Fugro Data Solutions Secures Worldwide Reputation with Scalable Backup Solution from ExaGrid that Delivers 80:1 Data Deduplication Ratio
Customer Overview
Fugro is the world’s leading Geo-data specialist. We unlock insights from Geo-data. Through integrated data acquisition, analysis and advice, Fugro supports clients in mitigating risks during design, construction and operation of their assets, both on land and at sea. Fugro contributes to a safe and liveable world by delivering solutions in support of the energy transition, sustainable infrastructure and climate change adaptation.
Key Benefits:
- 80:1 data deduplication rate
- Stellar customer support
- High scalable for future growth
- ExaGrid’s technology has exceeded business needs and expectations
- Significant operations time savings
The Challenge – How to Reduce the Backup Window and Ensure Disaster Recovery
As the name suggests, Fugro is a data centric business, collating and storing critical client data for oil companies from all over the globe. Fugro already used a disk-based backup solution but as the business grew, the capacity to cope with the data was rapidly shrinking whilst the backup window was becoming unmanageable. It began to take so long that one of the IT team became 100% dedicated to managing just the backup window.
Furthermore, Fugro’s first class, worldwide reputation had been built upon its ability to safely upload and store its client data. With such long backups and capacity rapidly reducing, this data was becoming more at risk and potentially with it, the company’s reputation.
Niels Jensen, IT systems manager at Fugro Data Solutions, commented: “We could not fault our current system from a performance perspective but as time passed, it became apparent that it had a finite capacity ceiling and would no longer be a viable solution with continued business growth. Therefore, we decided to find a more scalable solution with market leading data deduplication ratios.”
"Perhaps the most important reason why we decided to go with ExaGrid ahead of its competition was the scalability of its system. It means we have freedom to expand at a later date without incurring major cost or upheaval. We also have the comfort of knowing that their customer support is by far the best we have experienced in the industry. "
The Choice and Why
Fugro ran an initial trial of a solution from an ExaGrid competitor but, after an unsatisfactory experience, decided to look elsewhere. Jensen said: “The initial trial was not a waste of time as it helped us identify the performance that is essential to our success. It saved the business from making a poor decision that would ultimately have wasted a substantial amount of money on what would have been an incorrect investment. It took two days to get the trial box up and running and while technically impressive, it overcomplicated things. The impact of this would have required additional investment in both staff training time and costs. Furthermore, it would also have been expensive to maintain and the customer support we received was average.”
With the benefit of this experience, Fugro then selected the ExaGrid solution after reviewing alternative providers and their solutions. “Since day one the ExaGrid experience has been the best I have ever known from any supplier. The results were instantaneous. The ExaGrid team was very proactive to ensure my experience is the best it can be. It took just a couple of hours to get the appliance up and running and we now have the perfect backups, technology and partner to work with as we continue to grow as a business,” Jensen continued.
Data Deduplication Beyond Our Expectations – 80:1
Since the ExaGrid appliance has been installed Fugro’s daily backup window has been significantly reduced to less than three hours, whilst the weekly backup is now completed well within our weekend backup window. Furthermore, the IT team has seen compression rates on average at 15:1 with some up to 80:1. This means that client data is safer than ever and Fugro’s reputation in respect to this has been upheld. Jensen stated, “ExaGrid’s technology has exceeded our business needs and expectations. As such, it has delivered outstanding value for money. From an operational point of view the time savings are a huge hidden benefit. My team can deliver almost instant restores to people throughout the business – thus enabling them to deliver a better service to Fugro customers. It also frees my team to focus on other projects.”
Looking to the Future with Confidence in the Technology and Stellar Customer Support
“Perhaps the most important reason why we decided to go with ExaGrid ahead of its competition was the scalability of its system. It means we have freedom to expand at a later date without incurring major cost or upheaval. We also have the comfort of knowing that their customer support is by far the best we have experienced in the industry. The great service didn’t stop after installation but has carried on to this day, with proactive ideas and help at every turn. With one phone call you get direct access to an ExaGrid expert that can assist you,” said Jensen.
The ExaGrid system can easily scale to accommodate data growth. ExaGrid’s software makes the system highly scalable – appliances of any size or age can be mixed and matched in a single system. A single scale-out system can take in up to a 2.7PB full backup plus retention at an ingest rate of up to 488TB per hour.
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.
Intelligent Data Protection
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).