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Customer Success Story

Customer Success Story

Jel Sert Optimizes Backup Environment with Combination of ExaGrid and Veeam

Customer Overview

The Jel Sert Company is a family-owned business that’s been at the forefront of innovation in the food and beverage industry since 1926. For nearly a century, generations of families have enjoyed Jel Sert’s products, including dessert mixes, drink mixes and freezer bars. The Jel Sert Company’s products are made exclusively in West Chicago, Illinois, with over 1,000 employees sharing the company’s passion for creating high quality, high-value products.

Key Benefits:

  • Adding ExaGrid has reduced Jel Sert’s reliance on tape and streamlined daily backups
  • Jel Sert benefits from the superior integration of ExaGrid with Veeam over vRanger
  • Data restores and VM boots are fast; files restore in seconds and servers in minutes
  • Designated ExaGrid support engineer is a ‘great resource’
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Adding ExaGrid to Virtualized Environment

The Jel Sert Company had been backing up its data to tape using Veritas Backup Exec. The company decided to virtualize its environment, adding ExaGrid and Quest vRanger. Gerardo Zavala, the company’s computer operations manager, was impressed that the installation of the ExaGrid system at the company headquarters went “very smoothly,” as did the installation of the ExaGrid appliance at its disaster recovery (DR) site.

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. In addition, ExaGrid appliances can replicate to a second ExaGrid appliance at a second site or to the public cloud for DR (disaster recovery).

"Our migration to Veeam from vRanger has been a slow process, but we’ve already noticed how well ExaGrid and Veeam work together. It makes us feel even better to have chosen ExaGrid for our backup storage and confident that Veeam and ExaGrid are the best solution for our environment. "

Gerardo Zavala, Computer Operations Manager

Switch in Backup Apps Optimizes Solution

“We recently purchased Veeam and are in the process of migrating our backup jobs from vRanger to Veeam,” said Zavala. “Over the years, we have been growing uncomfortable that the vRanger product was moving through so many companies; we want to be sure that the solution we use will be available in the long-term. Veeam has so many more features to offer, and my boss and I have both heard good things about the work that Veeam and ExaGrid do within the backup realm.

“Our migration to Veeam from vRanger has been a slow process, but we’ve already noticed how well ExaGrid and Veeam work together. It makes us feel even better to have chosen ExaGrid for our backup storage and confident that Veeam and ExaGrid are the best solution for our environment,” said Zavala.

Short Backup Windows and Quick Restores

Zavala backs up Jel Sert’s data in daily incrementals and weekly fulls. “Before ExaGrid, we had to rotate tapes every day, and now we’ve moved away from tape during the week. We back up in daily incrementals to the ExaGrid system Monday through Thursday, with full backups on Friday and Saturday. On Fridays, we also run a second full backup job to tape.”

Zavala appreciates ExaGrid’s “adaptive” approach to data deduplication, which performs deduplication and replication in parallel with backups. “I like that our onsite ExaGrid system does everything in the background and then sends our backups to the offsite ExaGrid system. All that behind-the-scenes activity is great!” The company’s daily incrementals take 20 minutes and full backups take about two
hours and are replicated to the DR site. Zavala also finds that restoring data is also a quick process from ExaGrid’s landing zone. “We can restore a file in less than a minute. It doesn’t take long to restore a server either – it ranges from ten minutes to an hour depending on its size.”

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.

‘Straightforward’ System is Easy to Manage

Zavala finds ExaGrid to be straightforward and easy to use, from managing the interface to creating shares. “ExaGrid appliances are solid hardware devices, so I don’t have to worry about them breaking,” said Zavala.

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.

Zavala values ExaGrid’s customer support model. “One of best things about ExaGrid is that our account is assigned to a designated support engineer. Our ExaGrid support engineer has gotten to know us and is familiar with our environment. It’s been much easier to work with one person rather than someone different each time we need help. Our engineer has been fabulous! He’s always available for questions, and he’s helped us with upgrades and any issues that we encounter. He’s a really great resource.”

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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