ExaGrid Systems, Inc. (http://www.exagrid.com),  the leader in cost-effective and scalable disk-based backup solutions with byte-level data de-duplication, today announced that it has become a VMware Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) and has validated its product’s use within VMware virtualized environments. Using an ExaGrid system, VMware customers can cut their costs of retaining VMware data for centralized backups and disaster recovery. 

“Our ExaGrid system didn’t require any special configurations to perform VMware Infrastructure 3 backups to disk,” said Gary Larson, CIO of Gardner Trucking, Inc. “We’re getting an average 1000:1 delta compression with some data exceeding of 100s of 1,000s:1 de-duplication. Recoveries of VMware virtual machines and all of our backups are lightening fast too. There’s no manual processing required to do backups, they’re faster and restores of standard or virtualized servers are highly reliable -- that’s a triple plus for our organization.”

ExaGrid supports VMware environments in a variety of ways. For example, full and incremental file backups of VMware virtual machines can include both VMware .vmdk (virtual disk) and .vmx (VMware configuration) files. The customer no longer needs to rely on tape for VMware environment backups and can eliminate tape management, handling and transportation costs.

Since protection of virtual environments requires not only protection of each virtual server and its data but also the virtual server’s image, backups include the operating system, metadata and the information about the virtual server’s relationship to networked storage. Thus, VMware environment backups are typically large and need to be backed up regularly. ExaGrid is uniquely suited for VMware environment backups for the following reasons:

• ExaGrid combines compression and byte-level data de-duplication to minimize the amount of data stored in each subsequent backup.
• Depending on the customer’s data, ExaGrid customers are achieving data de-duplication of redundant VMware virtual machine instances by a factor of 100s or even 10,000s to 1.
• Backup windows are also cut by as much as 80%.  
• Restores do not require a SAN, are fast and highly reliable.
• The customer no longer needs to rely on tape for VMware environment backups and can eliminate tape management, handling and transportation costs.
• Entire VMware environments can also be replicated to an off-site ExaGrid via a WAN ensuring synchronized backups for Disaster Recovery purposes.

“No longer is it just the large IT staff of Fortune 500 enterprises who feel the pain unique to virtual environment backups and DR operations,” said Dave Therrien, ExaGrid CTO and founder. “It’s also felt by mid-size enterprises that are often resource-strapped. For these shops, even just a few weeks retention of multiple virtual environments is impractical. With ExaGrid, VMware Infrastructure 3 users can non-intrusively de-duplicate VMware images with no inline processing delays. And they can easily grow their environments via ExaGrid’s virtualized GRID-based architecture that creates a virtual pool of storage vs. individual storage islands.”

ExaGrid’s support for VMware Infrastructure 3 is available today and part of the standard ExaGrid product at no additional charge.

 

About ExaGrid’s Technology
The ExaGrid system is a turnkey, plug-and-play solution that works with existing backup applications and enables faster and more reliable backups and restores. Customers report that backup time is reduced by 30 to 80 percent over traditional tape backup. ExaGrid’s byte-level data de-duplication technology and most recent backup compression, coupled with high-quality SATA storage, reduces the amount of disk space needed by a range of 10:1 to 50:1, or more, resulting in a price about the same as tape, and about 25% the price of standard disk storage.