Customers Improving VM Recovery with ExaGrid and Veeam Joint Solution

ExaGrid® Systems, Inc., the leader in cost-effective and scalable disk-based backup solutions with data deduplication, today announced that an increasing number of companies are leveraging ExaGrid’s disk-based backup with deduplication systems and Veeam Software’s virtual server data protection solutions to enable faster backups, instant virtual machine (VM) restores, more efficient data storage and offsite replication.

IT departments are challenged with data growth, longer retention periods, and the need to recover quickly when systems fail. This coupled with a proliferation in virtualized servers means there is a greater need for IT departments to have better backup and disaster recovery for VMs.

Veeam Backup & Replication provides fast, flexible and reliable recovery of virtualized applications and data for both VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V. The ExaGrid and Veeam partnership offers a cost-effective disk-based backup solution maximizing data reduction, accelerating recovery times and offering scalability to handle data growth without costly forklift upgrades.

Joint customers of ExaGrid and Veeam’s industry-leading VMware data protection solutions can target their Veeam-based virtual machine backups to the ExaGrid appliance. Unlike competing disk backup appliances which only maintain a deduplicated copy of data and can take hours to reassemble or “rehydrate” the backup data, ExaGrid’s high speed landing zone maintains a full copy of the latest Veeam backups in their original formats. This means that users can instantly recover and run a VM from the ExaGrid system in case the primary VM is unavailable.

Portland, OR-based Hoffman Construction Co., one of the largest general contractors in the U.S. with an annual volume of more than $1 billion, has leveraged the ExaGrid/Veeam integration to maximize its data reduction and achieve fast, reliable backups and restores.

• The IT team at Hoffman Construction supports about 600 users who require continuous access to data and servers over WAN connections. The team had been running VM snapshots to backup to tape, but the backup windows were growing. A backup of a single database would take as long as six hours to complete. The company was at risk that its data wouldn’t be protected in the event of a failure.
• Hoffman Construction began turning to disk-based backup for the virtualized servers in 2010, including five VMware ESX hosts and 60 VMs. Hoffman was restoring its VMs and the Veeam backups on the same storage area network (SAN). Storage volume took up so much of the SAN’s capacity that Hoffman’s IT team had limited ability to add more VMs as needed.
• Needing to restore 100 percent of its VMs almost instantly, Hoffman Construction implemented the solution that integrates Veeam Backup & Replication with ExaGrid’s unique landing zone architecture, providing fast and reliable backups. The Hoffman IT team can run an entire VM directly from the ExaGrid system, which minimizes downtime and disruption.
• The combined ExaGrid and Veeam solution can scale as Hoffman’s data grows by simply plugging in more ExaGrid appliances, creating a larger virtual pool of storage. Because of ExaGrid’s GRID architecture, the amount of backup capacity can expand seamlessly, with no costly forklift upgrades.
• Hoffman Construction recently suffered a major SAN crash, losing all of the data stored on its VMs. However, thanks to the Veeam/ExaGrid solution, the IT team was able to restore 100 percent of the VMs right away.

The combination of ExaGrid and Veeam is also enabling faster backups and more efficient data storage for a number of other large companies, including:

• American Standard, a leading North American manufacturer of bath and kitchen products.
• Luby’s Fuddruckers Restaurants LLC, which operates restaurants under the brands Luby’s Cafeteria and Fuddruckers and provides foodservice management through its Luby’s Culinary Services division.
• Poulin Grain, Inc., a Vermont-based company specializing in high quality dairy, equine, pet and livestock feeds.

Supporting Quotes:

• Kelly Bott, field technician and technical specialist for Hoffman Construction: “With the ExaGrid and Veeam configuration, we have gained a huge amount of confidence and a real peace of mind. Before we had the combination of ExaGrid and Veeam, we were facing a big risk that if the SAN went down, we didn’t have terabytes of recoverability available to us. Our VM restores are much faster. This integrated solution is absolutely a winning scenario in flexibility and scalability.”
• Marc Crespi, VP of product management for ExaGrid: “Companies like Hoffman Construction are reaping significant benefits from the integration of Veeam and ExaGrid, including greater availability of their virtualized environments and a significantly shorter recovery time. Combined, Veeam and ExaGrid enable on and offsite backups to grow with your organization’s needs cost-effectively, and without the hassle of ongoing management and configuration.”
• Rick Hoffman, VP of Channels and Alliances at Veeam: “With the ExaGrid and Veeam integration and ExaGrid’s architecture, backups are always ready in complete form to instantly restore, which saves Veeam customers from the frustrations of having to rehydrate backup data. Companies like Hoffman Construction are saving valuable time and headaches leveraging the ExaGrid architecture in tandem with Veeam Backup and Replication.”

About Veeam Software

Veeam® Software develops innovative solutions for VMware backup, Hyper-V backup, and virtualization management. Veeam Backup & Replication™ is the #1 VM Backup solution. Veeam ONE™ is a single solution for real-time monitoring, resource optimization and management reporting for VMware and Hyper-V. The Veeam Management Pack™ (MP) and Smart Plug-in™ (SPI) extend enterprise monitoring to VMware through Microsoft System Center and HP Operations Manager. Veeam also provides free virtualization tools. Learn more by visiting http://www.veeam.com/.

About ExaGrid’s Technology:

The ExaGrid system is a plug-and-play disk backup appliance that works with existing backup applications and enables faster and more reliable backups and restores. Customers report that backup time is reduced by 30 to 90 percent over traditional tape backup. ExaGrid’s patented zone-level data deduplication technology and most recent backup compression reduces the amount of disk space needed by a range of 10:1 to as high as 50:1 or more, resulting in a cost comparable to traditional tape-based backup.

About ExaGrid Systems, Inc.:

ExaGrid offers the only disk-based backup appliance with data deduplication purpose-built for backup that leverages a unique architecture optimized for performance, scalability and price. The combination of post-process deduplication, most recent backup cache, and GRID scalability enables IT departments to achieve the shortest backup window and the fastest, most reliable restores and disaster recovery without backup window expansion or forklift upgrades as data grows. With offices and distribution worldwide, ExaGrid has more than 4,200 systems installed at more than 1,300 customers, and over 290 published customer success stories.

For more information, contact ExaGrid at 800-868-6985 or visit www.exagrid.com. Visit “ExaGrid’s Eye on Deduplication” blog: http://blog.exagrid.com/.

ExaGrid is a registered trademark of ExaGrid Systems, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.