Episcopal SeniorLife Communities

Episcopal SeniorLife Communities Rely on ExaGrid for Strong Backup Storage

Episcopal SeniorLife Communities (ESLC) is a faith-based, nonprofit organization offering a full continuum of compassionate senior care services and senior living communities in Rochester, NY. We support seniors and their families through life’s transitions, and honor each person’s unique desires, beliefs and values—all so that we can fulfill our promise of “Life. Inspired every day.”

Founded in 1868 on the Christian values of the Episcopal Church, our main location at the Episcopal Church Home has now met the needs of our community with care and compassion for more than 150 years.

Key Benefits:

Seamless integration between ExaGrid, Veeam, and Nutanix
Retention Time-Lock ensures data can easily be recovered
Restores are easy and quick
ExaGrid Customer Support is proactive and knowledgeable
Easy backup management saves IT staff time

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Switch to Nutanix-Veeam-ExaGrid Solution Streamlines Backup

Episcopal SeniorLife Communities puts their residents, members and staff first in everything they do, including data protection. Jared Streb, System Administrator at ESLC, is responsible for backing up the organization’s data.

“We used to back up data offsite, so the data was sent to a different location on a backup, which was not streamlined at all,” said Streb. “Now, that we use a Nutanix system, data goes through a Veeam proxy server and then backs up to ExaGrid which has made our process much more streamlined. Data flows quickly and efficiently. ExaGrid makes managing data easier because it’s automatic, which is fantastic.”

"I am so pleased with the security aspects of ExaGrid. We feel confident our data can be recovered in the event of an attack or a disaster. Role-based access control is essential. Also, having two-factor authentication is a plus. It's comforting to have so many security features built into our backup storage."

Jared Streb, System Administrator

Easy Installation with Expert Customer Support

Streb has found it easy to use the ExaGrid system since day one, especially due to ExaGrid’s industry-leading customer support. “The actual installation of the ExaGrid appliance was simple, and the instructions were clear. Since I was new to ExaGrid’s system admin responsibility, it was very nice to get assistance from our assigned ExaGrid Support Engineer with our installation. She’s very knowledgeable. Once the actual hardware was put in place, our engineer worked with us to get the Veeam proxy server set up with Nutanix, which that was fantastic, as that is above and beyond just setting up the ExaGrid appliance. It all went smoothly, and took us three hours or so to get it all set up and squared away, with all of the backup jobs scheduled,” he said.

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.

Comprehensive Security with Ransomware Recovery

“I am so pleased with the security aspects of ExaGrid. We feel confident our data can be recovered in the event of an attack or a disaster. Role-based access control is essential. Also, having two-factor authentication is a plus. It’s comforting to have so many security features built into our backup storage,” said Streb.

Traditionally, backup applications have strong security but backup storage typically has little to none. ExaGrid is unique in its approach, offering comprehensive security features. ExaGrid appliances have a network-facing disk-cache Landing Zone where the most recent backups are stored in an undeduplicated format for fast backup and restore performance. Data is deduplicated into a non-network-facing Repository Tier, where recent and retention deduplicated data is stored for longer-term retention. The combination of a non-network facing tier (tiered air gap) plus delayed deletes and immutable data objects guards against the backup data being deleted or encrypted. ExaGrid’s offline tier is ready for recovery in the event of an attack.

Fast Backup Performance

Streb backs up ESLC’s databases, SQL dumps, and file data, in daily incrementals and a weekly full backup, which takes less than two hours to complete.

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).

Quick VM Recovery Resolves Server Issues

“We had an issue during a project which impacted one of our servers. With the combination of the ExaGrid, Veeam, and Nutanix, we were able to make a duplicate server, using the data from the backup, so we just recreated it, essentially, and then we shut down the old server. The entire process took only 30 minutes to complete,” said Streb.

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

Administration is Hands-Off and Support is Outstanding

Streb appreciates the time he saves due to using a reliable backup solution with great customer support. “The management of our ExaGrid system is easy. I enjoy the proactive alerting system, which keeps me confident in our backups. I check on our backup jobs once a week, and other than that, the management of it is smooth. Our support engineer flags us on any updates—she is on top of it. It’s very hands-off, so it frees a lot of my time.”

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. Customers never have to repeat themselves to various support staff, and issues get resolved quickly.

“ExaGrid Customer Support is fantastic! I have a very good relationship with my support engineer, which I am thankful for. It’s a learning experience at the start, so I had a lot of questions and my support engineer is always ready with answers! Overall, using ExaGrid has been very, very easy,” he said.

ExaGrid and Veeam

Veeam’s backup solutions and ExaGrid 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.

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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Customer Success Story

Customer Success Story