ExaGrid Provides Data Replication from Remote Sites, Data Deduplication to Maximize Disk Space and Speed Transmission
Oberg Industries installed a primary ExaGrid unit in its Pittsburgh datacenter and additional units at its sites in Mexico and Costa Rica. The ExaGrid systems work in conjunction with Oberg’s existing backup application, Veritas NetBackup, and data is automatically replicated from the Mexico and Costa Rica sites to Pittsburgh each night in case it is needed for disaster recovery.
“Deploying the ExaGrid systems in all three sites has significantly improved our ability to recover from a disaster and it also eliminated a whole host of other issues. For example, we no longer have to remind people in our remote locations to change tapes because everything is now automated. It has really streamlined our processes and we’re more confident that our backups are being completed correctly each and every night,” said Hill. “Costa
Ricais also vulnerable to earthquakes and other natural disasters. It’s been a tremendous asset to me to not have to worry about remote backups. It really gives me peace of mind.” Hill said that ExaGrid’s post-process data deduplication helps reduce the amount of data stored and maximize disk space. The company backs up a total of nearly 2.3 TB in its Pennsylvania datacenter, with a large amount of CAD/CAM data as well as other data, including Microsoft Office information.
“Data deduplication was a mandatory requirement for us, and we haven’t been disappointed by the ExaGrid system. It not only helps us maximize disk space on the ExaGrid units, but it also helps with the transmission speed between systems because only the changed data is moved between sites each night,” said Hill.
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).