Customer Success Story

Customer Success Story

Scalable ExaGrid System Supports Corris AG’s Data Growth in Diverse Backup Environment

Customer Overview

Corris AG, founded in 1995, offers fundraising services for non-profit organizations in Switzerland with a focus on booth campaigns and door-to-door campaigns while utilizing tablet computers; services include the planning, development, and implementation of fundraising campaigns. Using the Corris AG database solution, NPOs can have their donor data managed perfectly without high investment and maintenance costs. With secure, encrypted access options via the Internet, the NPOs can view their data at any time, create evaluations, and export data for further processing.

Key Benefits:

  • ExaGrid is able to back up data from Corris AG’s different backup apps and processes
  • Corris AG no longer has trouble fitting in database backups
  • Scaling out ExaGrid system with additional appliance is ‘a simple task’ with ExaGrid support
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ExaGrid Able to Back Up Entire Environment

For many years, Corris AG backed its data up to disk and tape, using Arcserve and later Veritas Backup Exec. The organization’s IT staff also implemented an Xen VM hypervisor, but found Backup Exec was not able to back up the VMs. As time went on, the IT staff decided to look into other backup products. “We realized we had to change our backup strategy. As a team, we looked into different options, and we decided to add ExaGrid and Veeam to our backup environment,” said Martin Gruber, system administrator at Corris AG. “The combined solution was great for us because it was so simple to manage.”

The IT staff at Corris AG use multiple types of backup software to back up data to ExaGrid. “Our environment is mostly virtualized now, so we use Veeam to back up virtual servers to ExaGrid. We also back up older CIFS shares to ExaGrid using Backup Exec, and we back up the VMs on our Xen hypervisor using Xen Orchestra to our ExaGrid system. Now, all of our backups run perfectly,” said Gruber.

"ExaGrid is completely scalable, which is helpful for planning. When our data grew, we decided to expand our ExaGrid system with a second appliance, which was a very simple task."

Martin Gruber, System Administrator

ExaGrid Keeps Different Backup Jobs on Schedule

Corris AG has a wide variety of data to back up, from Microsoft Exchange servers to SQL databases, as well as UNIX systems. Gruber manages the backup of different data types with the different backup applications and software. “We used to have trouble fitting in the backups of our databases when they were not in use, as we would back up data to disk and then copy the backup from disk to tape. Our new process of backing up all of our data to ExaGrid is much faster, especially with Veeam. The ExaGrid-Veeam solution is very fast,” said Gruber.

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).

System Easily Scaled with Guidance from ExaGrid Support

ExaGrid can easily keep up with an organization’s data growth. “ExaGrid is completely scalable, which is helpful for planning. When our data grew, we decided to expand our ExaGrid system with a second appliance, which was a very simple task. Our ExaGrid support engineer was able to help us through the process, and was able to provide support in German,” said Gruber. “What’s great about ExaGrid is that we know we can add an another appliance in the future so that we don’t have to plan for five years ahead, we only need to make decisions for one or two years in the future.”

“ExaGrid offers excellent support. Our support engineer is very competent and available to help whenever we need assistance. He has been helpful with installing and scaling our system, as well as upgrading the firmware for our ExaGrid system. I’m very happy to have such reliable support for my backup environment,” said Gruber.

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.

Unique Architecture

ExaGrid’s award-winning scale-out architecture provides customers with a fixed-length backup window regardless of data growth. Its unique disk-cache Landing Zone allows for the fastest backups and retains the most recent backup in its full undeduplicated form, enabling the fastest restores.

ExaGrid’s appliance models can be mixed and matched into a single scale-out system allowing a full backup of up to 2.7PB with a combined ingest rate of 488TB/hr, in a single system. The appliances automatically join the scale-out system. Each appliance includes the appropriate amount of processor, memory, disk, and bandwidth for the data size. By adding compute with capacity, the backup window remains fixed in length as the data grows. Automatic load balancing across all repositories allows for full utilization of all appliances. Data is deduplicated into an offline repository, and additionally, data is globally deduplicated across all repositories.

This combination of capabilities in a turnkey appliance makes the ExaGrid system easy to install, manage, and scale. ExaGrid’s architecture provides lifetime value and investment protection that no other architecture can match.