ExaGrid has gained the nomination due the EX Series’ uniquely scalable architecture and its specialized deduplication process. ExaGrid is best known for its industry-leading approach to backup storage with unique Landing Zone technology, Adaptive Deduplication approach, and cost-effective scale-out architecture. Managing data growth can cause strain on backup storage and ExaGrid set out to develop the best backup target possible. Through its intelligent hyperconverged storage for backup with data deduplication, ExaGrid helps IT organizations solve three of the most pressing issues they face today: how to protect and manage growing data, how to recover data as quickly as possible, and how to do so at a lower cost.
In data backup, organizations retain weekly, monthly and yearly backups in order to account for regulatory audits, legal discovery and other business reasons. It is not uncommon for organizations to retain 20 to 50 copies of their backup data at different historic points in time. As a result, the total backup storage can be 20 to 50 times greater than the initial primary storage copy. The cost of storage for backup becomes prohibitive and difficult to manage. The value that ExaGrid provides stems from its adaptive approach to deduplication, which offers a 20:1 data deduplication ratio. The ExaGrid system can easily scale to accommodate data growth. ExaGrid’s computing software makes the system highly scalable. Appliances of any size or age can be mixed and matched in a single system with capacities of up to a 2PB full backup plus retention and an ingest rate of up to 432TB per hour, which is the highest in the industry. Once virtualized, they appear as a single system to the backup server, and load balancing of all data across servers is automatic reducing IT staff maintenance and time.
The traditional inline approach to backup storage only stores deduplicated data. Therefore, both backups and restores are slow as data is deduplicated and rehydrated. As data grows, no additional compute resources are added – so the backup window grows until backups must be abandoned as they are cutting into production hours. Only an expensive, disruptive, forklift upgrade can resolve the longer backup windows. Instead, ExaGrid writes data straight to a disk Landing Zone for the fastest backups, while deduplication happens in parallel. The most recent backup is kept in undeduplicated form in its Landing Zone for the fastest restores and instant VM recovery, since no rehydration is necessary. Long-term retention data is stored deduplicated in the repository, which is a separate section of the appliance.
“ExaGrid’s nomination demonstrates the importance of innovation in the backup storage space and the need for a continued focus on data storage efficiency and cost savings,” said Bill Andrews, CEO and President of ExaGrid. “ExaGrid’s unique scale-out storage architecture provides all compute, network and storage resources for a fixed-length backup window as data grows. This provides essential time savings for strained IT staff. Our approach also eliminates expensive forklift upgrades and planned product obsolescence, which reduces the total cost of ownership for organizations looking to save storage space in their backup environment.”
ExaGrid supports all backup typologies including private cloud, offsite data center, third-party data center, third-party cloud, public cloud, and can operate in a pure hybrid environment.
Lastly, ExaGrid supports a wide variety of backup applications, utilities, and database dumps, such as Veeam, Commvault, Veritas NetBackup, IBM Spectrum Protect, HYCU, Zerto, Acronis and many others. ExaGrid allows multiple approaches within the same environment. An organization can use one backup application for its physical servers, a different backup application or utility for its virtual environment, and also perform direct Microsoft SQL or Oracle RMAN database dumps – all to the same ExaGrid system. This approach allows customers to use the backup application and utilities of their choosing, use best-of-breed backup applications and utilities, and choose the right backup application and utility for each specific use case. If the customer chooses to change their backup application in the future, the ExaGrid system will still work, protecting the initial investment.
About ExaGrid
ExaGrid provides intelligent hyperconverged storage for backup with data deduplication, a unique Landing Zone, and scale-out architecture. ExaGrid’s Landing Zone provides for the fastest backups, restores, and instant VM recoveries. Its scale-out architecture includes full appliances in a scale-out system and ensures a fixed-length backup window as data grows, eliminating expensive forklift upgrades. Visit us at exagrid.com or connect with us on LinkedIn. See what our customers have to say about their own ExaGrid experiences and why they now spend significantly less time on backup in our customer success stories.