Cloud backup and business continuity service Datto Inc. is overhauling its flagship Siris 3 platform and adding an all-flash appliance to its on-premise lineup.

The Norwalk, CT-based company already claims to perform more than 1 million backups per day in its 200-petabyte private cloud. It’s known for a snapshot capability that enables data to be backed up and verified instantly for rapid recovery in the event of a failure.

Version 3 of the Siris appliance supports agent-based and agentless virtual backup and restore in VMware virtual machines, as well as the ability to operate as a virtual or physical appliance. Siris provides local backup and acts as a gateway to the Datto cloud and it disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS).

“It’s a refresh of the entire line from the base level up to the 60 terabyte versions,” said Mark Kulacz, director of product marketing and competitive intelligence.

The new platform is more flexible, enabling partners to now deploy it either as a dedicated appliance, virtual service on hypervisors or as an imaged service using a conversion tool that turns non-Datto devices and white box servers into a Siris appliance. Datto sells only through channel partners. The software is available immediately and will be provided as a free upgrade for all Siris 2 appliances.

Other enhancements to the Siris platform include agentless backups for systems running VMWare Inc. hypervisors, new agent technology for Linux and Apple Macintosh endpoints, diskless restores, NAS and iSCSI support, hybrid on-site/off-site virtualization and Linux backup screenshot verification. The devices come with 10 gigabit Ethernet interfaces and the latest generation of Intel XEON CPUs with Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI). Datto is also upgrading Siris 3 to Ubuntu OS 16.04 and to the KVM hypervisor.

“You have a local place for your backup storage so you can instantly restore individual files onsite,” Kulacz said. Backups are made first to the local device and then to cloud. With Virtual Siris, “You still need local storage capacity, but that’s provisioned within your infrastructure,” he added.

One restore option is to virtualize the backed-up image on the Datto appliance and initiate the restore there. “You can take that backed up image and copy it to your virtual infrastructure,” Kulacz said. Users can also export images to an iSCSI device and restore it to the Datto appliance.

The new Siris 3 X1 is claimed to be the first all-flash business continuity appliance. It supports all Siris 3 functionality in a small box with a one terabyte solid-state drive and 16 gigabytes of RAM, along with the ability to perform local virtualization directly on the appliance. The X1 also incorporates NAS shares, iSCSI boot, Linux and Macintosh agent support and Datto’s new Infinite Cloud Retention long-term storage offering that guarantees permanent backup storage in the Datto cloud.

Datto also announced significant enhancements to its Datto Device Management Portal, providing partners with what is said is a range of new capabilities to more effectively manage large device fleets.

Photo of Siris 2 appliance via Datto