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Customer Success Story

Customer Success Story

MPR Utilizes Disk-Based Backup, Maximizes Storage with ExaGrid-Veeam Data Deduplication

Customer Overview

MPR Associates is an employee-owned specialty engineering and management services firm founded in 1964, and headquartered in Alexandria, VA. MPR provides solutions to clients in the energy, federal government, and health and life sciences industries. The company brings value to its clients by delivering innovative, safe, reliable, and cost-effective technical solutions across the entire project or product lifecycle.

Key Benefits:

  • Deduplication provides savings on storage; MPR stores its 33TB virtual full in just 8TB of storage
  • ExaGrid supports both of MPR’s backup applications, Veeam and Veritas Backup Exec
  • Restores are ‘seamless and reliable’ using combined ExaGrid-Veeam solution
  • ExaGrid support engineer is a direct point of contact and a helpful resource
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ExaGrid and Veeam Added to Virtualized Environment

MPR Associates had been backing up data to tape, using Veritas Backup Exec. The company looked into disk-based backup solutions that offered faster recovery options, and decided to an install an ExaGrid system, moving tape to a solely archival function.

MPR has virtualized most of its environment, adding Veeam to back up virtual servers, and keeping Backup Exec for the remaining physical servers. Katherine Johnson, MPR’s system engineer, feels that ExaGrid works well with both backup applications.

“Veeam and Backup Exec both integrate quite nicely with the ExaGrid system,” Johnson said. “I easily added ExaGrid as the backup target in both applications, and backing up data has been straightforward and simple.” Johnson backs up MPR’s data in daily incrementals and weekly fulls, keeping two weeks’ worth of backups on the ExaGrid system before the full backups are archived to tape and sent to offsite storage.

The ExaGrid system is easy to install and use and works seamlessly with all of the most frequently used backup applications, so an organization can seamlessly retain its investment in existing applications and processes. Its unique landing zone retains the most recent backup in its full undeduplicated form, enabling the fastest restores, offsite tape copies, and instant recoveries.

"ExaGrid is a solid and reliable solution. Of all the things I manage, it’s the one that I have to pay the least amount of attention to because I know that it’s working properly. The automated reports help me track how much storage is being used and easily check that all jobs are running successfully. "

Katherine Johnson, System Engineer

Data Deduplication Maximizes Storage

Johnson has found that ExaGrid’s data deduplication has maximized MPR’s storage capacity. “Without ExaGrid’s deduplication, we would not have enough space for the amount of data that we have. For example, on one backup of our virtual environment, we are able to store 33TB while consuming just a little over 8TB of storage!”

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.

‘Seamless’ Restores with ExaGrid-Veeam Solution

“Restoring data is seamless and reliable using Veeam. I’ve had to restore single files and entire servers, and I haven’t had any issues restoring the data from ExaGrid’s landing zone or even from tape!” said Johnson.

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.

Reliable Solution with Proactive Support

Johnson appreciates ExaGrid’s customer support model of working with a support engineer that is assigned to individual accounts. “I like having a direct point of contact, someone that I can reach out to without calling a technical support line and having to speak with level-one and level-two engineers before the call is escalated. If I have a problem, I typically email my support engineer and we work through it together. He handles all of our upgrades and then configures our settings to be more efficient as well. He checks in regularly to make sure everything is going well and to see if we need any new hardware or any help from him. It’s wonderful to have such a resource!

“ExaGrid is a solid and reliable solution. Of all the things I manage, it’s the one that I have to pay the least amount of attention to because I know that it’s working properly. The automated reports help me track how much storage is being used and easily check that all jobs are running successfully. The GUI is also intuitive and straightforward, and it’s something I was able to pick it up right away when I was first learning my way around the ExaGrid system,” said Johnson.

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.

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 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.

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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