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Customer Success Story

Customer Success Story

ChildFund Saves 'Significant' Storage Thanks to ExaGrid's Data Deduplication

Customer Overview

ChildFund ChildFund International (http://www.ChildFund.org) is a global child focused development and protection agency and a founding member of the ChildFund Alliance. ChildFund International works throughout Asia, Africa and the Americas – including the United States – to connect children with what they need to grow up safe, healthy, educated and skilled, no matter where they are. Last year, they reached 13.6 million children and family members in 24 countries. About 200,000 Americans support our work by sponsoring individual children or investing in ChildFund programs. Since 1938, we have worked to help children break the generational cycle of poverty and achieve their full potential. We align what we learn from children with best practices in the international development field to develop and deliver programs that are supported by the generosity of sponsors and donors. Find out more at ChildFund.org.

Key Benefits:

  • ChildFund chose ExaGrid for its deduplication ‘at a reasonable price point’
  • Restoring data is now a faster and simpler process using ExaGrid and Veeam
  • ExaGrid support model of working with assigned engineers is similar to ‘seeing a family physician’
  • Deduplication leads to ‘significant’ savings on storage
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ExaGrid Chosen to Replace Tape Library

ChildFund International had been backing up to a tape library. Tapes were rotated offsite using a data management company. Nate Layne, a network administrator at ChildFund, had grown frustrated with the ever-changing tape hardware that was not backwards compatible. “Over periods of time, we replaced our robotic libraries, and the tape technology would change. There were some instances where would have an older tape that we needed to use, but we no longer had the drive for tapes with longer retention periods.” In addition, Layne found that there were often mechanical errors with tape, and he spent too much time troubleshooting just to get the system to work.

Layne’s former CIO asked him to find a better solution and after researching some options, Layne recommended ExaGrid. “What I liked about the ExaGrid is that it was a simple solution with a lot of features that wouldn’t be hard to leverage. Choosing ExaGrid was a great way to get what we were looking for. Our goals were to get our data offsite and to have deduplication at a reasonable price point.”

ChildFund had been using Veritas Backup Exec with a tape library. Since switching to ExaGrid, the organization has recently migrated to Veeam. “Backup Exec works well, but Veeam has some added functionality that I really like, such as parallel VM processing and the high availability Instant VM Recovery feature that mounts a VM to restore point data within the backup repository. It’s really fast,” said Layne.

The ExaGrid system is easy to install and use and works seamlessly with the industry’s leading backup applications so that an organization can retain its investment in its existing backup applications and processes.

"Working with ExaGrid support is like going to see a family physician. When you call into some other vendors, it’s like going to a walk-in clinic where you see a different doctor each time. With ExaGrid, the support engineers get to know your history like your doctor knows your chart. "

Nate Layne, Network Administrator

A ‘Family Physician’ Approach to Support

Layne appreciates working with an assigned ExaGrid customer support engineer. “One of the deciding factors in choosing ExaGrid was the support model it offers. I like having an assigned technical resource. That individual really gets to know how we use the ExaGrid in our backups in our particular environment. So that allows for better support.

“Working with ExaGrid support is like going to see a family physician. When you call into some other vendors, it’s like going to a walk-in clinic where you see a different doctor each time. With ExaGrid, the support engineers get to know your history like your doctor knows your chart. In my experience, it’s pretty rare to find a support model like ExaGrid has. It works really well, and it allows ExaGrid customers to build a relationship with the company,” said Layne.

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.

High Dedupe Leads to Savings on Storage

Layne is impressed with the data deduplication ratios that are achieved with the ExaGrid system. “We’re seeing ratios of 12.5:1, sometimes upwards of 15:1. If we weren’t able to get that much deduplication, then we would need significantly more storage than what we have now, so it’s a huge savings.”

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 for a strong recovery point (RPO). As data is being deduplicated to the repository, it can also be replicated to a second ExaGrid site or the public cloud for disaster recovery (DR).

Faster and Simpler Restores

Layne has found that using ExaGrid to restore data is much more efficient than using a tape library. “It’s a simpler process now – there are no tapes to recall, our data remains in our custody, and there are no time-consuming tape inventories. The data is restored much faster using ExaGrid. Never again will I have to grapple with potential tape or tape device incompatibilities, outdated drivers, or cleaning cartridges. Tape media degradation occurs over time and can be accelerated if the tapes are stored improperly, which can result in data loss and/or corruption.”

ExaGrid’s award-winning scale-out architecture provides customers with a fixed-length backup window regardless of data growth. Its unique disk-cache Landing Zone allows for the fastest backups and retains the most recent backup in its full undeduplicated form, enabling the fastest restores.

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. This combination of capabilities in a turnkey appliance makes the ExaGrid system easy to install, manage, and scale. ExaGrid’s architecture provides lifetime value and investment protection that no other architecture can match.

ExaGrid and Veeam

Veeam’s backup solutions and ExaGrid’s Tiered Backup Storage combine for the industry’s fastest backups, fastest restores, a scale-out storage system as data grows, and a strong ransomware recovery story – all at the lowest cost.

 

ExaGrid-Veeam Combined Dedupe

Veeam uses changed block tracking to perform a level of data deduplication. ExaGrid allows Veeam deduplication and Veeam dedupe-friendly compression to stay on. ExaGrid will increase Veeam’s deduplication by a factor of about 7:1 to a total combined deduplication ratio of 14:1, reducing the storage required and saving on storage costs up front and over time.

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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