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Customer Success Story

Customer Success Story

The Guardia di Finanza Switches to ExaGrid for Better Data Protection and 10x Faster Restores

Customer Overview

The Guardia di Finanza is a military police force reporting directly to Italy’s Minister of Economy and Finance, with general economic and financial crime-fighting competencies. The institutional mission of the Corps, in line with the indications of the Government Authority, is divided into three strategic objectives concerning: combating tax evasion, tax avoidance, and tax fraud; the fight against public expenditure offenses; and combating economic and financial crime.

Key Benefits:

  • Faster backups and restores, which translates into time savings for busy staff
  • Seamless integration with Veeam
  • Comprehensive Security Features including Ransomware Recovery
  • “Simply amazing” customer support from ExaGrid
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"After extensive market research, we realized that ExaGrid could be the ideal choice, so we did a proof of concept (POC) with the ExaGrid team. ExaGrid integrated with Veeam, our installed backup application, without any issues. The POC gave us the opportunity to verify reliability and performance, comparing ExaGrid with the solutions already in use, in the same environment, and we were immediately able to appreciate the performance benefits that ExaGrid offers. Our choice favors the architecture that guarantees constant performance even in the event of a significant increase in data volume."

Rosario Cacciola, Security Backup Manager

POC Proves ExaGrid to be the Best Solution

Rosario Cacciola, Security Backup Manager, has worked for decades at the Guardia di Finanza (GDF) with his team and prior to using ExaGrid, he used other backup storage solutions. Cacciola experienced performance and reliability problems with the other backup storage, so he and his team decided to search for a more advanced and effective solution.

“After extensive market research, we realized that ExaGrid could be the ideal choice, so we did a proof of concept (POC) with the ExaGrid team. ExaGrid integrated with Veeam, our installed backup application, without any issues. The POC gave us the opportunity to verify reliability and performance, comparing ExaGrid with the solutions already in use, in the same environment, and we were immediately able to appreciate the performance benefits that ExaGrid offers. Our choice favors the architecture that guarantees constant performance even in the event of a significant increase in data volume,” said Cacciola.

“The ExaGrid installation was extremely simple—I could almost handle it by myself. Our ExaGrid support engineer helped set up the system perfectly, with the finishing touches. ExaGrid support is always there when needed.” 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.

ExaGrid’s Comprehensive Security Gives Confidence Needed in Today’s World

Cacciola is pleased with the comprehensive security included in the ExaGrid system, including ransomware recovery. “I really appreciate all the security features offered by ExaGrid. We decided to purchase the SEC version of ExaGrid which offers encryption at the RAID controller level and therefore does not affect the ability to deduplicate data. I also really appreciate that ExaGrid enables two-factor authentication (2FA) and the Retention Time-Lock function, which is very effective in the event of a ransomware and malware attack. Fortunately, we never had the need to test the functionality, because the attacks never reached do damage,” he said.

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 tier called the Repository Tier, for longer-term retention. ExaGrid’s unique architecture and features provide comprehensive security including Retention Time-Lock for Ransomware Recovery (RTL), and through the combination of a non-network-facing tier (tiered air gap), a delayed delete policy, and immutable data objects, backup data is protected from being deleted or encrypted. ExaGrid’s offline tier is ready for recovery in the event of an attack.

Better Backups and 10x Faster Restores for 1PB of Data

GDF backs up over 1PB of data of various types including documents, databases, and email servers. Switching to ExaGrid has increased the amount of data that GDF can back up, and the ExaGrid-Veeam solution has been able to keep up, “brilliantly.”

“Our environment consists of over 400 VMs and many physical servers. Since switching to ExaGrid, we have seen astonishing differences, and our performance and reliability drastically improved. The ExaGrid technology and architecture are much better than alternatives,” said Cacciola. “With ExaGrid, I am having fewer problems overall and I am saving quite a lot of time managing backups. Our restores are 10X faster! I can restore a server in two minutes, which is a big shift from our past experiences.”

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).

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.

“Simply Amazing” Support from ExaGrid

Cacciola appreciates the ExaGrid support model of working with an assigned ExaGrid support engineer who works with him on any updates to the system and helps resolve any issues that may come up. “ExaGrid support is simply amazing. They are always present, quick, and very organized in handling tickets,” he said.

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-Veeam Deduplication for Longer-term Retention

Cacciola backs up the data on a daily and weekly basis, utilizing both active and synthetic fulls. GDF keeps longer-term retention of different lengths based on the type of data. The ExaGrid-Veeam combined deduplication is helpful at keeping storage manageable for GDF’s retention.

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.

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.

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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