Summary
Introduction
Five years ago, a visionary management and technical team based in Silicon Valley got together to provide an innovative and exciting data storage and file sharing service to help businesses improve efficiency, coordination, security, and reliability of their data. For this purpose, they devised a comprehensive data backup and file sharing system perfect for the achievement of all key objectives.
The management team strongly believed in the principle of certainty and continuity of data flow and its utilization. Druva is the symbol of certainty in Hindu mythology, and the Druva service-based company emerged from this visionary thinking with a customer-oriented commitment by the company’s expert team.
Druva offers plans for small business to large corporations, as well as separate plans for those wishing to run their own servers (inSync On Premise) instead of using Druva’s (inSync Cloud). Registration and service management are simple, and the inSync client software is light weight and highly featured.
Plans & Pricing
Druva offers comprehensive and consolidated plans for businesses of all sizes at competitive rates. Its two major service categories, serving those either with on-site servers or those wishing to use Druva’s cloud servers, each have three unique service plans. Categories and their subsequent plans are given below.
On-Premise
Customers can use their own on-premise servers to run Druva. Pricing schemes are given below.
Professional @ $2.50/User/Month: 250 Max Users, 2 TB online Storage, Perfect for SMBs
Enterprise @ $4.50/User/Month: 5000 Max Users, 16 TB online Storage, Perfect for Enterprises
Unlimited @ $9.00/User/Month: Unlimited Users, Elastic Architecture, Perfect for global Enterprises
Virtual Private Cloud
Clients may configure and use virtual private servers. Pricing schemes are given below.
Professional @ $6.00/User/Month: 250 Max Users, 15GB/User Online Storage, Perfect for SMBs
Enterprise @ $ 8.00/User/Month: 5000 Max Users, 30GB/User Online Storage, Perfect for Enterprises
Unlimited @ $14.00/User/Month: Unlimited Users, 100GB/User Online Storage, Perfect for Global Enterprises
Features
- Simple registration and service operation
- Options for both on-premises servers and cloud servers with separate pricing plans
- Light weight server and client software
- Multiple-device support
- De-duplication capable, saving 80-90% storage and bandwidth
- Effectively encrypted transportation of data on secure connections
- Two-Factor industry encryption level similar to bank lockers, meaning users are unable to decrypt without the unique customer key
- High-level physical security from industry leader Amazon AWS, SAS-70 Type-II, strict access control, secure encryption keys, and compartmentalization of customers’ data.
- Strict authentication and authorization control
- HTTPS and LDAPS secure access protocols
- High-performance online backup supporting hyperCahe, Client Side Caching, and SSD
- Software is capable of recognizing data based upon application; e.g. application-aware capability
- Optimized network use and intelligent resources utilization. Octopus engine queries about the status of network parameters such as latency, congestion, and noise. Responds accordingly to produce optimized performance.
- Efficient bandwidth throttling schemes and backup auto-start in case of interruption in data backups
- Auto-management functions for user profiles, auto updates, and support to mass-deployment function
- Unified management across On-premise servers for server, user, and log management
- Single Sign-on capability through highly featured SAML platform
- Viable pricing schemes for businesses of all sizes
- Simple up and down subscription-scaling options
- Free trial period without bank info
- Word class customer support available around the clock via chat, email, phone and trouble tickets.
- Fast turnaround for problem resolution
- Support for multiple operating systems and backup agents
- High performance remote office server backup capability
- In-depth insight into trends and data-use behavior of end users
- Highly-advanced reporting alerts and other management tools
- Easy, centralized data management of end points
- Mobile data security; deletion or modification of lost-device data through Remote Wipe Data function
- Lost-device location through the Geo-Locate feature
- Mobile access to employee data
- Multiple-file version capable for restoration
- Constant network uptime or system availability
Security
Druva was developed for business-data security with the understanding that data is a company’s mind. Security plays a vital role in keeping business data safe, both storerd and in transition. Druva provides enterprise-class security, including encrypted transmission of data over secure SSL protocol, 256-AES-based encryption, a two-factor encryption/decryption mechanism, and many other protocols. Here is a summary of Druva’s security services.
