Are you test driving Amazon S3 cloud as your backup storage and worried about your data security ?  Now, Amazon S3 users can have a compelling encrypted backup solution by adopting to OpenSolaris and ZFS.  Few months ago, I had my first experience with ZFS Automatic Snapshots which allows to backup and preserve the filesystem at timed intervals.  Last week I noted from Glenn Brunette that now we can store and retrieve Encrypted ZFS Automatic Snapshots to and from Amazon S3 Cloud.  Thanks to Project Kenai initiative, it just introduced the ZFS Backup To S3  and S3-Crypto tools together referred to as Cloud Safety Box (CSB) that allows to integrate the ZFS Automatic Snapshots with full-fledged encryption support using Solaris Cryptographic Framework or OpenSSL.  The solution can also take advantage of cryptographic accelerators including On-chip cryptographic acceleration provided by Sun Niagara T1/T2 platforms.

The following diagram depicts the operational model of storing and retrieving encrypted ZFS snapshots to Amazon S3 storage cloud.  You just had the highlights… if you want to try it out I suggest you to take a look at the detailed instructions here at Project Kenai.

Encrypted ZFS Automatic Snapshots (Source: Project Kenai)