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Customer Success Story

Customer Success Story

Law Firm Virtualizes with Veeam and ExaGrid, Products 'Integrate Perfectly'

Customer Overview

Since 1927, the lawyers and staff of Levene Gouldin & Thompson (LG&T) have helped clients with prompt legal expertise that has made a difference. Over 70 LG&T attorneys and paralegals provide counsel to families and businesses on a host of legal matters including personal injury, elder law, family law, and corporate law in offices throughout Central New York and Northern Pennsylvania.

Key Benefits:

  • Restores ‘much easier and faster’ than tape, down to just minutes
  • ExaGrid and Veeam ‘integrate perfectly,’ offer efficient solution
  • System is easy to scale; ExaGrid support guides the setup process
  • Automated daily reports keep system easy to maintain
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‘Cumbersome Ordeal’ with Tape Library

Mark Goodman, network administrator for LG&T, recalls the frustrations of backing up to a tape library. “Before we installed ExaGrid, we only had physical servers and we backed everything up to a tape library. It was a cumbersome ordeal as far as the software; we used Arcserve from CA Technologies at the time.”

When LG&T transitioned from physical servers to a virtual environment, Mark found that backing up using tape was not efficient. In addition, it was hard to find platforms that supported the Novell Enterprise Server that LG&T had been using. The law firm was ready for a change.

"I like using ExaGrid! I’ll recommend it to anybody who is looking for a new system. "

Mark Goodman, Network Administrator

Making the Switch

At a presentation with an IT services provider, Mark was impressed by what he learned about ExaGrid and Veeam and decided to upgrade his environment. “We just jumped in with both feet and purchased the products. This was the only solution we ever looked at, and using Veeam and ExaGrid was so simple that there wasn’t any need to look at anything else. What sold us on ExaGrid was how easy restores would be – that we could spin-up a previous version of a system that was running to grab data if we needed to.”

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.

Restores are ‘Much Easier and Faster’

Mark is pleased to work with a system that is optimized for restoring data. He had been frustrated with the restore process before switching to ExaGrid. “With Arcserve, we needed to go back and the find the job number to specify the tape. Now using Veeam with ExaGrid, everything is right there. I see a list of backups and it’s just a matter of selecting the date, going to that file, and restoring. I can have it all done in 15 minutes.

“It’s great to have easy access to our data and to be able to restore so easily. ExaGrid integrates perfectly with Veeam. I can’t say enough how much I like these products. I’ve had other people call me, trying to sell me on other products, but I’m not interested in moving to anything different. This system is much easier and faster.”

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.

Reliable System is Easy to Maintain

Mark appreciates the reliability of the ExaGrid system and how easy it is to monitor the system with automated daily reports. “I get a report every day for every backup so I can check the health of the system, which is very helpful. I have the reporting set up so that if it’s a clean report, it goes to a folder in my e-mail and if it’s not, it comes to my inbox, so I know right away if something’s wrong.”

“The interface is very simple and easy to use, as is working with the hardware itself. I like using ExaGrid! I’ll recommend it to anybody who is looking for a new system,” Mark said.

Support to Scale Out

To keep up with the standards of the legal industry, LG&T keeps a ten-year retention of its data. Mark found it easy to scale out when the law firm needed more storage. “It was easy. Once I hooked up the new appliance, my ExaGrid customer support engineer helped me link it to the network and add an IP address. Within an hour we had it all set up, repartitioned, and changed the jobs so that one set of jobs went to the EX3000, one went to the EX5000, and I flipped up two repositories. It went smoothly. Anytime I’ve had an issue with partitions or understanding how anything works on the ExaGrid system, he’s been very patient with me and answered my questions,” said Mark.

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.

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. Data is deduplicated into a non-network-facing Repository Tier with automatic load balancing and global deduplication across all repositories.

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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