1. WHITEPAPER
Five Cloud Backup
Case Studies
FOR PRACTICAL IT BUYERS
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.

2. 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 Performance
Rapidly growing data needs faster backup and recovery speeds to reduce downtime and to back up more data
in established backup windows.
Functionality vs. Price
New technologies have introduced ways to significantly cut costs while adding functionality like archiving
and DR.
Server vs. Laptop Backup
Backing 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.
Security
What is the right amount of security for your environment? Enterprise data usually requires 256-bit encryption
and SSAE 16 audits.
Central & Remote Office Backup
With 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.
www.zetta.net
2

3. CASE STUDY
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
PERFORMANCE TEST RESULTS*
150GB OF SQL DATA:
claim in vendor materials, but the reality is different.
Taking advantage of available free trial programs is the
Zetta: 1 hour, 5 min.
only way to evaluate the real performance of different
cloud backup solutions.
Mozy Pro: 3 hours, 18 min.
Carbonite Business: 100+ hours
The results of this performance test between Zetta,
Mozy Pro, and Carbonite Business show that even for a
* Performance test conducted in Zetta labs using identical data sets
small dataset like 150GB of SQL data, the time until the
backup job completes varies significantly.
Cloud Backup Performance Makes a Difference: Group Photographers Association
Quickly Recovers Critical Server
CASE STUDY
3TB Server Recovery in
24 Hours
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
ORGANIZATION:
Group Photographers Association
USE CASE:
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.”
SQL server backup, laptop backup,
disaster recovery
GPA deployed Zetta’s 3-in-1 backup in their environment after losing 1TB of
PERFORMANCE EXAMPLE:
RAID storage in early 2012, and losing confidence in their existing D2D
“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
See the Rest of This Case Study:
zetta.net/case-study-gpa
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.”
www.zetta.net
3

4. Cloud Backup: Features That Drive Performance
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 Optimization
Zetta’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 Transfer
Data is sent using parallel threads to eliminate the bottlenecks of single-threaded transport solutions.
No Traffic Throttling
Data transfer speeds are never throttled by Zetta data centers.
SSD and RAM-based Storage
Eighty 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.
NEXT STEPS: See Zetta’s Performance in Your Environment
Get access to all of Zetta.net’s backup and recovery
functionality and customer-only resources.
START FREE TRIAL
www.zetta.net
4

5. CASE STUDY
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.
Cloud Backup Functionality: Nonprofit Adds NetApp Offsite Backup and Disaster
Recovery with No New Hardware
CASE STUDY
$75,000 Savings for HIPAA
Compliant NetApp Backup
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 individuals 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
ORGANIZATION:
subject to HIPAA regulations for offsite backup due to the health records
Cook Inlet Tribal Council
from treatment programs.
USE CASE:
SQL, Exchange, Hyper-V, VMWare,
and NetApp backup, disaster
recovery, and HIPAA compliance
With about 2.5TB of email, databases, and files on their NetApp Filer,
PERFORMANCE EXAMPLE:
explains: “We can’t afford a Recovery Time Objective of weeks. We need
“Provisioning a second NetApp
Filer, including the data center
hosting costs, and third-party
software would have cost $75,000.”
– IT Director, CITC
See the Rest of This Case Study:
zetta.net/case-study-citc
CITC’s small IT group was stuck with expensive, cumbersome, and not-always-reliable choices for offsite backup and DR. IT Director Jerry Kung
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.”
www.zetta.net
5

