Cloud data protection company Druva today debuted a new cloud-based, integrated backup and archive for network attached storage (NAS) systems.

The offering provides a 500% performance improvement to backup speeds for warm storage, intelligent tiering for cheaper long-term retention (LTR), and file-level insights for greater visibility to illustrate a more holistic picture of stored data, according to Druva.

Druva, which developed a cloud-based backup platform that includes disaster recovery (DR), archiving, analytics, and visibility across environments, is now extending its reach to cover NAS storage. The new services eliminate redundant copies and infrastructure to better protect, manage, and maximize the value of unstructured data.

Stephen Manley, chief technologist at Druva, said this launch addresses the NAS associated  storage problems that the industry has faced since he began his career at NetApp in 1997. “And a lot of those challenges revolve around aggregated data,” he said.

NAS systems are great for aggregated data but have historically been a nightmare when the time comes to put hundreds of millions to billions of files in one place and backup. It creates so much data gravity that backups “take longer than whatever window you’ve got," Manley said.

Unlike more structured data that tends to be a lot better at setting what Manley called “retention periods,” which is basically identifying data to determine how long it needs to be saved for compliance reasons, NAS is a repository for billions of files, the contents of which few people are aware. Manley said this ends up leading organizations to retain everything forever, which is “expensive, both in terms of just the amount of media consumed, but also managing the whole lot of it.”

Due to the lack of visibility and understanding in NAS systems, secondary storage – essentially everything that’s not mission critical – often racks up a massive bill. “It's like the picture of a glacier that we always talk about, maybe 10% of the data is accurate,” he explained. “The other 90%, a lot of times, hasn't been touched, modified, or looked at in years."

The new offering eliminates the decades-long headache of backup performance and cost problems while giving organizations the breathing room to “make a strategic plan to change the trajectory of their unstructured NAS data," Manley said.

Backing up NAS, because it tends to be smaller files, requires “you to be smarter about how you actually pull the data off the system so you don't stress the system,” he said. This was a critical first step in developing the new offering because “everybody's first problem is it [NAS] doesn't go fast enough," he explained. “Until you can take that thorn out of their foot, it's really hard for them to think about something more strategic."

The second thorn in the other foot, Manley explained, is cost. The new service offers two different ways to reach lower cost LTR. Druva’s multi-tier platform uses machine learning to power an automatic tiering architecture that places data in a three-tier hierarchy within Amazon’s storage services. Users can choose an option where Druva will automatically tier cold storage at up 30% less cost than standard tiers. 

For larger data sets with infrequent recovery requirements that don’t need to be tiered and will not require an urgent short term recovery, Druva now offers an infrequent access tier for direct-to-cold storage at up to 50% off a regular price. 

File-level insights and recommendations capabilities can tell users what data doesn’t need to be backed up, and help them determine what needs to be stored on a NAS system or move to lower cost storage. This will allow organizations to be more strategic in how they take action against unnecessary data, according to Druva.

In stride with seemingly every other data protection and management company under the sun, Druva is changing with the times to expand its cloud service’s data protection capabilities to include support for Kubernetes clusters. 

The company last month also announced an early access program option within its CloudRanger service that aims to make Kubernetes support more widely available in the first half of 2021.