ExaGrid, Pure Storage and Veeam Collaborate

ExaGrid Systems, Inc. announced a collaboration with Pure Storage, Inc. to deliver end-to-end storage solutions.

Due to high demand from customers and partners, Pure and ExaGrid in collaboration with Veeam Software, Inc. have released a reference architecture entitled, Advanced Pure Storage FlashData Protection Using Veeam Backup & Replication and ExaGrid Backup Storage.

This collaboration provides storage solutions that address an organization’s storage needs. While Pure Storage provides all-flash primary storage, ExaGrid’s target-side backup storage appliances are best suited for organizations with longer-term backup retention needs, typically four weeks or more. Organizations that work with both ExaGrid and Pure Storage benefit from the price/performance of these next-generation products over the established brand solutions that offer earlier generations of storage products.

“ExaGrid is receiving requests in record numbers from resellers who are seeing increasing demand for the next generation of best-of-breed storage solutions,” said Bill Andrews, CEO, ExaGrid. “This includes the combination of Pure Storage for primary storage and ExaGrid for backup storage, particularly in combination with Veeam for virtualized backup. In response, we are conducting an unprecedented number of end-user events that includes these next-generation storage companies.“

“Successful partnerships are those that blend the strengths of complementary products to deliver value beyond cost and speed,” said Andy Vandeveld, VP of global strategic alliances, Veeam.  “High-caliber products such as Pure Storage and ExaGrid further strengthen the performance that Veeam provides to its ‘Always-On’ customers. Today’s IT teams continue to be understaffed and have tight budgets, so introducing an end-to-end solution that puts an end to the traditional problems inherent to storage and backup brings immeasurable value. Our customers are the guardians of the data, and it’s expected to be there – not sometimes, not some of it, not two days from now; but 24.7.365. Only best of breed can deliver that availability with excellence – consistently and reliably. That’s the drumbeat that IT is expected to march to, and that’s what this partnership uniquely delivers.“

Customer validation has come from many segments, including the healthcare industry. TN-based Williamson Medical Center has been using the three products together, and Sam Marsh, engineering team lead, reports reliance on the integrated solution to work flawlessly: “In our virtualized environment, storing, backing up, and restoring data easily and efficiently is really important. The combination of Pure Storage All Flash, Veeam Backup & Replication, and ExaGrid disk-based backup with deduplication have provided us with superior end-to-end performance. Mission-critical applications require highly optimized storage, and I get incredible speed and performance with Pure Storage. ExaGrid provides not just the shortest backup window, but the fastest – and most reliable – data restores. Both Pure and ExaGrid have a scale-out architecture, so I can expand without taking the entire system down. Veeam connects the two and is highly integrated with ExaGrid to maximize backup speed and data deduplication. The three products couldn’t be easier to install and manage, and the capability and user experience are amazing.“

“We have seen tremendous demand from our enterprise customers to support the combination of Veeam and ExaGrid for protection of their business critical workloads running on all-flash storage. In particular, the solution is well-suited to customers in heavily-regulated industries, where long-term retention is required,” said Matt Kixmoeller, VP products, Pure Storage. “Pure Storage has committed resources across engineering, marketing, sales, and support to bring this solution to market, and we look forward to working with Veeam and ExaGrid to deliver a world-class experience to customers in this important market segment.“

Supporting this solution are a number of industry awards and recognition. Gartner positioned ExaGrid as the sole ‘Visionary’ in its most recent Magic Quadrant for Deduplication Backup Target Appliances while also naming Veeam a leader in its 2016 Magic Quadrant for Data Center Backup and Recovery Software and Pure Storage a leader in its Magic Quadrant for Solid-State Arrays’ for the last three years.  ExaGrid was also named Most Valuable Product by Computer Technology Review and received Network Computing’s ROI’award. ExaGrid and Veeam were honored by storage magazine Searchstorage.com as Products of the Year in backup hardware and backup and DR software and services, respectively. Veeam has received over 100 industry awards and was most recently recognized by Ovum as The Leader in its 2016 ODM report.

ExaGrid provides second-generation backup storage with adaptive data deduplication, a landing zone, and differentiated scale-out storage architecture. In contrast, first-generation appliances perform deduplication inline and have a scale-up architecture that store deduplicated data but also slows down backups, restores, and VM boots. This approach provides faster backups by performing deduplication after landing backups to disk. The firm maintains the most recent non-deduplicated backups in a landing zone for fast restores and VM boots, and stores longer-term deduplicated retention data in its repository storage. Due to ExaGrid’s scale-out architecture, which adds compute with capacity, the backup window stays fixed in length even as data grows.

Datasheet: Next Generation Primary Storage and Backup
Reference Architecture: Advanced Pure Storage FlashData Protection Using Veeam Backup and Replication and ExaGrid Backup Storage