ARBES Technologies

ARBES Technologies Reduces Oracle Database Backups from Three Days to Four Hours with ExaGrid

Customer Overview

ARBES Technologies is a leading Czech B2B developer and supplier of unique information systems for banking, leasing, capital markets, and consumer financing that was founded in 1991. The company’s state-of-the-art, customized solutions are developed to support the business strategy of each individual customer. Its solution portfolio includes, in part, paperless processes, digital banking, security trading, enterprise content management, and business process support. ARBES’ continued product innovation is a result of its monitoring of new trends in technology, business intelligence, and reporting tools to include in its solutions. Many leading banking and financing institutions in the Czech Republic and abroad use its solutions

Key Benefits:

Restoring data is 12X faster using ExaGrid
ARBES’ Oracle backups reduced from days to hours, and its other backups are cut in half
ExaGrid’s scale-out architecture eliminates forklift upgrades
ExaGrid support provides expertise on backup environment

Download PDF

Switch to Dedicated Backup Appliance Adds Deduplication

ARBES Technologies had struggled with slow backups and data restores that exceeded its RTO and RPO. The company decided it was time to re-evaluate its backup solution, a disk-to-disk-to-tape (D2D2T) process using Microsoft Data Protection Manager (DPM).

The IT staff decided to look into dedicated backup appliances with data deduplication and arranged POCs using appliances from Arcserve, Dell EMC, and ExaGrid. The IT staff was particularly impressed by ExaGrid’s adaptive deduplication and ultimately selected ExaGrid paired with an Arcserve backup application as its new backup solution. ExaGrid’s turnkey disk-based backup system combines enterprise SATA/SAS drives with zone-level data deduplication, delivering a disk-based solution that is far more cost effective than simply backing up to straight disk. ExaGrid’s patented zone-level deduplication reduces the disk space needed by a range of 10:1 to 50:1 by storing only the unique bytes across backups instead of redundant data. Adaptive Deduplication performs deduplication and replication in parallel with backups while providing full system resources to the backups for the fastest backups and, therefore, the shortest backup window. As data grows, only ExaGrid avoids expanding backup windows by adding full appliances in a system. ExaGrid’s unique Landing Zone keeps a full copy of the most recent backup on disk, delivering the fastest restores, VM boots in seconds to minutes, “Instant DR,” and fast tape copy. Over time, ExaGrid saves up to 50% in total system costs compared to competitive solutions by avoiding costly “forklift” upgrades.

Backup Times Reduced from Days to Hours

ARBES installed an ExaGrid system at its primary site that replicates to a second ExaGrid system at its offsite disaster recovery (DR) location. Its data is comprised of Oracle, MS Exchange, and Active Directory databases as well as file server, Linux, and Windows data.

Before ExaGrid was installed, ARBES backed up data on a daily and monthly basis. “Our backup schedule has changed since we switched to ExaGrid,” said Petr Turek, IT Manager at ARBES. “We back up some data every day, at intervals of four or six hours. Other data is backed up once a week, and some is backed up once a month.” ExaGrid has resolved the slow backup limitation that ARBES faced with its previous solution. “Our backup window for Oracle databases before ExaGrid was about three days and now it is about four hours. Our backup window for other data was about nine hours, and that’s been reduced to just four hours,” said Turek.

"It used to take 48 hours to restore our databases and ExaGrid has cut that down to 4 hours. We can restore data immediately thanks to ExaGrid’s landing zone, which stores the most recent backups in their native form, making it as easy as copying from disk. The landing zone differentiates ExaGrid from other backup solutions. Restores are incredibly fast thanks to this unique feature.” "

Petr Turek, IT Manager

Data Restores Now 12x Faster

One of the major reasons that ARBES decided to replace its previous backup solution was that data restores took too long for its RPO and RTO requirements. Turek has noticed significant improvement in the speed of data restores now that ExaGrid has been installed. “Restores are much faster now! It used to take 48 hours to restore our databases and ExaGrid has cut that down to 4 hours. We can restore data immediately thanks to ExaGrid’s landing zone, which stores the most recent backups in their native form, making it as easy as copying from disk. The landing zone differentiates ExaGrid from other backup solutions. Restores are incredibly fast thanks to this unique feature.”

ExaGrid writes backups directly to a disk-cache Landing Zone, avoiding inline processing and ensuring the highest possible backup performance, which results in the shortest backup window. Adaptive Deduplication performs deduplication and replication in parallel with backups so that an RTO and RPO can be easily met. Available system cycles are utilized to perform deduplication and offsite replication for an optimal recovery point at the disaster recovery site. Once complete, the onsite data is protected and immediately available in its full undeduplicated form for fast restores, VM Instant Recoveries, and tape copies while the offsite data is ready for disaster recovery.

Scalable System with Expert Support

Turek appreciates ExaGrid’s scalable architecture, which prevents the need for expensive forklift upgrades or buying additional processing power as data grows. “If I had to increase my backup storage using other solutions, I would need to buy an expanding box. With ExaGrid, I can just buy another appliance to add to the existing system, and not only do I get more storage but also more power for my backups.”

All of ExaGrid’s appliances contain not just disk but also processing power, memory, and bandwidth. When the system needs to expand, additional appliances are simply attached to the existing system. This type of configuration allows the system to maintain all the aspects of performance as the amount of data grows, with customers paying for what they need when they need it. In addition, as new ExaGrid appliances are added to the existing system, ExaGrid automatically load balances available capacity, maintaining a virtual pool of storage that is shared across the system. Turek has been impressed with the high level of support he receives from ExaGrid. “Our customer support engineer is an expert in backup, and it’s been very helpful to work with him.” 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.

ExaGrid and Arcserve Backup

Arcserve Backup delivers reliable, enterprise-class data protection across multiple hardware and software platforms. Its proven technology — unified by a single, easy-to-use interface — enables multi-tiered protection driven by business goals and policies. Organizations using popular backup applications can look to ExaGrid as an alternative to tape for nightly backups. ExaGrid works with existing backup applications to provide faster and more reliable backups and restores.

About ExaGrid

ExaGrid provides Tiered Backup Storage with a unique disk-cache Landing Zone that enables fastest backups and restores, a Repository Tier that offers the lowest cost for long-term retention and enables ransomware recovery, and scale-out architecture which includes full appliances with up to 6PB full backup in a single system.

Talk to us about your needs

ExaGrid is the expert in backup storage—it’s all we do.

Request Pricing

Our team is trained to ensure that your system is properly sized and supported to meet your growing data needs.

Talk With One of Our System Engineers

With ExaGrid’s Tiered Backup Storage, each appliance in the system brings with it not only disk, but also memory, bandwidth, and processing power—all the elements needed to maintain high backup performance.

Schedule call »

Schedule Proof of Concept (POC)

Test ExaGrid by installing it in your environment to experience improved backup performance, faster restores, ease of use, and scalability. Put it to the test! 8 out of 10 who test it, decide to keep it.

Schedule now »

Customer Success Story

Customer Success Story