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Customer Success Story

Customer Success Story

Fuss & O'Neill Engineers Better Backups with ExaGrid

Customer Overview

Fuss & O’Neill is an east coast full-service, multi-discipline, engineering, planning and landscape architecture firm. The company has been serving public and private sector organizations for over 85 years, providing multidisciplinary solutions to maximize value and best address the long-term needs of its clients. With a staff of nearly 300, Fuss & O’Neill has office locations in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and New York.

Key Benefits:

  • Delivers disaster recovery solution
  • Full backup times reduced from 4 days down to 1 day
  • Spent 90% less time managing & administering backups
  • Seamless integration with Veritas Backup Exec
  • Minimal learning curve & easy setup
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Cumbersome, Unreliable Tape Made Backups Difficult and Time Consuming

The IT staff at Fuss & O’Neill had been backing up data at each of its five locations to individual tape devices but keeping up with backups had become increasingly difficult because of outdated, unreliable technology and the daily grind of tape management. When it came time to replace the aging drives, the firm’s IT staff originally looked at newer, faster tape technology but eventually decided to go with a disk-based solution in an effort to streamline backup processes.

“We back up a significant amount of data from our various locations, and it was becoming more and more difficult to get complete backups with our old tape devices,” said Stephen Cram, computer analyst at Fuss & O’Neill. “We were tired of backup issues and were running out of room to keep tapes.”

"I probably spend 90% less time managing and administering backups. The system has been extremely reliable, and our backups are completed correctly each and every night. It really has taken a lot of the stress out of my job. "

Stephen Cram, Computer Analyst III

ExaGrid Delivers Ease of Use, Scalability and Strong Data Deduplication

After looking at solutions from a variety of different vendors, Fuss & O’Neill chose ExaGrid’s disk-based backup system with data deduplication to back up and protect the firm’s data. The ExaGrid system works alongside Fuss & O’Neill’s existing backup application, Veritas Backup Exec.

“We chose the ExaGrid over other solutions because we liked its ease of use, scalability and its data deduplication technology.” said Cram. “We also were impressed with the tight integration of ExaGrid and Backup Exec as we’re pretty embedded. The ExaGrid system and Backup Exec work together seamlessly.”

Cram explained that since Fuss & O’Neill backs up a significant amount of information, including AutoCAD, Civil 3D, and GIS data, effective data deduplication technology was a critical feature they looked for when evaluating systems. The firm has experienced data deduplication rates of 12:1 and higher since installing the system.

“ExaGrid’s data deduplication technology does a phenomenal job at reducing our data. We currently have all of our data in the system, and we still have 40 percent capacity left,” said Cram. “Since the ExaGrid deduplicates the data after it has landed on the system, the backup times are the fastest possible.”

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).

Full Backups Reduced from Four Days to One

Since installing the ExaGrid system, Cram said that Fuss & O’Neill’s full backup times have been reduced from four days to just one.

“The ExaGrid has done a tremendous job at reducing our backup times. Things are so much easier now. With tape, I had to pore over error reports every morning to determine which backups had issues. Now, I come in every morning and spend mere minutes just making sure everything ran okay overnight. The ExaGrid is very reliable, and I probably spend 90 percent less time managing and administering backups,” said Cram. “Restores are also far faster. Before, I had to pick through our fireproof safe to find the tape, mount it, and run the backup. Now, I can restore even older data in minutes. It’s made a huge difference.”

Scale-out Architecture Provides High Levels of Scalability

As Fuss & O’Neill’s data grows, the ExaGrid system can be scaled to accommodate additional data. Cram said that the firm is also considering adding a second ExaGrid system for data replication to enhance its disaster recovery efforts.

“The ExaGrid is a very scalable solution, both in terms of capacity and in terms of adding a second system for disaster recovery. Its modular design means that we can add appliances at any time,” said Cram.

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. ExaGrid appliances contain not just disk but also processing power, memory, and bandwidth. When the system needs to expand, additional appliances are simply added to the existing system. The system scales linearly, maintaining a fixed-length backup window as data grows so customers only pay for what they need, when they need it.

Easy Setup, Responsive Customer Support

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.

“Quite honestly, we would have had to go to training sessions just to learn how to set up some of the other solutions. The ExaGrid was a piece of cake. We turned it on, created a couple of shares, and we were up and running. It’s very easy to use. We’ve also had a good experience with ExaGrid’s customer support and have always found them to be knowledgeable and responsive,” said Cram. “The system has been extremely reliable, and our backups are completed correctly each and every night. It really has taken a lot of the stress out of my job.”

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 6PB full backup in a single system.

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