ExaGrid Supports Carglass’ Diverse Backup Environment and Reduces Backup Window 70%
Customer Overview
Carglass, a subsidiary of the Belron, the world leader in vehicle glass repair and replacement. Belron provides the highest levels of care to over 15 million customers in more than 30 countries across six continents, and is the leading vehicle glass repair and replacement company. Carglass has nearly 3,000 employees, 450 integrated centers, and nearly 700 workshop vehicles in France.
Key Benefits:
- Carglass switches to ExaGrid for its deduplication and expands retention of its backups
- ExaGrid supports all of Carglass’ backup apps and utilities in a diverse backup environment
- Switch to ExaGrid results in 70% reduction of backup window
- ExaGrid’s reliability reduces the time Carglass’ IT staff spends on backup management
Slow SAN Results in New Backup Solution
The French division of Carglass had been backing up its data to a storage-attached network (SAN) solution using Veeam. The IT staff had grown frustrated with growing backup windows and struggled with storage capacity, so the company looked into other backup storage solutions. “We have many virtual machines (VMs) to back up and backups to our SAN were very slow. We would start backups at 8:00 p.m. and sometimes those still wouldn’t be finished at 8:00 a.m. We were also running out of space on our SAN, and that made it even harder to manage our backups,” said Vincent Dominguez, an IT infrastructure engineer at Carglass. “We also wanted to back up our databases and our principal ERP, which we realized would take up more storage space, so we looked for a solution that provided excellent deduplication. After some research, we found that ExaGrid would provide faster backups and restores, as well as better deduplication.” Carglass purchased ExaGrid systems for its two data centers, which cross-replicate backups for increased data protection. In addition to using Veeam to manage backups of VMs, the IT staff also uses Acronis to back up data, as well as the Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN) utility to back up its databases directly to ExaGrid.
ExaGrid Reduces Backup Window by Over 70%
Dominguez backs up Carglass’ data in daily incrementals and a weekly full. “We’ve noticed that our backups are faster than they were before,” he said. “Our nightly backup used to take about 13 hours, and was error-prone. Since installing ExaGrid, our nightly backup takes under four hours, and we no longer have to resolve any issues with our backup jobs. “Restoring data is much faster too, thanks to the Landing Zone. We’re able to restore a VM in minutes; it’s night and day, compared to restoring from the SAN,” said Dominguez.
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 provides great deduplication across the different data types we back up. We like to retain a month’s worth of our backups to restore from if necessary, and even longer for some types of data, such as accounting software backups. Thanks to the deduplication, we have more space to accommodate the retention. "
Deduplication Maximizes Storage Capacity, Increasing Retention
Since installing ExaGrid, Carglass has been able to expand its retention, further increasing data protection. “ExaGrid provides great deduplication across the different data types we back up. We like to retain a month’s worth of our backups to restore from if necessary, and even longer for some types of data, such as accounting software backups. Thanks to the deduplication, we have more space to accommodate the retention,” said Dominguez. “Before ExaGrid, we were limited to one week of backups, because we were often struggling with storage capacity in our SAN.”
ExaGrid’s turnkey disk-based backup system combines enterprise drives with zone-level data deduplication, delivering a disk-based solution that is far more cost effective than simply backing up to disk with deduplication or using backup software deduplication to disk. ExaGrid’s patented zone-level deduplication reduces the disk space needed by a range of 10:1 to 50:1, depending on the data types and retention periods, by storing only the unique objects across backups instead of redundant data. Adaptive Deduplication performs deduplication and replication in parallel with backups. As data is being deduplicated to the repository, it is also replicated to a second ExaGrid site or the public cloud for disaster recovery (DR).
Reliable ExaGrid System Saves Time on Backup Management
Dominguez has found that switching to ExaGrid has had an impact on his daily work life. “It only takes a few moments to look at the backup reports when I arrive to work each morning. Since I no longer have to resolve backup issues, I’ve gained more time to work on other projects.” Dominguez also appreciates the convenience of working with an assigned customer support engineer. “Our ExaGrid support engineer is helpful, and quickly responds whenever we have a question or an issue. He’s easy to work with, and we always find a solution when we work together,” he said.
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.
ExaGrid and Veeam
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. Veeam’s backup solutions and ExaGrid’s Tiered Backup Storage combine for the industry’s fastest backups, fastest restores, a scale-out storage system as data grows, and a strong ransomware recovery story – all at the lowest cost.
ExaGrid and Oracle RMAN
ExaGrid eliminates the need for expensive primary storage for database backups without affecting the ability to use familiar built-in database protection tools. While built-in database tools for Oracle and SQL provide the basic capability to back up and recover these mission-critical databases, adding an ExaGrid system allows database administrators to gain control over their data protection needs at a lower cost and with less complexity. ExaGrid’s support of Oracle RMAN Channels provides the fastest backup and fastest restore performance for databases
of any size.