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Customer Success Story

Customer Success Story

ExaGrid Adds Data Protection While Reducing Scottish Law Firm’s Backup Windows by 82%

Customer Overview

Harper Macleod is a leading independent Scottish law firm offering a full range of commercial and personal legal services across Scotland, the UK, and further afield. The law firm is one of the largest professional partnerships in Scotland, generating in excess of £26 million in turnover – a figure that has consistently grown regardless of the economic backdrop.

Key Benefits:

  • Harper Macleod updates backup environment with ExaGrid and Veeam to enable replication
  • Switch to ExaGrid results in 82% reduction of backup window
  • Recovering data from ExaGrid using Veeam is ‘very easy to do’
  • ExaGrid’s simplicity reduces time spent on backup management
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ExaGrid-Veeam Solution Chosen to Update Backup Environment

The IT staff at Harper Macleod decided to update its backup environment so that the law firm could replicate its data offsite for additional protection. “We had previously backed up our data to disk using Commvault and Arcserve, and then copied it to tape for long-term retention,” said Brian Carton, IT manager at Harper Macleod. “We wanted a disk-based backup solution that would enable 10Gb replication to multiple sites. We looked briefly at other technologies, but our vendor highly recommended ExaGrid and Veeam as a solution that would work well for replication.”

Harper Macleod installed an ExaGrid system at its primary site that cross-replicates to another ExaGrid system at its secondary site. After installation, Brian realized the backups weren’t working as planned. He worked with his ExaGrid support engineer to troubleshoot the system, and eventually they both realized that the ExaGrid system was not sized correctly. The ExaGrid account manager worked with the support engineer to resolve the sizing issue, and Brian was glad that the ExaGrid team moved the process along and kept him informed throughout the process. “We were impressed with the support that we received. Our experience working with ExaGrid staff has been very positive despite some difficult discussions about things not working right. ExaGrid gave us additional appliances so that our system is the correct size. Now that the sizing is resolved, the solution works well and we are very happy with it,” he said.

"Backups are notoriously complex, and now that our ExaGrid system is up and running, we’re saving hours on admin time, so we can spend more time making improvements to our environment rather than making sure our backups are secured, which was previously quite a time-consuming job. "

Brian Carton, IT Manager

ExaGrid Makes “Massive Difference,” Reduces Backup Windows 82%

Harper Macleod has a wide range of data to back up, from SQL databases to application servers. Brian backs up the law firm’s data in different stages, from “hot” storage of snapshots of live data taken from the primary storage solution every five minutes, to “warm” storage of data backed up nightly as well as weekly to the ExaGrid system, where it is kept for 30 days, and then moved to “cold” storage on network-attached storage (NAS), where it stays for five years.

Harper Macleod is governed by policies set by the Law Society of Scotland, and Brian has been able to add more recovery points using ExaGrid, keeping in line with the policies as well as keeping the law firm’s data well protected. “ExaGrid provides us with quick nightly backups and a recent recovery point, should we need one,” he said. “We’ve seen a massive difference in our backup window since switching to ExaGrid; a full backup used to take 70 hours, and that’s been reduced to 12 hours. Our nightly backups have also been reduced from seven hours with our previous solution to an hour and a half using ExaGrid. It’s such an improvement!”

In addition to shorter backup windows, Brian has found that restoring data from ExaGrid using Veeam is a quick process. “Part of our backup policy is to test our backups on a weekly basis, which can range from restoring an individual file to a full server. We’ve found the process with Veeam and ExaGrid is very smooth, and recovering data is very easy to do. From the testing we’ve done, we feel that we can recover quickly in the event we ever lost our servers,” he said.

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 VMware virtual machine by running it directly from the ExaGrid appliance in the event that the primary storage VM becomes unavailable. This is possible because of ExaGrid’s Landing Zone – a high-speed cache on the ExaGrid appliance that retains the most recent backups in complete form. Once the primary storage environment has been brought back to a working state, the VM running on the ExaGrid appliance can then be migrated to primary storage for continued operation.

ExaGrid Team “Excellent” to Work With

Brian values the high level of customer service his company receives from the ExaGrid team. “Both our account manager and our support engineer have been excellent to work with. Our account manager even came to see us when we’d been having issues. We’ve felt very well looked after and that makes a difference,” he said. “We work with many vendors and call into their support teams, and we appreciate ExaGrid’s model of assigning a single support engineer to work with, instead of getting a different person every time. Our ExaGrid support engineer understands our environment and has an existing relationship with our staff, and it’s been a very positive experience,” said Brian.

Brian has found that backups require less management since implementing the ExaGrid system. “Backups are notoriously complex, and now that our ExaGrid system is up and running, we’re saving hours on admin time, so we can spend more time making improvements to our environment rather than making sure our backups are secured, which was previously quite a time-consuming job.”

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 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-Veeam Combined Dedupe

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.

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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