Pestalozzi Group realizes 97% faster restore times with Veeam and Exagrid

ExaGrid’s Secure Backups Offer Greater Data Protection

Prior to using ExaGrid, the Pestalozzi Group backed its data up to a Quantum DXi appliance, using Veeam. The company wanted to increase its data protection by implementing a system with secure backups.

Markus Mösch, Pestalozzi’s head of IT infrastructure, found that ExaGrid offered the security the company was looking for. “Our ICT service provider, Keynet, recommended ExaGrid and after a presentation, we decided to replace our Quantum appliance with an ExaGrid system. We like the security features that ExaGrid provides, and its functionality with Veeam, especially that backups are only accessible from the Veeam server, so if there is a ransomware attack on a network, the ransomware can’t encrypt your backup. We were also impressed that you can run a virtual machine from a backup stored on ExaGrid’s Landing Zone in a disaster recovery situation.”

The data security capabilities in the ExaGrid product line provide a high level of security for data at rest and can help reduce IT drive retirement costs in the data center. All data on the disk drive is encrypted automatically without any action required by users. Encryption and authentication keys are never accessible to outside systems where they can be stolen.

ExaGrid and Veeam can instantly recover a VMware virtual machine by running it directly from the ExaGrid appliance in the event that the primary storage VM becomes unavailable. This is possible because of ExaGrid’s landing zone – a high-speed disk cache on the ExaGrid appliance that retains the most recent backups in complete form. Once the primary storage environment has been brought back to a working state, the VM running on the ExaGrid appliance can then be migrated to primary storage for continued operation.

Improved Backup Environment Leads to 95% Shorter Backup Windows and 97% Faster Restores

Mösch backs up Pestalozzi’s data in daily incrementals and a weekly full backup, as well as a yearly backup. In addition to updating the backup system, Pestalozzi also upgraded to a 10 GbE network, which replaced the 1GbE network it had used before, maximizing the speed of its backups.

“Since updating our network and implementing ExaGrid, a backup of our entire data center has been reduced from 59 hours to just 2.5 hours. It’s a huge improvement!” said Mösch. “We often test restore times, and recovering our data center would take over six days with our previous solution, which has been reduced to little more than three hours with our new ExaGrid-Veeam solution. That’s fast!”

“Since updating our network and implementing ExaGrid, a backup of our entire data center has been reduced from 59 hours to just 2.5 hours. It’s a huge improvement!” said Mösch. “We often test restore times, and recovering our data center would take over six days with our previous solution, which has been reduced to little more than three hours with our new ExaGrid-Veeam solution. That’s fast!”

ExaGrid writes backups directly to a disk landing zone, avoiding inline processing and ensuring the highest possible backup performance, which results in the shortest backup window. ExaGrid’s Adaptive Deduplication performs deduplication and replication in parallel with backups while providing full system resources to the backups for the shortest backup window. Available system cycles are utilized to perform deduplication and offsite replication for an optimal recovery point at the disaster recovery site. Once complete, the onsite data is protected and immediately available in its full undeduplicated form for fast restores, VM Instant Recoveries, and tape copies while the offsite data is ready for disaster recovery.

ExaGrid’s Unique Architecture Provides Investment Protection

ExaGrid’s award-winning scale-out architecture provides customers with a consistent backup window regardless of data growth. Its unique landing zone retains the most recent backup in its full undeduplicated form, enabling the fastest restores, offsite tape copies, and instant recoveries.

ExaGrid’s multiple appliance models can be combined into a single system configuration, allowing full backups of up to 2PB with a combined ingest rate of 432TB/hr. The appliances virtualize into one another when plugged into a switch so that multiple appliance models can be mixed and matched into a single configuration. Each appliance includes the appropriate amount of processor, memory, disk, and bandwidth for the data size, so as each appliance is virtualized into the system, performance is maintained and backup times do not increase as data is added. Once virtualized, they appear as a single pool of long-term capacity. Capacity load balancing of all data across servers is automatic, and multiple systems can be combined for additional capacity. Even though data is load balanced, deduplication occurs across the systems so that data migration does not cause a loss of effectiveness in deduplication.

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.

ExaGrid and Veeam

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 diskbased backup system. This combination provides fast backups and efficient data storage as well as replication to an offsite location for disaster recovery. ExaGrid fully leverages Veeam’s built-in backup-to-disk capabilities, and ExaGrid’s zone-level deduplication provides additional data and cost reduction over standard disk solutions. Customers can use Veeam Backup & Replication’s built-in source-side deduplication in concert with ExaGrid’s disk-based backup system with zone-level deduplication to further shrink backups.

About ExaGrid

ExaGrid provides intelligent hyperconverged storage for backup with a unique landing zone and scale-out architecture. The landing zone enables the fastest backups, restores, and instant VM recoveries. The scale-out architecture includes full appliances in a scalable system and ensures a fixed-length backup window as data grows, eliminating expensive and disruptive forklift upgrades. Learn more at www.exagrid.com.