Fortuna Entertainment Group Chooses ExaGrid and Veeam for Enterprise Backup Solution
Customer Overview
Fortuna Entertainment Group a.s. (FEG) is the leading omni-channel betting and gaming operator in Central and Eastern Europe. FEG started in the Czech Republic and, through their passion and expertise, have become a truly international operator. The FEG footprint now extends to the Slovakian, Polish, Romanian, and Croatian markets. There are now more than 6,000 employees that we call colleagues and friends, and they are proud to be the largest Central and Eastern European betting and gaming operator with over 30 years of experience.
Key Benefits:
- The integration between ExaGrid and Veeam provides a ‘seamless experience’
- Deduplication saves FEG on storage capacity
- Backup performance improved by ExaGrid-Veeam solution
- ‘Stand-out’ ExaGrid Support helps IT staff keep the backup environment running smoothly
ExaGrid and Veeam Chosen for Enterprise Backup Solution
Fortuna Entertainment Group (FEG) decided to invest in an enterprise-level solution for its backup environment, choosing Veeam and ExaGrid Tiered Backup Storage after research highlighted the strong partnership between the two. The combination of ExaGrid’s and Veeam’s industry-leading virtual server data protection solutions allows customers to utilize Veeam Backup & Replication in VMware, vSphere, and Microsoft Hyper-V virtual environments on ExaGrid’s Tiered Backup Storage. This combination provides fast backups and efficient data storage as well as replication to an offsite location for disaster recovery. Customers can use Veeam Backup & Replication’s built-in source-side deduplication in concert with ExaGrid’s disk-based backup system with Adaptive Deduplication to further shrink backups. ExaGrid systems were installed at multiple company locations. “Our assigned ExaGrid support engineer guided us through the installation,” said Juraj Hutyra, group IT infrastructure engineer at FEG.
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).
"The real benefit of the ExaGrid-Veeam solution is how it creates synthetic fulls. Weekly and monthly backups usually run a long time but utilizing the synthetic fulls really reduces the runtime. "
ExaGrid and Veeam Chosen for Enterprise Backup Solution
Fortuna Entertainment Group (FEG) decided to invest in an enterprise-level solution for its backup environment, choosing Veeam and ExaGrid Tiered Backup Storage after research highlighted the strong partnership between the two. The combination of ExaGrid’s and Veeam’s industry-leading virtual server data protection solutions allows customers to utilize Veeam Backup & Replication in VMware, vSphere, and Microsoft Hyper-V virtual environments on ExaGrid’s Tiered Backup Storage.
This combination provides fast backups and efficient data storage as well as replication to an offsite location for disaster recovery. Customers can use Veeam Backup & Replication’s built-in source-side deduplication in concert with ExaGrid’s disk-based backup system with Adaptive Deduplication to further shrink backups.
ExaGrid systems were installed at multiple company locations. “Our assigned ExaGrid support engineer guided us through the installation,” said Juraj Hutyra, group IT infrastructure engineer at FEG. 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).
ExaGrid’s Integration of Veeam Data Mover Optimizes Backups
The backup solution backs up FEG’s data on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis, depending on the type of data. The company has a wide variety of data to back up, from SQL databases to application data to infrastructure services. Juraj has been very pleased with the backup performance provided by the ExaGrid-Veeam solution.
“Our largest backup jobs only take a few hours. The real benefit of the ExaGrid-Veeam solution is how it creates synthetic fulls. Weekly and monthly backups usually run a long time, but utilizing the synthetic fulls really reduces the runtime,” said Juraj. 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.
ExaGrid has integrated the Veeam Data Mover so that backups are written Veeam-to-Veeam versus Veeam-to-CIFS, which provides a 30% increase in backup performance. ExaGrid is the only product on the market that offers this performance enhancement. Because ExaGrid has integrated the Veeam Data Mover, Veeam synthetic fulls can be created at a rate that is six times faster than any other solution. ExaGrid stores the most recent Veeam backups in undeduplicated form in its Landing Zone, has the Veeam Data Mover running on each ExaGrid appliance, and has processor in each appliance in a scale-out architecture. This combination of Landing Zone, Veeam Data Mover, and scale-out compute provides the fastest Veeam synthetic fulls versus any other solution or configuration on the market.
ExaGrid-Veeam Combined Deduplication Saves on Storage
Juraj has been impressed with the deduplication achieved with the ExaGrid-Veeam solution, which provides savings on storage capacity. “We’re getting a high deduplication ratio, thanks to the way that ExaGrid and Veeam integrate, which averages at 9:1 for our database and application data. The two work so well together, providing a seamless experience,” he said.
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. 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.
‘Stand-Out’ ExaGrid Support
Juraj appreciates working with an assigned ExaGrid support engineer to assist with FEG’s backup environment. “I’m in touch with my ExaGrid support engineer on a weekly basis, and he helps with more than just backups, but also with troubleshooting and fine-tuning our system, and helping us through the update process when those are available,” he said. “I like working with the same person all of the time because he is familiar with the specifics of our environment. ExaGrid’s support really stands out.”
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.