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Customer Success Story

Customer Success Story

GuideIT Confidently Backs Up Client Data – and Its Own – with ExaGrid

Customer Overview

GuideIT, a Perot company that launched in 2013, is a provider of technology optimization services located in Plano, Texas. Through a collaborative approach, the company helps customers align IT operations in meeting their strategic business needs, better govern and manage the cost of IT, and effectively navigate changes in technology.

Key Benefits:

  • Competitive pricing and scalability make ExaGrid the ideal solution for GuideIT’s clients
  • Combined ExaGrid- Veeam data deduplication maximizes storage for GuideIT’s own datay
  • ‘Top-quality’ ExaGrid support provides assistance on entire environment, beyond hardware
  • ExaGrid supports a variety of backup apps, including two used often by GuideIT’s clients: Veeam and Veritas Backup Exec
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GuideIT Uses ExaGrid to Back Up Client Data as Well as its Own

GuideIT provides its clients with IT infrastructure management and data preservation services that include backup and recovery. In addition to recommending ExaGrid as a backup storage solution for its clients, the IT company also uses an ExaGrid system to back up its own data. Five of GuideIT’s clients currently use ExaGrid to back up their data, and GuideIT staff feel confident that ExaGrid’s performance will live up to client expectations. Edmund Farias, convergence engineer senior specialist at GuideIT, offers some insight into how clients are using their ExaGrid systems: “We’re backing up over 500 virtual machines (VMs) as well as physical servers for our clients on ExaGrid systems. The majority of our clients use Veeam to back up virtual servers and Veritas Backup Exec to back up physical servers. Some of our clients have an ExaGrid system onsite that replicates to GuideIT’s data center, and some back up data directly to our data center.”

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). Using ExaGrid gives GuideIT assurance that it can meet its clients’ needs. “It helps us with our requirements as a service provider, where we’ve taken on backups and restores as our responsibility. If something happens, we need to know that we’re able to retrieve client data, and ExaGrid provides us with confidence that we’ll be able to do that,” said Farias.

"For some of our clients, cloud-based backup is just not feasible due to the amount of data that they have stored. Cloud-based backup solutions charge by the amount of data stored, so clients would have to worry about the monthly price changing as user data grows. That’s the biggest difference about using an ExaGrid system; the appliance is paid for and owned, and it has been properly sized to accommodate the client. It can be scaled as necessary, and it’s a very easy system to deploy. "

Edmund Farias, Convergence Engineer Sr. Specialist

ExaGrid Provides Better Value for Clients with Growing Data

Farias has found that using ExaGrid’s disk- based backup storage solution is a better value for his clients than using the cloud for backup. “For some of our clients, cloud-based backup is just not feasible due to the amount of data that they have stored. Cloud-based backup solutions charge by the amount of data stored, so clients would have to worry about the monthly price changing as user data grows. That’s the biggest difference about using an ExaGrid system; the appliance is paid for and owned, and it has been properly sized to accommodate the client. It can be scaled as necessary, and it’s a very easy system to deploy.”

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.

Combined ExaGrid-Veeam Deduplication Maximizes Storage

In addition to storing client backup data, GuideIT also backs up its own data onto an ExaGrid system. The company’s environment is entirely virtualized, using Veeam to back up its VMware. “We back up our data daily and also do weekly synthetic fulls, and some file systems are even backed up on a 4-hour incremental basis. We keep retention of 14 dailies as well as copy jobs and a quarterly backup. We’re able to back up 160TB in a space of 53TB thanks to the data deduplication from ExaGrid and Veeam.”

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.

‘Top-Quality’ Support

Farias appreciates ExaGrid’s support model of working with an assigned engineer who knows GuideIT’s environment. “One of the best aspects of working with ExaGrid is the top-quality support engineers. My ExaGrid support engineer is able to assist me with my entire environment, beyond my ExaGrid hardware. He’s helped me with VMware and with Backup Exec. I’ve received better support from him than when I’ve called other vendors directly.”

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 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 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.

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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