Several Customers With ExaGrid and Veeam Joint Solution

ExaGrid Systems, Inc. announced that an increasing number of companies are leveraging its disk-based backup with deduplication systems and Veeam Software‘s virtual server data protection solutions to enable faster backups, instant 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 need for IT departments to have better backup and DR for VMs.

Veeam Backup & Replication provides recovery of virtualized applications and data for both VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V. The ExaGrid and Veeam partnership offers a 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 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 landing zone maintains a 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., a 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 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.

It 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 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% of its VMs almost instantly, it implemented the solution that integrates Veeam Backup & Replication with ExaGrid’s landing zone architecture, providing backups. The IT team can run an entire VM directly from the ExaGrid system, which minimizes downtime and disruption.

The combined solution can scale as Hoffman’s data grows by 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, 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 solution, the IT team was able to restore 100% of the VMs.

The solution is also enabling backups and storage
for other companies, including:

• American Standard, a 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 food service management through its Luby’s Culinary Services division.
• Poulin Grain, Inc., a Vermont-based company specializing in dairy, equine, pet and livestock feeds.

Kelly Bott, field technician and technical specialist for Hoffman Construction, said: "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, said: "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, said: "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."