Colleges and Universities Opt for ExaGrid

ExaGrid Systems, Inc. announced that higher education institutions are increasingly
choosing ExaGrid’s disk-based backup appliances with deduplication to gain
faster backups and restores and scalability as data grows.

As a result of implementing ExaGrid, IT departments at a growing number of colleges and universities have reduced backup times by up to 90%,
improved offsite DR capabilities, reduced or eliminated tape backup, and sped
up their restores of files, objects, and VMs – while also avoiding costly ‘forklift
upgrades’ associated with other approaches that do not scale easily.

Higher education institutions are choosing disk backup with
deduplication to meet their backup and recovery needs in large part because of
ExaGrid’s approach to disk backup, which combines compute with capacity
as data grows in a ‘scale-out’ architecture along with a landing zone
for rapid restores.

Other disk backup solutions that expand in a ‘scale-up’ architecture
by adding just disk capacity without adding compute resources result in
downstream problems including ever-expanding backup windows and expensive
forklift upgrades. These other solutions also only store deduplicated data,
resulting in slow system restores and tape copies, and slow recoveries of
files, VMs and objects that take hours versus minutes. ExaGrid is the only solution
that permanently shortens backup windows without expensive forklift upgrades,
and also enables the fastest full system restores and rapid restore of files,
VMs and objects in as fast as minute.

Higher education institutions that have turned to ExaGrid
to solve their backup challenges include:

• Keene State College: The Keene State
  College IT department selected it to meet its need for shorter backup
  windows and greater backup reliability. After implementing the system,
  the team was able to reduce the backup time for the college’s main file server
  by 95%, from 20 hours to just 45 mn.
• Furman University:
  Furman University turned to appliances to replace its aging tape
  library. ExaGrid offered the university a faster, more reliable backup solution
  that reduced the amount of time spent managing tape backups. Since implementing
  the disk backup with deduplication solution, Furman’s IT team reported
  a reduction in backup data by 22:1 and a 75% reduction in nightly
  backup times – from as much as six hours to about 90 mn.
• Plymouth State University: The Plymouth
  State University IT department needed to move away from tape, and chose
  disk-based backup to make their data protection processes faster and more
  reliable. ExaGrid was a choice as the appliance worked with the university’s
  existing backup application and made switching from tape easy. Since
  installation, the university has cut its backup windows in half and achieved
  data deduplication ratios as high as 20:1 with 30 days of retention.
• Sarah Lawrence College: Sarah
  Lawrence College’s IT team knew that it wanted to move away from tape, and even
  considered backing up to primary disk in a co-location facility. The team chose
  disk backup with deduplication as a way to reduce backup data volumes
  and the high projected cost of disk space, power draw, and rack space in the
  co-location facility. Since backing up to ExaGrid, the IT department has seen
  the college’s backup window reduced from between 24-36 hours per week to 10-12
  hours.

Marc Crespi, VP of
product management for ExaGrid, said: "These education institutions experienced many of the same pain points
that made ExaGrid’s unique approach to disk backup with deduplication an
attractive solution. Most of these customers were experiencing rapid data
growth, backups running outside the available window, long restore times, and
the management headaches of tape backup. Each of these campuses solved their
backup challenges with ExaGrid’s proven architecture built for backup and
optimised for backup and restore performance and cost-effective scalability."

Kevin Forrest, system administrator for Keene State
College, said: "Decreasing our
backup windows and the time the IT team spent on backups each night was a huge
factor in why we chose to implement an ExaGrid appliance. Since installation,
backup times have decreased and we’re all able to sleep better at night knowing
our data will be completely backed up by the time we arrive to work each
morning."