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Customer Success Story

Customer Success Story

ExaGrid-Veeam Provide High Efficiency, Lower Cost Global Backup Strategy for AspenTech

Customer Overview

AspenTech is a global leader in asset optimization software helping the world’s leading industrial companies run their operations more safely, efficiently and reliably – enabling innovation while reducing waste and impact on the environment. AspenTech software accelerates and maximizes value gained from digital transformation initiatives with a holistic approach to the asset lifecycle and supply chain. By introducing effective AI modeling to traditional principles of process engineering, AspenTech delivers a faster and more accurate analysis of efficiency and performance boundaries. The real-time data and actionable insights delivered by our software help customers push the boundaries of what’s possible

Key Benefits:

  • Short backup windows keep worldwide backups on schedule
  • ExaGrid-Veeam combined dedupe saves ‘significant money’ on disk
  • VM boots are ‘amazingly easy’
  • Unmatched customer support – Dell EMC and HP aren’t ‘nearly as streamlined’
  • Entire environment viewable at a glance with one-stop web console
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Worldwide Backup Required Upgrade from Tape

AspenTech had been using Quantum Scalar i80 tape libraries with Dell EMC NetWorker to backup its data, but the technology company sought a solution that would bring greater speed to backups at a lower cost and add deduplication to its environment to maximize storage capacity. AspenTech ultimately chose ExaGrid and Veeam to replace its previous solution and back up data in its mostly virtualized environment.

AspenTech installed ExaGrid systems at five locations worldwide. Richard Copithorne, principal systems administrator, finds it surprisingly easy to manage the multiple systems. “ExaGrid provides a simple one-stop web console to see everything at a glance. We use that in conjunction with Veeam, and both offer the information on a single pane of glass.”

Copithorne backs up AspenTech’s data in weekly synthetic fulls and nightly incrementals. “Our backup window is usually close to 24 hours, because our systems across the globe are running at different times. We also back up multiple snaps from VMs across the globe. Our vital VMs are backed up using Veeam and sent to the multiple locations and to the ExaGrid system at our DR site, which we set up recently with the help of our ExaGrid support engineer.”

While backups run throughout the day, AspenTech’s individual backup jobs have a much shorter window. “We are able to back up our entire environment at headquarters in locations, the entire environment is backed up in just one hour! Using tape, a full backup of a VM would sometimes take 24 hours, but we are able to leverage Veeam and ExaGrid to back up the same amount of data in an hour, and it’s already deduped as it goes,” said Copithorne.

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.

VM Boots and Data Restores ‘Amazingly Easy’

Copithorne is impressed with the ease and speed with which he can restore data now. “One of the major selling points of using ExaGrid with Veeam is the ability to stand up a VM almost immediately with just a couple of clicks. When I need to do an instant VM restore or create a clone copy, it’s amazing how easy it is.”

ExaGrid and Veeam can instantly recover a VMware virtual machine by running it directly from the ExaGrid appliance in the event that the primary storage VM becomes unavailable. This is possible because of ExaGrid’s Landing Zone – a high-speed disk cache on the ExaGrid appliance that retains the most recent backups in complete form. Once the primary storage environment has been brought back to a working state, the VM running on the ExaGrid appliance can then be migrated to primary storage for continued operation.

“In some cases, when someone accidentally deletes a file, I am able to go to a console, drill into a VMDK file, and pick the file they need restored. That’s huge! With tape, we would have needed to physically go to the data center, unload tapes from the library, find the right tape, put the tape in the library, catalog the file, and then restore the file. Speaking from experience, restoring just a single file from tape could take up to an hour, and now, it takes a mere ten minutes,” said Copithorne.

"One of the major selling points of using ExaGrid with Veeam is the ability to stand up a VM almost immediately with just a couple of clicks. When I need to do an instant VM restore or create a clone copy, it’s amazing how easy it is. "

Richard Copithorne, Principal Systems Administrator

ExaGrid Delivers ‘Fantastic’ Support Compared to HP and Dell EMC

Copithorne’s experience with ExaGrid’s customer support has been ‘fantastic.’ “Having worked with the likes of HP and Dell EMC, I can speak from experience – their support isn’t nearly as streamlined as ExaGrid’s. When I send an email to my ExaGrid support engineer, I typically receive a response within half an hour. If there is ever an issue, I receive an automated alert, and my support engineer will get in touch with me; he usually knows what’s going on before I do! This allows me to take a ‘set it and forget it’ approach and focus on my other priorities because I don’t have to worry,” said Copithorne.

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.

Copithorne finds that ExaGrid’s reliability allows him to focus on other aspects of his position. “As an administrator, using a system that doesn’t require constant upkeep and alleviates the need for me to be hands-on is a major plus for day-to-day operations. There is so much happening on any given day that the last thing I want to do is worry about backup. Using ExaGrid gives me peace of mind because it’s a solid product.”

Savings with ExaGrid-Veeam Combined Dedupe

“Deduplication has saved us from what used to cause a lot of headaches,” Copithorne said. “When I look at the environment – just at our headquarters alone – we are getting a 7.5:1 deduplication ratio. That saves us significant money on disk, and we don’t have to worry about running out of storage anytime soon.”

Veeam uses the information from VMware and Hyper-V and provides deduplication on a “per-job” basis, finding the matching areas of all the virtual disks within a backup job and using metadata to reduce the overall footprint of the backup data. Veeam also has a “dedupe friendly” compression setting which further reduces the size of the Veeam backups in a way that allows the ExaGrid system to achieve further deduplication. This approach typically achieves a 2:1 deduplication ratio.

ExaGrid is architected from the ground up to protect virtualized environments and provide deduplication as backups are taken. ExaGrid will achieve up to 5:1 additional deduplication rate. The net result is a combined Veeam and ExaGrid deduplication rate of upwards to 10:1, which greatly reduces the amount of disk storage required.

ExaGrid and Veeam

The combination of ExaGrid and Veeam’s industry-leading virtual server data protection solutions allows customers to utilize Veeam Backup & Replication in VMware, vSphere, and Microsoft Hyper-V virtual environments on ExaGrid’s Tiered Backup Storage. This combination provides fast backups and efficient data storage as well as replication to an offsite location for disaster recovery. Customers can use Veeam Backup & Replication’s built-in source-side deduplication in concert with ExaGrid’s Tiered Backup Storage with Adaptive Deduplication to further shrink backups.

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.

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