Palestine Investment Bank Backs Up Data 10x Faster After Adding ExaGrid to Environment
Customer Overview
The Palestine Investment Bank (PIB) was established by a group of elite Arab and Palestinian bankers which are known for their superior banking experience that was gained from their global banking exposure. PIB was the first national bank licensed to practice banking services by the Palestinian authority in 1994 and started operations during March 1995, and is currently operating through its head office in Al-Bireh and its nineteen branches and offices located in Palestine.
Key Benefits:
- Since switch to ExaGrid, backups are 10-15X faster
- Restoring VMs from Landing Zone is ‘important for business continuity and to meet RTO’
- Bank is able to deduplicate as much as 25:1 for storage savings
- Replication to DR site much smoother with ExaGrid
Backup and Replication Easier After Switch to ExaGrid
The Palestine Investment Bank had used Veeam to back up to SAN storage, backing up on servers, and then replicating data offsite. The bank’s IT staff found that managing the SAN storage was difficult and any issues with the operating system would affect the backup jobs. “When we used the SAN storage and the servers, we had to configure the LANs as hard drives, and when any problem occurred with our operating system, our backups would go down,” said Abdulrahim Hasan, Palestine Investment Bank’s IT manager.
A partner recommended ExaGrid as a better storage solution for the bank’s backups. The bank’s IT staff were skeptical about ExaGrid at first, but were impressed by ExaGrid’s backup performance during evaluation. “At first we were afraid to try ExaGrid, but once we tested it, we realized how well it works in our backup environment and decided to back up all of our critical applications to the ExaGrid system,” said Hasan.
The Palestine Investment Bank installed an ExaGrid system at its primary site that replicates data to a second ExaGrid system at its disaster recovery (DR) site. “Replication goes so smoothly now,” said Hasan. “We were surprised at how quickly we were able to install the systems at both locations and how easy it was to set up and manage replication, which had been a challenging process before we used ExaGrid.”
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).
"There are so many backup solutions on the market that end up providing poor performance, so it has been a great experience to use such an excellent product. I highly recommend ExaGrid to any fellow IT manager! "
Running a VM from ExaGrid’s Landing Zone
Hasan backs up critical data such as the bank’s applications and file servers on a daily, monthly, and yearly basis. He has found that is easy to restore data from ExaGrid’s Landing Zone. “We back up all of our servers as an image,” he explained. “By using this method, we were able to restore a production server within minutes and use it from the ExaGrid system itself for the entire workday, and then we migrated the server to the SAN. ExaGrid’s ability to run a VM from its Landing Zone is important for business continuity and to meet our RTO.”
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.
Backup Jobs 10X Faster
Hasan has been impressed with the speed of backup jobs since switching to ExaGrid. “Our backup jobs are so much faster now – most backups are ten times faster, some are even 15X faster, depending on the data. The longest daily incremental only takes two minutes.”
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).
Impressive Deduplication Results in Storage Savings
Data deduplication has provided significant storage savings for the bank. “We’re able to back up 60TB worth of storage on 22TB due to the compression and deduplication that Veeam and ExaGrid provide, which saves on storage capacity,” said Hasan. “We’re impressed with the dedupe ratios we’re seeing from the ExaGrid-Veeam solution; on average, most of the ratios are around 10:1, but some of our data is being deduped as much as 25:1, which is fantastic!”
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.
ExaGrid Provides Proactive Customer Support
Hasan values the high-quality customer support he receives from ExaGrid. “Support from other vendors is often complicated, and usually involves opening a ticket and waiting. ExaGrid’s support is unique because it is proactive. Our ExaGrid support engineer calls us when there is a patch or a firmware upgrade,” he said. “The ExaGrid system is so stable that I haven’t run into any issues, and when I do have a question or need to make an adjustment to the system, our support engineer responds immediately. I’m very satisfied with ExaGrid’s customer support.
“It has been a credit to the bank to use ExaGrid as our backup solution; our data is secure and encrypted, and management has noticed the storage savings it provides. There are so many backup solutions on the market that end up providing poor performance, so it has been a great experience to use such an excellent product. I highly recommend ExaGrid to any fellow IT manager!”
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. Customer’s never have to repeat themselves to various support staff, and issues get resolved quickly.