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Customer Success Story

Customer Success Story

Millennium Technology Group Speeds Backups and Restores with ExaGrid

Customer Overview

Millennium Technology Group was founded in 1997 as an internal solution for Rosen Hotels & Resorts. Today, the company provides comprehensive computer network solutions and services including network design, wireless Internet, desktop software and hardware upgrades, computer training, and server overhauls ranging from wire management, hubs, routers, and switches to complete computer room planning. The company is also a leading provider of telecommunications and technology for Orlando area conventions and trade shows.

Key Benefits:

  • Backups were exceeding 24 hours and now they ‘fly’
  • ExaGrid run flawlessly, savings tons of time
  • User-friendly management, very ‘hands-off’
  • Knowledgeable and responsive customer support
  • Seamless integration with Veritas Backup Exec
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Search for Alternative to Tape Led to ExaGrid

The IT staff at Millennium Technology Group began looking for an alternative to tape in an effort to alleviate ongoing tape issues and long backup times.

“We had reached the end of the line with our tape backup system,” said Lester Steele, network engineer at Millennium Technology Group. “We were experiencing all sorts of tape problems, but our biggest challenge was our backup window. Our backups were running continuously, and we had trouble keeping up. Our backup jobs often failed because they were exceeding 24 hours, and the new jobs would kick off before the old ones were finished.”

"Our support engineer has been responsive to our inquiries and very proactive. ExaGrid’s support is a model for how all support organizations should work. "

Lester Steele, Network Engineer

ExaGrid Works with Existing Backup Application, Provides Effective Data Deduplication

After looking at several different solutions, Millennium Technology Group decided to purchase a disk-based backup system with data deduplication from ExaGrid. The ExaGrid system works along with the firm’s existing backup application, Veritas Backup Exec.

“The ExaGrid system fit right into our existing infrastructure, and it works seamlessly with Backup Exec. That helped with the learning curve and kept the system’s acquisition cost down,” said Steele. “We also looked carefully at different data deduplication technologies and decided that ExaGrid’s approach was the most efficient. ExaGrid’s adaptive approach dedupes the data after it hits the landing zone so that the server performance isn’t affected and the backup times are the fastest possible,” Steele 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). Since installing the ExaGrid system, Steele said that Millennium’s backups are now completed well within the company’s backup windows and restores are faster and far easier, too.

“Our backups absolutely fly now that we’ve installed the ExaGrid system. We’re able to finish our backups in plenty of time,” he said. “Restores are also far less time-consuming and more reliable than with tape. We can just point and click to restore a file.”

Fast Installation, Responsive Customer Support

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 was very user-friendly right from the start. The system was delivered as promised, and then I met with our customer support engineer who set it up and showed me how to use it,” said Steele. “Our support engineer has been responsive to our inquiries and very proactive. If the system needs maintenance, he contacts me and makes sure that it’s done correctly. ExaGrid’s support is a model for how all support organizations should work.”

Steele said that he saves hours each week on management and administration since installing the ExaGrid system. “The ExaGrid has run flawlessly since we set it up, and it saves me tons of time compared to our old tape library. It’s a very hands off system. I just monitor it to make sure that things are running smoothly and our backups are completed correctly each night,” he said.

Scalability to Easily Accommodate More Data

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.

“Like most organizations, our data continues to grow, so it’s nice to know that we can just plug another ExaGrid system in to handle more data,” said Steele said. “Backing up data to the ExaGrid system is so much easier than backing up to tape. Having the ExaGrid in place enables me to be more effective in my job because I can now use the time I used to spend on troubleshooting backups to focus on other things. Also, we have a greater sense of security just knowing that our data is backed up correctly and easily accessible.”

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

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).

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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