Data Replication & Snapshots in the Cloud

 

As a full-featured file system, the Zetta Storage Service offers enterprise-class data management features including file-based replication and snapshots.

 

Data Snapshots

The Zetta file system provides full snapshotting capabilities — either scheduled or ad hoc snapshots. And Zetta snapshots are free from the capacity and performance limitations of single devices and fixed size clusters. Snapshots are space efficient and provide a customer-controlled protection mechanism. Once a snapshot is created, the file system is preserved in that state until the snapshot is deleted, allowing a user to go back and restore files and directories from the “.snapshot” directory like with any on-premise filer.

 

File-based Data Geo-replication

Replication is something that IT administrators expect to be facilitated by their storage technologies. HTTP cloud object stores often rely on replication as their sole form of data protection and employ a solution that is opaque to the user. Zetta replication results in a mountable, readable volume in another identified data center, with all of the visibility and transparency that you would get if you constructed your own solution.

 

Replication is a point-and-click option, with instant protection without the time and cost of acquiring and managing replication software, facilities, storage hardware, and networking bandwidth. Pricing is a fraction of the cost of buying and managing an on-premise replication solution.

 

Zetta replicated storage volumes appear as fully mountable and accessible read-only volumes. This allows for not only multi-site data protection, but also enables workload sharing with data accessible from both data centers at the same time, providing as much as twice the performance of a single volume.

 

In the rare event that the primary volume becomes unavailable, the secondary volume can assume both read and write status and users and applications can then access their data from the secondary volume.

 

Other key replication features include:

 

• Low Recovery Time: Zetta supports a near-instant return to operation for replicated data. Data is maintained in a ready-to-use format and can be “mounted” for immediate use.
  
  
• Recovery Point: With Zetta replication, changes to primary volume data are continuously replicated to the secondary volume, ensuring good data consistency and currency.
  
  
• Consistent replica performance: Zetta replicates data to production-ready storage, ensuring that performance on the secondary volume is the same as on the primary volume.
  
  
• No client-side overhead: All the replication processing and network bandwidth take place on the Zetta side and do not impact the client network or servers.
  
  
• Transparency: Through the Zetta Storage Management Portal, volume owners have access to volume replication information including the replication status and bandwidth being consumed by the replication.