International SOS UK Converts From Tape to D2D Backup With De-Dupe

ExaGrid Systems, Inc. announced that International SOS UK has chosen the ExaGrid system to achieve faster backups and restores, and remove the hassles associated with tape backup.

Eliminating Long Backup Times and Problems with Tape
International SOS UK is the local arm of the world’s leading provider of medical assistance, international healthcare, security services and outsourced customer care. It had been experiencing issues with its nightly tape backups. With long backup and restore times and tape management issues causing problems on a daily basis, the staff decided to look for an alternative solution.

“We had lots of problems with tape, but our main concern was the length of our backups. Our nightly backup windows were way too long and our backup jobs had begun to run into the workday. And if the backup was running, we couldn’t restore files. With services that cover emergency medical and security evacuations – including more than 16,000 evacuations last year – having streamlined and quicker backups enables us to achieve time efficiencies,” commented Ben Aung, Infrastructure Manager at International SOS, UK.

Two-site ExaGrid Streamlines Backup Process
After considering systems from both ExaGrid and a competing solution, International SOS UK chose a two-site ExaGrid system to back up data in its London office.

“We are very happy with the ExaGrid disk backup and data deduplication technology that we’ve chosen. Full backups, which currently take nearly 14 hours with tape, will only take six hours with the ExaGrid system. Moreover, in a tough economic climate where prudence is essential, we will also be able to better control costs by reducing the amount of money we spend on tape, transportation and storage fees,” continued Aung.

ExaGrid combines last backup compression along with data deduplication, which only stores changes from backup to backup, instead of storing full file copies. This unique approach reduces the disk space required by a range of 10:1 to 50:1 or more, delivering unparalleled cost savings and performance. ExaGrid delivers extremely fast backup performance because data is written directly to disk, and data deduplication is performed post-process after the data is stored to reduce data.

Looking to the Future – No Limitations
“The final reason why we decided to go with ExaGrid ahead of its competition was the scalability of its system. It means we are able to have freedom for expansion at a later date without incurring a major cost. Its modular architecture will enable us to easily add capacity in the future to accommodate more data,” said Aung.

ExaGrid’s GRID computing software makes the system highly scalable, and when plugged into a switch, different sized configurations can be mixed and matched into a single GRID system with capacities of up to a 60TB full backup plus retention. When virtualized, they appear as a single system to the backup server, and load balancing of all data across servers is automatic.

“Organizations struggle daily with tape backup technology that simply can’t keep pace with growing data protection needs,” said Bill Andrews, President and CEO of ExaGrid Systems, Inc. “ExaGrid’s Disk-based Backup with Deduplication system was designed to work with existing backup applications to quickly, easily and cost-effectively reduce long backup windows and eliminate the hassles of tape.”