- Mission-critical-level security from end to end; data is encrypted with 256-AES coding protocol and then transported through highly secure connections.
- Data encryptioin is done through two-factor keying, which means that no single key can decode or decrypt data stored on servers, both on-premise and in the cloud. This mechanism is implemented only in Druva networks and is analogous to two-code bank vaults
- Strict access and authentication process with AD
- HTTPS and LDAPS protocol access
- Industry-grade physical security of data powered by Amazon AWS
- Cloud servers located in Amazon data centers, which are certified under many industrial security standards, such as SAS-70 Type-II, Biometric access, surveillance and monitoring systems.
- Druva is certified under ISO 27001, PCI DSS, ISAE 3000 Type-I and other organizations
- Single sign-on capability implemented for secure data access
Customer Service
Druva customer support can be accessed through live chat, phone, email, and TT systems. With the exception of phone support, which is avaialable at all hours any day of the week for enterprise clients and limited to normal business hours for lesser accounts, support is pretty universal.
Druva’s response time for issues is predefined and tracked based on the chart below, and response time takes place according to service impact. For example, not functional will take precedence over a customer training issue, and here again enterprise accounts take precedence over others.
The process (Sign-up & Install)
One of the most exciting features of Druva’s service is its simplicity and ease of operation and maintenance. The inSync data backup and file sharing software operates through client and server communication with simple, integrated management tools, and getting started with Druva and its client software is virtually effortless. From start to finish shouldn’t take the average person more than 20 minutes.
To get started, click Try it Free located at the top right of Druva’s home page, as shown in the above figure. Go to the free trial for your plan of choice
- Fill in your information and submit
- Login to your email account and find the message from Druva as shown in the following figure
- Click the Download inSync Professional link
- Or choose one of the five numbered options above for tutorials and other tools
- Download both inSync server and client software for your machine’s operating system
- You can also download client setup for inSync mobile devices
- After you’ve downloaded server and client software, next you need to install the server
- Choose a destination folder
- Installation status will become visible
- Finish or choose to view the administration guide
- Next, configure your inSync Server software with the credentials, which will be used for backing up, sharing, accessing and transporting data within your teams.
- You will need web console details like TCP port, admin name, email ID and admin password, as shown in the following figure.
- Click Finish to launch
- Select Express Configuration for now and worry about advanced configuration as per requirements later on.
Server Configuration
- Follow the five steps listed here to setup your server
Dashboard
- Once you’ve configured your management, server, and data-base information, you will be taken to your Dashboard, as depicted in the following figure.
- Here you can work and manage resources through different options such as Backup, Restore, DLP, Share, Analytics, and Manage.
- In the Manage menu from the Dashboard toolbar in the upper right, you can work with profiles, users, devices, storages, server activities, alerts, reports, diagnostics, and server settings
- Manage Profiles can be used for server data management and synchronization with online storage, etc.
- To create a new profile click Create New Profile as shown in the above figure and fill in required information as shown below.
- Configuring your first profile is one of the final steps before data management with Druva’s inSync server
- Next you need to install the client software
- Run the setup from your previous inSync client software download, which will present you with the following interface
- Select the location you would like the inSync software to end up
- Once installation is complete, click Finish and you’re done
- To activate the inSync client software input the server URL, your email address and password
Conclusion
Druva is especially suitable for medium and large size enterprises due to its tailored service of these companies. Price plans and customer service are fair for all, but suited most beneficially for large accounts. It also possesses amazing security of its networks, systems, and data transport. Druva delivers on its goals of helping businesses increase productivity and efficiency, and is therefore highly recommended.
One major flaw with Druva’s backup software.. Although you can schedule backup frequency, you cannot specify WHEN it should happen. If you want your backup to occur, say, at 1am on a daily basis so as not to interrupt usage during regular hours then you need to stay up until 1am and manually kick off a backup. In my opinion, this is an obvious feature that any backup software should have.
Awesome site, I can recommend them fully.