Zerto previews 2019’s version 7 with Elastic Journal backup

Data protection and backup software supplier Zerto has previewed the next full version of its product, nearly a year ahead of its release.

The key addition will be its Elastic Journal. That is, unlimited journaling that will allow customers to restore full or partial copies from any point in time.

Currently, Zerto journaling only stretches back 30 days. But the move to create restore points from any point in time in Elastic Journal, from seconds to years in the past, will be the foundation of Zerto’s so-called IT Resilience Platform.

Zerto is a data protection product based on continuous data protection (CDP), which records every input/output (I/O) change to data and records it in journals grouped by application but handled by a single workflow. If the customer wants to restore to a certain point in time they can rebuild full copies from the journal.

In practice, Zerto combines this with full backups taken at intervals set by the customer. So, for example, a full backup can be taken monthly, and then incremental logging of changes made from that time. Then, if the customer want to restore, the point-in-time copy is rebuilt from the full and journaled delta changes.

In theory, customers could simply use the incremental CDP information to build full copies from any point in time, but in practice keep a “golden copy” from full backups taken at set intervals is preferred.

Zerto is also a multi-cloud product, with data migration possible between on-premise locations and public clouds such as Amazon Web Services, Azure and IBM.

Zerto is pushing its vision of an IT Resilience Platform that combines backup, disaster recovery (DR) and cloud mobility – such as cloud bursting – on a single platform. This is contrasted with the traditional approach of separate backup, DR and cloud functionality.

“There is pent-up demand for a longer-term approach to data protection,” said Rob Stretchay, vice-president for products at Zerto. “Gartner says 40% of backup products bought in 2018 will be replaced by 2021. That’s an $8bn market and 40% of it will be gone in three years; that’s massive.”

Zerto version 7 is set for launch in the first quarter of 2019, but there will be an incremental v6.5 later this year.