveNew Server and Windows Server OS for Tape Drive50 new LTO-5 tapesTOTAL

$9,922.00 $5,200.00$2,000.00

$17,122.00

TOTAL COSTSTotal Monthly CostTotal Capital

$1,991.46$17,122.00

TOTAL COSTSTotal Monthly CostTotal Capital

$1,382.40$0.00

NEW TAPE SYSTEM

Server Backup: Virtual + Physical Server Backup With One Solution

The mixed physical and virtual server environments that are common in enterprises have seen rapid adoption by smaller organizations. Adding Hyper-V and VMware backup requirements to the list of physical servers—SQL, Exchange, Linux, Mac, and NetApp—has lead some companies to deploy multiple backup products for different server types, significantly increasing management complexity and cost.

Merced College's IT environment includes 30 physical servers, including Windows, Linux, and Mac, and 65 VMware virtual servers. Data includes Exchange and SQL databases, other applications' data, and the home directories of the college's employees and faculty.

Merced’s IT Director Don Peterson chose Zetta’s solution after pricing out a D2D2T system, “With Zetta we won't spend nearly as much on tape hardware, backup software, or implementation which would have cost $200,000.”

Not only has Merced lowered their cost for server backup, but also made backup simpler to manage. “Using Zetta takes a lot less of our time—no more tapes running out of space before a backup finished,” says Merced’s Network Administrator Arlis Bortner.

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C A S E S T U D Y

C A S E S T U D Y

$200,000 Saved in 95 Server + 500 Laptop Deployment

See the Rest of This Case Study:zetta.net/case-study_Merced-College

ORGANIZATION: Merced College

USE CASE:30 physical servers, 65 VMs, and 500 faculty laptops

PERFORMANCE EXAMPLE: “Zetta keeps our backups online, in a secure, redundant, and available way.”

– IT Director, Merced College

Cloud Server Backup: College Saves $200,000 in Hardware and Software Costs for VMs and Windows, Linux, and Mac Server Backup

Security: Massachusetts Town Protects 377 Years of Records From Disaster

Data security is a critical component of the decision to use a cloud-based solution for offsite backup. Zetta uses 256-bit SSL and Salsa20 data encryption—both in flight and at rest in the data center—together with SSAE-16 audited data centers and service to deliver enterprise-grade cloud security that meets requirements for regulatory compliance.

The town of Dedham, first settled in 1635, is located about 12 miles south-west of Boston. Following a series of natural disasters, including flooding and major storms in surrounding areas, the town's IT staff decided that a better solution was needed to safeguard its 377 years of data. Dedham is now using Zetta to backup 60 VMs with 55TB of data, after migrating from an older tape backup solution.

The town’s Technology Director, Veronica Barnes, views the result this way: “Zetta has made us so much better prepared in the event of a disaster, enabling us to retrieve data more readily. If necessary, we could literally rebuild all the town’s data in a couple of hours compared to days with our previous system. You are only as good as your last backup, and with Zetta we don't even have to think about our data. We simply know it's protected."

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C A S E S T U D Y

C A S E S T U D Y

Online Backup Secures town of Dedham From Disaster

See the Rest of This Case Study:zetta.net/case-study_The-Town-of-Dedham

ORGANIZATION: The town of Dedham, MA

USE CASE:65 VMs

PERFORMANCE EXAMPLE: “The town is implementing new financial systems and will use Zetta to back those up from the start.”

– IT Director, Town of Dedham

Cloud Backup Security: 55TB of Secure Government Data

There are certain baseline security/privacy criteria that must be met prior to trusting a cloud storage solution with enter-prise data:

In-flight EncryptionEncrypted web-optimized file transfer protocols: SFTP, FTPS, and Secure WebDAV run over HTTPS.

Cloud Backup Security: Baseline Criteria to Trust Cloud Backup With Enterprise Data

Security: Remote Offices: Back Up the London Office From New York

As organizations grow and establish new offices and locations, it becomes increasingly hard to maintain an integrated IT infrastructure. Zetta enables remote office backup and recovery management from a single browser tab.

With two data center locations, in New York and London, Acupay enables investors in international companies to reduce excess foreign taxes on their holdings.

Thorpe Thompson is Acupay's director of technology and was challenged to maintain backups in both offices. “In New York, we were doing nightly incremental backups to tape with weekly full system backups. We were spending a lot of money on tape media and the offsite service,” he says.

In addition, backups at the London office were difficult to oversee remotely since the London office was managed by different staff onsite and a separate offsite storage vendor. After deploying Zetta to both offices, Thompson boasted, “We implemented Zetta and got better reliability. I spend less time and attention on backup, it takes less time for data recovery, and we added the London office to the process.”

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C A S E S T U D Y

C A S E S T U D Y

Painless Remote Office Backup & DR

See the Rest of This Case Study:zetta.net/case-study_Acupay

ORGANIZATION: Acupay

USE CASE:Remote Office Server Backup

PERFORMANCE EXAMPLE: “All of our offsite backup is now with Zetta.”

– Director of Technology, Acupay

Remote Office Cloud Backup: Manage Backups at the London Office Remotely

At-rest EncryptionPublic Key Infrastructure (PKI) backed by FIPS 140-2 compliant key repositories, advanced bit encryption, and a robust key rotation scheme.

PartitioningEach customer’s mount point is a unique URI in distinct file system.

Zetta was built specifically to back up enterprise data in the cloud and these security requirements helped drive the design of the solution.

www.zetta.net/trial

Enterprise-grade, cloud-based offsite server backup can scale up or down quickly and doesn’t require rebuilding storage systems.

Zetta’s 3-in-1 integrated solution enables managing different locations through a “single pane of glass,” with full visibility to back up data from each office and secure web-based access for immediate recovery during server or data center downtime.

Remote Office Cloud Backup: Zetta Delivers Scalable Remote Office Backup

Speed is the most glaring weak point of cloud backup and DR-as-a-Service solutions today. Vendors put in a lot of effort on sales fluff, trying to sugarcoat the inherent limitations of appliance-based or consumer-grade solutions. The reality, however, is that too many deployment project ends in disappointment and migration to a different solution—with wasted IT budgets and resources left behind.

The common denominator among the IT organizations we profiled for this paper was trying a backup and DR solution in their environment, before buying. Most reputable vendors offer free trials, and if they don’t—that should be a red flag. Deploy a free trial in your environment with your data and see how it really works.

If you have any questions or issues, contact the vendor. This should also be a test on the vendor’s responsive-ness and customer support. After all, these are among the most critical things you will need if you ever encounter a disaster recovery situation.

We also encourage you to try Zetta’s 3-in-1 enterprise-grade backup and DR solution to see how Zetta can improve performance and lower the cost of backup in your environment.

Of course, you can start a free trial today at:

FINAL THOUGHTS: Cloud Backup for the Practical IT Buyer

WWW.ZETTA.NET

CONTACT USFor more information, contact Zetta: sales@zetta.net or call 877-Go-Zetta (650-590-0950)Zetta Inc. is an award-winning provider of enterprise-grade 3-in-1 backup, disaster recovery, and archiving.