ExaGrid Support ‘An Invaluable Resource’
Hanson values the level of support he receives from ExaGrid. “When there’s a software upgrade for our ExaGrid system, my support engineer calls me to let me know he’s uploaded it to our system and that we can apply it when we’re ready. When I was using Data Domain, I would have to go to their website, search for the proper upgrade, and install it myself. ExaGrid is so helpful and it’s reduced the amount of system maintenance that I need to manage.
“Our ExaGrid support engineer has become an extension of our department. He’s an invaluable resource. I don’t need to get in touch with him too often, but whenever we need to work through an issue, I give him a call or send him an email and he’s ready to help,” said Hanson. “When we decided to add an ExaGrid appliance to our system, we moved another appliance from our primary site to our DR site and our support engineer helped us migrate that data. He actually did most of the reconfiguration while I was driving from site to site, and we were up and running within a matter of hours.”
The ExaGrid system was designed to be easy to set up and operate. ExaGrid’s industry-leading level 2 senior support engineers are assigned to individual customers, ensuring they always work with the same engineer. Customer’s never have to repeat themselves to various support staff, and issues get resolved quickly.
ExaGrid’s appliance models can be mixed and matched into a single scale-out system allowing a full backup of up to 2.7PB with a combined ingest rate of 488TB/hr, in a single system. The appliances automatically join the scale-out system. Each appliance includes the appropriate amount of processor, memory, disk, and bandwidth for the data size. By adding compute with capacity, the backup window remains fixed in length as the data grows. Automatic load balancing across all repositories allows for full utilization of all appliances. Data is deduplicated into an offline repository, and additionally, data is globally deduplicated across all repositories.
Hanson has found that using an ExaGrid has made backing up Blackfoot’s data effortless. “What I love most about using ExaGrid is the simplicity of it all. It integrates well with my backup solution, and the system runs itself. It’s given me my weekends back.” The ExaGrid system was designed to be easy to set up and maintain, and ExaGrid’s industry-leading customer support team is staffed by trained, in-house level 2 engineers who are assigned to individual accounts. The system is fully supported, and was designed and manufactured for maximum uptime with redundant, hot-swappable components.