ExaGrid Systems, Inc., the leader in cost-effective and scalable disk-based backup solutions with data deduplication, today announced that it received US Patent no. 8,412,848, building on the company’s history of innovation to solve data protection problems for its customers. The patent covers ExaGrid’s unique Zone-level deduplication method, a core component of ExaGrid's deduplication technology.

ExaGrid’s zone-level deduplication enables customers to benefit from a unique combination of seamless scalability, support for the widest range of backup applications, and faster backup and restore performance.

• Seamless scalability: Zone-level deduplication is a key technology that enables ExaGrid’s disk backup solution to scale seamlessly in a scale-out architecture – with full servers in a grid – by reducing deduplication metadata by a factor of 1000-times or more over all other deduplication solutions. ExaGrid offers the only scale-out disk-based backup system where as data grows, additional capacity is accompanied by compute resources to maintain performance and scalability. Competing solutions that scale by only adding disk shelves as data grows are performance-challenged and burden customers with costly forklift upgrades.
• Extensive backup application support: Zone-level deduplication also allows ExaGrid to deliver its deduplication capability for the widest possible range of backup and archiving applications. Historically, when customers have looked for faster, more reliable backups and restores along with seamless scalability in a disk backup with deduplication solution, they have faced a tradeoff decision. They previously have had to choose either the scalability and performance of byte-level deduplication with limited backup application support, or the generic approach offered by block-level deduplication, which can support a wide range of backup applications but has performance and scalability challenges. The unique Zone-level deduplication eliminates this tradeoff by making ExaGrid’s deduplication technology available with a broad range of backup applications, while also delivering the highest performance and scalability. Customers benefit from generic and content-aware methods of deduplication, along with GRID-scalability all in a single product from a single vendor. ExaGrid is the first and only to offer this approach.
• Faster backup and restore performance: Zone-level deduplication technology enables faster backups and restores due to much more efficient processing of data streams. By processing larger chunks – from 2MB to 50MB zones – ExaGrid achieves the same or better deduplication rates versus competing technologies that use 4KB to 8KB (average) chunks, and create large and unmanageable hash tables which force these systems to use a front end controller with disk shelves.

“This latest patent is further confirmation of the uniqueness of ExaGrid’s technology, which provides performance and scalability while also working with a wide range of backup applications,” said Dave Therrien, founder and chief technical officer of ExaGrid. “ExaGrid continues to build on its long history of developing innovative technology and applying those innovations to difficult data protection challenges for our customers. Our growing intellectual property portfolio extends our technology lead in disk backup with deduplication and enables ExaGrid to offer our customers the fastest backup and restore performance, and most seamless scalability with support for the broadest range of backup applications and utilities. This latest patent again acknowledges the uniqueness of our technology, and reinforces ExaGrid’s place as a leader in the market for highly scalable disk-based backup.”

ExaGrid’s disk backup system with data deduplication supports the industry’s leading backup applications and utilities, including Acronis, CA ARCserve, Bridgehead, CommVault Simpana, Dell/Quest vRangerPro, HP Data Protector, IBM iSeries/Laservault, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager, Idera SQL Safe, Linux/Unix dumps, Microsoft SQL dumps, Oracle RMAN dumps, PHD Virtual, Redgate, Symantec Backup Exec, Symantec NetBackup, Unitrends, Veeam Backup and Replication, VMware Backup and many others.