Commercial movers like Aspera and Signiant are fast over the WAN — but proprietary, metered by throughput, and software-only, so you still size, tune, and own the hardware. Zettar delivers line rate as a co-designed appliance, on open hardware, with no protocol or data lock-in.
FASP-based commercial movers work, but the price is paid in lock-in and TCO: a proprietary protocol and format that tie up your data, licensing metered by throughput or volume, and a closed, proprietary stack you don't control. And because they are software only, hitting line rate is still your project — you select, integrate, and tune the servers, storage, and network yourself.
| Aspera / Signiant | Zettar zx | |
|---|---|---|
| Licensing | Proprietary, metered by throughput / volume | One appliance — no per-GB license |
| Lock-in | Proprietary protocol & format | Open hardware, native formats, no lock-in |
| Hardware | Software only — you size and tune it | Co-designed appliance, pretuned |
| Transparency | Closed, proprietary | Open, measurable, line rate (~90%+) |
| Support | Software vendor only | One accountable solution (hardware + software) |
| Petascale proof | — | 1 PB in 29 hours with SLAC & the U.S. DOE |
| Security | Proprietary | TLS + end-to-end checksums, on-prem, in-country |
Zettar is not a faster proprietary stack — it is an open, co-designed system. You get line rate and you keep your data, your formats, and your choice of hardware.
The Zettar zx Appliance co-engineers hardware and software to run at line rate — roughly 10× typical movers, with no software ceiling — and ships pretuned on the enterprise platform you standardize on. No proprietary lock-in, no per-GB meter, one accountable solution. Built on U.S. DOE Office of Science–funded R&D; winner of the Supercomputing Asia 2019 Data Mover Challenge.
Compare Zettar with: rsync · Globus · Aspera / Signiant
Those are proprietary, software-only movers metered by throughput or volume. Zettar is a co-designed appliance on open hardware: line rate, native formats, no protocol or data lock-in, no per-GB license, and supported as one solution.
No. zx moves data in native formats with no proprietary repository, so there is nothing to convert or re-architect. It is racked and moving data in days, on the hardware you choose.
Both move data quickly; the difference is that zx is open and co-designed for line rate (about 90%+) end to end, and you can measure it — versus a closed, proprietary stack — while avoiding lock-in and per-GB licensing. Compare on your own data with our transfer calculator.
See the appliance move your data as fast as the wire allows, on hardware you own, with no proprietary tax.