Every well-planned release has a motif, a term often used to describe a dominant theme in a literary, artistic, or musical work.

In all the early releases, the motif for Druva has been Simplicity: simplicity for both end-users and for IT administrators. For end users, Druva inSync is now so simple to use that it just works without their knowing. It’s completely non-intrusive and works on all kinds of networks such as WAN and VPN. It’s so simple to use that end users can access their data from any Web browser without having to contact IT. Likewise, for IT administrators, it’s so simple to download (~40MB), install (under 20 minutes), and manage (almost zero maintenance) that the total cost of ownership is almost negligible. The simplicity motif has been a strong differentiator for Druva’s offerings.

For inSync 4.0, we made Storage and Bandwidth Optimization the motif. To optimize storage, we introduced App-aware Dedupe, an industry-first dedupe technology that offers a 90% storage savings across all user data and a 100% dedupe accuracy at the source (laptops) for supported applications such as Outlook and Office. To optimize bandwidth, we introduced the Octopus WAN optimization engine, a multi-threaded client architecture that does smart bandwidth throttling to offer a 5x performance gain for every client backing up on WAN.

The eye-catching red shack on the wharf (Rockport, Massachusetts) is often called Motif #1, a reference to its popularity among artists.

The theme for inSync 4.1 emerged naturally to “Scale” as customers were increasingly deploying Druva to more users in each of their environments. With release 4.1, we wanted to make inSync scale efficiently along several dimensions as outlined below –

Scale -

• 2000 users per server
• 16TB of data per server
• 200 parallel connections per server

Performance -

• We’re excited to introduce an innovative HyperCache technology, which can improve backup performance by 6x compared to inSync 4.0. HyperCache is an in-memory cache that can be configured to access the most optimal subset of your dedupe index in memory resulting in a high hit rate. The usual 80-20 rule applies here: with just a 30% subset of the dedupe index, Hypercache can deliver upwards of 75% hit rate. We recommend a 4GB of HyperCache size for every 1TB of data to maximize performance. The admin console offers a simple way for you to configure HyperCache for optimal performance.
• You can now configure an SSD storage for your dedupe index to further enhance your server performance. Lab results show a whopping 12x performance improvement with HyperCache and SSD configurations.
• You can now install Druva on a 64-bit system for enhanced performance.

Administration –

• 4.1 now supports a new administrative role in addition to a Server Administrator. A Profile Administrator role grants permissions to manage one or more user profiles in order to edit profile settings, add users, and manage data restore for those profiles. This is a great way to scale the administration tasks across your organization between server and profile administration.
• In light of the above role, we’ve enhanced our dashboard and reporting, so an administrator can get a customized view of their reports depending on their role.
• You can now automate the import of users to inSync from your Active Directory. A periodic import from your AD can be set up to dynamically add users to inSync.

Access -

• We’re very excited to announce mobile access of your data from iPads and iPhones. Check out our newest app at http://itunes.apple.com/app/insync/id420380654?mt=8#

We’re excited about the upcoming deployments of inSync 4.1 and the performance benefits to all of you. In my next blog, I’ll talk about the 2 editions of inSync 4.1 (Enterprise and Professional), how they compare, and which one is right for you. Stay tuned….