6. Cloud Backup Costs: Reducing Backup Costs by 60%
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.
1-YEAR COSTS
SPREADSHEET COMPARISON
$41,019.52
ZETTA.NET
RECURRING MONTHLY EXPENSES
3TB Volume
TOTAL
CAPITAL REQUIRED
––
TOTAL
$16,588.80
TOTAL COSTS
Total Monthly Cost
Total Capital
ZETTA.NET
NEW
TAPE SYSTEM
NEW TAPE SYSTEM
$1,382.40
$1,382.40
$0.00
$0.00
$1,382.40
$0.00
31% LOWER MONTHLY
COSTS WITH ZETTA.NET
RECURRING MONTHLY EXPENSES
Iron Mountain
IT Weekly hours touching/moving tapes
Symantec Netbackup software maintenance
IBM Hardware server maintenance
LTO Tape drive maintenance
TOTAL
CAPITAL REQUIRED
New Tape Drive
New Server and Windows Server OS for Tape Drive
50 new LTO-5 tapes
TOTAL
TOTAL COSTS
Total Monthly Cost
Total Capital
$750.00
$960.00
$165.79
$115.67
$150.00
$2,141.46
$9,922.00
$5,200.00
$2,000.00
$17,122.00
$1,991.46
$17,122.00
SAVED $17K IN CAPEX
WITH ZETTA.NET
Cloud Backup – Functionality vs. Price: Get Both
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/endpoints
All functionality included (Backup, DR, archiving)
Supports: SQL, Exchange, VMWare, Hyper-V, NetApp, System State, Files, Network Shares
500GB of secure online storage
24x7 U.S.-based support
NEXT STEPS: Get Custom Pricing
Request custom pricing from Zetta for your
organization’s environment
GET CUSTOM PRICING
www.zetta.net
6

7. CASE STUDY
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.
Cloud Server Backup: College Saves $200,000 in Hardware and Software Costs for
VMs and Windows, Linux, and Mac Server Backup
CASE STUDY
$200,000 Saved in 95 Server
+ 500 Laptop Deployment
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
ORGANIZATION:
D2D2T system, “With Zetta we won't spend nearly as much on tape
Merced College
hardware, backup software, or implementation which would have
USE CASE:
cost $200,000.”
30 physical servers, 65 VMs, and
500 faculty laptops
PERFORMANCE EXAMPLE:
“Zetta keeps our backups online, in
a secure, redundant, and available
way.”
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.
– IT Director, Merced College
See the Rest of This Case Study:
zetta.net/case-study_Merced-College
www.zetta.net
7

8. CASE STUDY
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.
Cloud Backup Security: 55TB of Secure Government Data
CASE STUDY
Online Backup Secures town
of Dedham From Disaster
The town of Dedham, first settled in 1635, is located about 12 miles southwest 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
ORGANIZATION:
migrating from an older tape backup solution.
The town of Dedham, MA
USE CASE:
The town’s Technology Director, Veronica Barnes, views the result this way:
65 VMs
“Zetta has made us so much better prepared in the event of a disaster,
PERFORMANCE EXAMPLE:
enabling us to retrieve data more readily. If necessary, we could literally
“The town is implementing new
financial systems and will use Zetta
to back those up from the start.”
– IT Director, Town of Dedham
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."
See the Rest of This Case Study:
zetta.net/case-study_The-Town-of-Dedham
Cloud Backup Security: Baseline Criteria to Trust Cloud Backup With Enterprise Data
There are certain baseline security/privacy criteria that must be met prior to trusting a cloud storage solution with enterprise data:
In-flight Encryption
Encrypted web-optimized file transfer protocols: SFTP, FTPS, and Secure WebDAV run over HTTPS.
www.zetta.net
8

9. At-rest Encryption
Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) backed by FIPS 140-2 compliant key repositories, advanced bit encryption,
and a robust key rotation scheme.
Partitioning
Each 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.
CASE STUDY
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.
Remote Office Cloud Backup: Manage Backups at the London Office Remotely
CASE STUDY
Painless Remote
Office Backup & DR
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
ORGANIZATION:
Acupay
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.
USE CASE:
Remote Office Server Backup
PERFORMANCE EXAMPLE:
“All of our offsite backup is now
with Zetta.”
– Director of Technology, Acupay
See the Rest of This Case Study:
zetta.net/case-study_Acupay
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.”
www.zetta.net
9

10. Remote Office Cloud Backup: Zetta Delivers Scalable Remote Office Backup
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.
FINAL THOUGHTS: Cloud Backup for the Practical IT Buyer
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 responsiveness 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:
CONTACT US
www.zetta.net/trial
For 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.
WWW.ZETTA.NET