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Customer Success Story

Customer Success Story

SAIF Maximizes Storage Capacity with ‘Incredible’ Deduplication Using ExaGrid-Veeam Solution

Customer Overview

SAIF is Oregon’s not-for-profit workers’ compensation insurance company. Since 1914, SAIF has been taking care of injured workers, helping people get back to work, and striving to make Oregon the safest and healthiest place to work.

Key Benefits:

  • ExaGrid-Veeam solution keeps SAIF’s backups short, despite ‘exploding’ data growth
  • SAIF easily scales out system with help from ExaGrid support
  • Restoring data from ExaGrid is ‘instantaneous’ using Veeam
  • ExaGrid’s deduplication saves on storage costs, which helps SAIF budget for future growth
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SAIF Chooses ExaGrid for its Integration with Veeam

SAIF’s IT team had been backing up the nonprofit’s data to disk using Veeam, but found that the disk storage couldn’t keep up with data growth. “Our backup storage was getting to be huge because our environment had exploded in size, and I was looking for a backup solution that provided deduplication so that I could get my backups compressed a little bit and save money in the long run,” said Dan Sproule, SAIF’s infrastructure engineer.

After some research, Sproule decided to narrow the search to ExaGrid and a competitor. “I liked ExaGrid’s technology, as far as the speed of restores from its landing zone as well as its deduplication, and that the replication would happen automatically in the background,” he said. Sproule was also interested in ExaGrid’s unique integration with the Veeam Data Mover.

ExaGrid has integrated the Veeam Data Mover so that backups are written Veeam-to-Veeam versus Veeam-to-CIFS, which provides a 30% increase in backup performance. ExaGrid is the only product on the market that offers this performance enhancement. Because ExaGrid has integrated the Veeam Data Mover, Veeam synthetic fulls can be created at a rate that is six times faster than any other solution. SAIF installed an ExaGrid system at its primary site and its DR site. “Installation was simple. Our ExaGrid support engineer helped us configure the systems and we haven’t looked back since then,” said Sproule.

The ExaGrid system is easy to install and use and works seamlessly with the industry’s leading backup applications so that an organization can retain its investment in its existing backup applications and processes. In addition, ExaGrid appliances can replicate to a second ExaGrid appliance at a second site or to the public cloud for DR (disaster recovery).

"Our data has exploded since we first installed our ExaGrid systems a few years ago, but thanks to ExaGrid our backup window has been able to stay the same. "

Dan Sproule, Infrastructure Engineer

‘Incredible’ Deduplication with Oracle RMAN and ‘Instantaneous’ Restores with Veeam

Sproule backs up SAIF’s data in daily incrementals and weekly fulls. SAIF’s data consists of 550 VMs as well as SQL and Oracle databases. “We back up our Oracle databases directly to ExaGrid. The deduplication we’re getting on the Oracle RMAN backups is incredible!” said Sproule. ExaGrid enables the fastest Oracle RMAN Backups with performance load balancing utilizing Oracle RMAN Channels. ExaGrid delivers a 10 to 50:1 deduplication ratio for long-term retention and stores the most recent backup in an RMAN native format for the fastest restores. Whether backing up VMs or databases, Sproule has been impressed with the reliable backups and quick restores from the ExaGrid system. “Our data has exploded since we first installed our ExaGrid systems a few years ago, but thanks to ExaGrid our backup window has been able to stay the same. Plus, using Veeam to restore data from ExaGrid’s
landing zone is instantaneous and very simple,” he 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).

ExaGrid’s Deduplication Saves on Storage Costs

“We’re getting quite a bit more deduplication using ExaGrid and Veeam than we were with spinning disks. It saves me some time before we actually have to buy more storage and I don’t have to worry about running out of space anymore. It took a few budget cycles to buy all of our ExaGrid systems and factoring in the deduplication helps with our planning and our budgeting for future growth,” said Sproule.

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.

Scalable System Easily Managed with Assistance from ‘Fabulous’ Customer Support

Sproule has appreciated ExaGrid’s high level of support, especially when he was ready to scale out his ExaGrid system to accommodate data growth. “I like the ExaGrid support model of working with an assigned support engineer; it’s unlike any other in the industry. My engineer has helped me configure additional appliances to our existing ExaGrid systems, making it a very simple process.

“The customer support has been fabulous. In addition to helping with installation of appliances in our systems, our ExaGrid support engineer has been very proactive in monitoring the health of our systems. By the time the ExaGrid system alerts me to any issue, my support engineer is already checking it out to see what’s going on. We did have an issue where the storage space on one of our appliances was running low, so he helped migrate data across to another one. It’s been so easy to work with the ExaGrid system thanks to our support engineer,” said Sproule.

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.

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-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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