Switch to ExaGrid Resolves Backup Window Issues
Sebagh backs up Swiftness LTD’s data in daily incrementals with weekly synthetic fulls, in addition to select data that is backed up monthly and yearly for long-term retention, and he has noticed that backups are much faster since switching to ExaGrid. “Before using ExaGrid, we had issues with backup jobs not finishing in time, which would result in Veeam stopping the jobs when they approached the given timeframe. Those backup window issues stopped once we started using ExaGrid,” he said. “We’ve been able to restore data easily, without any issues. It’s a very fast process, using the ExaGrid-Veeam solution,” he added.
“While our previous solution allowed us to take advantage of deduplication, we never had the benefit of ExaGrid’s Landing Zone or its Adaptive Deduplication, so the data was compressed and deduplicated before it was written to storage. Now with ExaGrid, our backups are very fast because the data goes straight to the Landing Zone. We think it’s the best feature of the ExaGrid system,” said Sebagh.
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.