Lifetime Assistance

Lifetime Assistance Installs ExaGrid for Fastest Possible Backups

Customer Overview

Lifetime Assistance, Inc. is an industry leader providing comprehensive services for children and adults with developmental disabilities, helping them live with the highest possible level of independence. Established in 1978, the non-profit organization supports more than 1,800 people with intellectual and developmental disabilities at over 80 sites throughout the Greater Rochester Region, providing a full spectrum of individualized services to help children and adults reach their maximum potential by promoting independence, dignity, and respect.

Key Benefits:

Seamless integration with Veritas Backup Exec
Greatly reduced backup window
ExaGrid offers “peace of mind and confidence”
Reliable and fast customer support

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Long Backup Times and Failed Backups using Straight Disk

Lifetime Assistance had been backing up its six remote locations over T1 lines to its main data center using straight disk and then copying the data off to tape. As the volume of Lifetime’s data continued to increase, their backup window grew to be so large that as one backup was running, it would impede the subsequent backup from starting.

“Our disk-based system simply couldn’t accommodate the amount of data and the rate at which we were sending jobs,” said Abbey Simmons, coordinator of information technology at Lifetime Assistance, “and when backups failed, we’d have tough choices to make between re-running failed jobs or missing a backup. The remote site that was the most problematic had a full backup that kicked off on Friday night and typically didn’t finish until sometime during the day on Wednesday.”

In addition to their lengthy backup window, managing tapes continued to be an increasingly cumbersome chore, so Lifetime began to look for a better alternative and found ExaGrid.

"Any time you can put a device in place that comes with really low management overhead and proactive customer support, it’s fantastic, and that’s what you get with the ExaGrid system. The system has given me peace of mind and confidence in my backups that I didn’t have before. "

Abbey Simmons, Coordinator of IT

ExaGrid Integrates Easily into Existing Environment

Simmons said that the ExaGrid was the only solution that Lifetime considered due to the fact that no other system offered everything that the ExaGrid does. “We didn’t find anything that did all the things that we needed other than the ExaGrid,” said Simmons.

“It was very important to us that the ExaGrid fits into our existing environment and integrates seamlessly with Veritas Backup Exec. We’ve had other backup solutions in the past, and we’re comfortable with Backup Exec. It works well, and we really wanted to keep it. ExaGrid allowed us to do that,” she said.

Backup Times Reduced, Stress-Free Management

Simmons said that installing the ExaGrid system has greatly reduced backup windows. When Lifetime was backing up to straight disk, their most troublesome backup that was started on Friday night typically ran until Wednesday – and not always error free or completely. Simmons reports that that same backup now finishes by the time she arrives at work on Monday morning.

“Our backups are much easier to manage now that we’re backing up to the ExaGrid,” said Simmons. “Since we’ve had the ExaGrid installed, there hasn’t been a job that’s failed. Any time you can put a device in place that comes with really low management overhead and proactive customer support, it’s fantastic, and that’s what you get with the ExaGrid system. The system has given me peace of mind and confidence in my backups that I didn’t have before,” she said.

Post-Process Data Dedupe Maximizes Speed of Backup Jobs

One of the compelling features of the ExaGrid to Lifetime Assistance was the way the ExaGrid system handles data deduplication. “It was important for us that the deduplication occur post process after the backups have landed versus deduplicating while the backups are being written,” said Simmons. “That approach gets our backups completed as quickly as possible, and the ExaGrid is the only system that offers that.”

ExaGrid’s turnkey disk-based backup system combines enterprise drives with zone-level data deduplication, delivering a disk-based solution that is far more cost effective than simply backing up to disk with deduplication or using backup software deduplication to disk. ExaGrid’s patented zone-level deduplication reduces the disk space needed by a range of 10:1 to 50:1, depending on the data types and retention periods, by storing only the unique objects across backups instead of redundant data. Adaptive Deduplication performs deduplication and replication in parallel with backups. As data is being deduplicated to the repository, it is also replicated to a second ExaGrid site or the public cloud for disaster recovery (DR).

Quick and Simple Installation, Reliable Customer Support

According to Simmons, “The installation was seamless. Our support engineer contacted me to review the requirements and how to set everything up. Then he set up a remote session to install the system with me. It was really quite simple. I’ve been very pleased with the customer support I’ve received since the installation as well. Anytime I have a question or need information, our engineer sets up a remote session and helps me out. He’s very accessible,” said Simmons.

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.

Simple Scalability with Scale-out Architecture

Lifetime currently has a total of seven sites that they back up to the ExaGrid. 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.

“Because our data is growing, we will probably add another ExaGrid in the near future. I like that it’s so easy to do. When we were backing up to straight disk, adding disk was a lot of work. A few years ago before ExaGrid when we needed to add capacity, we had to move everything to tape and reformat the box so that we could add another hard drive to it. It’s really nice to be able to just add another ExaGrid,” said Simmons.

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.

Intelligent Data Protection

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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Customer Success Story

Customer Success Story