ExaGrid and Veeam Deliver Faster, More Reliable Backups
According to Jarvis, USA Risk Group decided to search for a disk-based backup appliance capable of delivering fast backups and restores and chose ExaGrid after looking at several different solutions. “We researched a couple of other backup solutions, but the issue we had with every single one of them was the amount of preprocess work that needed to be done before the data hit the disk. In each case, backup speed was a major concern for us,” he said. “With the ExaGrid system, the data is backed up to a landing zone before the deduplication process begins so backups run as quickly as possible. And the proof is there – our backups are significantly faster than they were before.”
USA Risk Group virtualized much of its environment at the same time it implemented the ExaGrid system and decided to install
Veeam Backup & Replication because of its tight integration with ExaGrid. “We are really happy with how the two products
work together. Veeam deduplicates the data before it gets to the ExaGrid system, and then the system reduces it even further after it hits the landing zone,” 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 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.