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Customer Success Story

Customer Success Story

Dedupe in Backup Software Fails Miserably, First National Bank of Hutchinson Turns to ExaGrid as Solution of Choice

Customer Overview

First National Bank of Hutchinson (FNBH) is a community bank that offers personal banking, commercial banking and wealth management services. The bank was founded in 1876 and is based in Hutchinson, Kansas. First National Bank of Hutchinson operates as a subsidiary of First Kansas Bancshares, Inc. The bank is locally owned and community-managed, Members of the senior leadership team and the Board of Directors are from the area, keeping the primary interests of the bank focused on central Kansas.

Key Benefits:

  • 50% reduction in backup times
  • Offers scalability for future data growth
  • Responsive customer support
  • Tight integration with Veritas Backup Exec
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Bank Migrates from Tape to Disk, Turns on Dedupe in Backup Software

“Using tape, we weren’t getting our backups done in the timely manner that we needed,” said Tim Miller, senior vice president and manager, IT. The bank’s backup window of 12 hours was woefully insufficient to handle the full range of data FNBH needed to protect. “We got to a point where not only were we not doing full backups, we weren’t backing up some servers at all because our backups could reach the 20-hour mark,” said Miller. The bank was far outside of its backup window and looking forward, knew the problem would continue to worsen as their volume of data invariably continued to grow. Said Miller, “We were using three LTO tape drives, and it was really bulky and often unreliable. At least weekly, if not more often, we had tapes that failed and had backup jobs that didn’t run correctly.”

In order to increase speed and reliability, FNBH decided to transition to disk-based backup and turn on deduplication in their backup software. “The deduplication in the software just wasn’t fast enough, and we weren’t getting the throughput that we needed,” said Miller. “Our dedupe ratios were only about 5:1, which was far below what we had hoped for, and we were way outside of our backup window – so much so that we never really did full backups. We backed up maybe half our data, and that took more than 12 hours.”

"You never know what your data is going to look like in a few years, and I wanted a product that would allow me to easily scale; the ExaGrid provides that. It seems that ExaGrid and CDW are really on top of new technology, and the system is a very good fit for our environment. "

Tim Miller, Senior VP and Manager, IT

CDW Recommends ExaGrid

“I was introduced to ExaGrid by CDW,” said Miller. “CDW worked with ExaGrid throughout the sales process to make the right recommendation and correctly size our system. The whole process went really smoothly.”

As a leading provider of technology solutions, CDW has access to products from thousands of vendors. CDW assigns specialists to each customer to help them navigate the sea of options and to deliver solutions that fit the customer’s needs perfectly.

“When FNBH approached us for recommendations on revamping their backup capabilities, upgrading their Veritas Backup Exec environment and adding ExaGrid appliances both came to mind as possible solutions,” explained Mike Geremia and Tory Knapp, FNBH’s dedicated CDW account manager team. “We arranged a call with our Inside Solutions Architect to help FNBH sort through the merits of each solution and to describe how they can work together as well.”

“Once it became apparent that utilizing dedupe in their backup software wasn’t serving them well and that FNBH needed a dedicated appliance solution, I recommended ExaGrid because of their industry-leading performance and scalability,” said Matt Wright, inside solutions architect for CDW. Matt added that “ExaGrid’s support is also a huge differentiator and their customers are very vocal. ExaGrid customers like talking about their solution and are overwhelmingly positive about their ExaGrid experience.”

ExaGrid Delivers on Bank Expectations

After evaluating both ExaGrid and other disk backup solutions, the bank chose ExaGrid. The ExaGrid system integrates tightly with the bank’s existing backup application, Veritas Backup Exec. “ExaGrid was quite simply the better solution for us,” said Miller. “We got the speed we needed at a much lower price than if we had gone with any other solution.”

Backup Times Dramatically Reduced, Dedupe Soars, Retention Increases

Since installing the ExaGrid system, the bank has seen a major reduction in backup times. “We’re now completing everything in less than 11 hours. We’re backing up significantly more data, and it is all being done within our backup window. Our dedupe ratios jumped from 5:1 using dedupe in our backup software to 27:1 using ExaGrid,” said Miller. The bank has increased their retention from 20 days using tape to 30 days using ExaGrid. Miller said that the bank is saving a lot of space due to ExaGrid’s deduplication of their data.

“For one relatively small appliance, we are storing a ton of information, which is very impressive.”

ExaGrid’s turnkey disk-based backup system combines enterprise drives with zone-level data deduplication, delivering a disk-based solution that is far more cost effective than simply backing up to disk with deduplication or using backup software deduplication to disk. ExaGrid’s patented zone-level deduplication reduces the disk space needed by a range of 10:1 to 50:1, depending on the data types and retention periods, by storing only the unique objects across backups instead of redundant data. Adaptive Deduplication performs deduplication and replication in parallel with backups. As data is being deduplicated to the repository, it is also replicated to a second ExaGrid site or the public cloud for disaster recovery (DR).

Scalability Provides for Data Growth

The ability to scale their system as the bank’s data increases was very important to Miller. “You never know what your data is going to look like in a few years, and I wanted a product that would allow me to easily scale; the ExaGrid provides that. It seems that ExaGrid and CDW are really on top of new technology, and the system is a very good fit for our environment.” As the bank’s data volumes continue to increase, the ExaGrid system can be scaled to accommodate additional data.

The ExaGrid system can easily scale to accommodate data growth. ExaGrid’s software makes the system highly scalable – appliances of any size or age can be mixed and matched in a single system. A single scale-out system can take in up to a 2.7PB full backup plus retention at an ingest rate of up to 488TB per hour.

Easy Setup, Responsive Customer Support

According to Miller, the setup was surprisingly simple. “Not only did our ExaGrid support engineer help us set up the ExaGrid, but he also went through step-by-step how to set up jobs in Backup Exec, so we knew exactly what we needed to do. It worked as soon as we started using it.”

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 and Veritas Backup Exec

Veritas Backup Exec provides cost-effective, high-performance backup and recovery – including continuous data protection for Microsoft Exchange servers, Microsoft SQL servers, file servers, and workstations. High-performance agents and options provide fast, flexible, granular protection and scalable management of local and remote server backups.

Organizations using Veritas Backup Exec can look to ExaGrid Tiered Backup Storage for nightly backups. ExaGrid sits behind existing backup applications, such as Veritas Backup Exec, providing faster and more reliable backups and restores. In a network running Veritas Backup Exec, using ExaGrid is as easy as pointing existing backup jobs at a NAS share on the ExaGrid system. Backup jobs are sent directly from the backup application to ExaGrid for backup to disk.

Intelligent Data Protection

ExaGrid’s turnkey disk-based backup system combines enterprise drives with zone-level data deduplication, delivering a disk-based solution that is far more cost effective than simply backing up to disk with deduplication or using backup software deduplication to disk. ExaGrid’s patented zone-level deduplication reduces the disk space needed by a range of 10:1 to 50:1, depending on the data types and retention periods, by storing only the unique objects across backups instead of redundant data. Adaptive Deduplication performs deduplication and replication in parallel with backups. As data is being deduplicated to the repository, it is also replicated to a second ExaGrid site or the public cloud for disaster recovery (DR).

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 2.7PB full backup in a single system.

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