ExaGrid Works with Existing Backup Application to Cut Backup Window in Half, Increase Overall Efficiencies
After careful evaluation of all their options, O’Connor and the rest of his team decided that it was necessary to start phasing out tape. It was crucial for SEMCO ENERGY to not only find a more reliable and scalable solution for data retention but also one that was more cost effective than their current SAN disk/tape backup solution. After thoroughly researching various solutions, SEMCO ENERGY selected ExaGrid’s disk- based backup with deduplication solution over several competing solutions. The ExaGrid system works
seamlessly with SEMCO’s existing backup application, Veritas BackupExec, at a primary site and also at a secondary site for disaster recovery.
“Cost and the ability to leverage our existing backup infrastructure were key factors for us in selecting ExaGrid,” said O’Connor. “We didn’t want to just throw away our existing IT investment. We wanted a solution like ExaGrid that could work in conjunction with our backup application to provide the best backups and restores.”
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).
“The nice thing was that there was no learning curve needed when we implemented ExaGrid with BackupExec. Our backups still worked the same,” said O’Connor. “ExaGrid just sits on the backend and replaces your existing tape or disk application so it’s a very seamless transmission.” Since implementing ExaGrid, SEMCO ENERGY has seen dramatic results. The company’s backup
window has been cut in half, from 24 hours to about 12. In addition, SEMCO ENERGY’s IT department saves about 20 hours a week that it used to spend manually processing and administering tape media.
“Our IT department’s backup administration work has dropped about 90 percent since we started using ExaGrid. The whole tape management process has been eliminated. Now all those hours we’d spend on handling tape can be spent on other important IT initiatives,” said O’Connor.