Straightforward Data Restores
In addition to more efficient backups, Hussong has found that ExaGrid has improved the process of restoring data. “Now that we have virtualized and organized our environment and are able to use a single interface, we can retrieve exactly what we need, and that has really saved our bacon a couple of times! We once had an email catastrophe where one of our critical users actually lost a number of their email folders in a migration. We were able to use the Veeam backups from ExaGrid and restore the entire folders of emails dating back for years just by being able to navigate at an application level and specifically pull out this user’s email. What was really great was that restoring data is so straightforward, we were able to have one of our interns do it. It didn’t even require engineer-level support!
“On another occasion, when a VM had a break in connectivity with vMotion in one cluster, we were able to shut it off, run a backup, and then restore it at the other cluster. We were able to bypass VMware connectivity issues by using the backup,” said Hussong. ExaGrid and Veeam can instantly recover a VMware virtual machine by running it directly from the ExaGrid appliance in the event that the primary storage VM becomes unavailable. This is possible because of ExaGrid’s “landing zone” – a high-speed cache on the ExaGrid appliance that retains the most recent backups in complete form. Once the primary storage environment has been brought back to a working state, the VM running on the ExaGrid appliance can then be migrated to primary storage for continued operation.