Secure cloud backup : Review

Zoolz www.zoolz.com

Touting the world's first tribrid cloud... yes you read that right, Zoolz aims to separate itself in the market by breaking its cloud storage services down into three categories: instant, cold, and local. These are synonyms for storing data on Amazon's S3 for 'instant' data that might need a quick turnaround, storing data on Amazon Glacier for 'cold' data that's rarely accessed but needs to be kept (for example for compliance purposes), and locally via a hybrid offering that utilises a local server to store backup data before being replicated to Amazon S3 or Glacier.
For security you can opt for an auto-generated key which will also be stored on Zoolz's servers or a private key which, like other products covered here, means only you can decrypt the data (and if the key is lost, so is the data).

To seed an initial backup Zoolz offers the 'Copy, Encrypt & Ship' service where the Zoolz client can be used to encrypt the first large backup to one or more hard drives to be shipped to Zoolz and transferred to the cloud, at an extra cost of course.

Zoolz makes no distinction between employee desktops and laptops and server backups, providing a one-size fits all plan that also includes unlimited users, devices (including externally attached storage), and machines.

For accessing data and restoring Windows and MacOS X are supported along with clients for iOS and Android, while administration of users and policies is provided by an online browser-based console. This includes features to streamline configuration for admins through its 'Smart Selections' category, easily including or excluding data types or directories from user devices (i.e. 'Documents', 'Email', 'Bookmarks' and the like).

Like its service offering pricing is flexible starting at $360 a year for 1TB (note this is 'Cold' storage) and again this covers unlimited users and devices. Alternatively, you can create your own payment plan with its 'Mix and Match' option that lets you specify the volumes of Instant storage and Cold storage along with the number of users and servers, though when we played with it we couldn't get the service offering to match the listed plans despite using the same values. As the main plans don't include 'Instant' storage, you'll need to use this option if you want to add Instant storage to your plan.

  1. Summary page
  2. Backblaze
  3. Druva
  4. Rackspace
  5. Carbonite
  6. Crashplan
  7. Mozy
  8. Cloudberry

This article is brought to you by Enex TestLab, content directors for CSO Australia.

Tags cloud storagemozycarboniterackspacereviewBackBlazeCrashPlanDruvaZoolzsecure backup servicesCloudberryCode42secure cloud backup

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