ExaGrid Systems, the backup appliance storage provider just named an industry Visionary in Gartner’s recent “Magic Quadrant for Deduplication Backup Target Appliances” report, is launching version 4.7 of its software for the ExaGrid family of backup storage appliances.

The new software continues to deliver on ExaGrid’s promise of stress-free backup, allowing for 14 appliances in a single GRID and increasing ingest and capacity by more than 40 percent. In addition, version 4.7 increases the number of data centres for cross-site disaster recovery, improves the recovery point for offsite disaster recovery and supports an ExaGrid-Veeam Accelerated Data Mover integrated into each appliance.

“ExaGrid has been a valued partner of Veeam for several years,” said Doug Hazelman, VP of Product Strategy at Veeam. “This latest integration further enables our joint customers to leverage the benefits of Availability for the Modern Data Centre™. By enabling Veeam’s data mover to be installed directly onto the ExaGrid appliance, customers will appreciate increased performance and less complexity of their availability infrastructures.”

ExaGrid is a leading disk-based backup provider with a unique landing zone for fast backups and the industry’s fastest restores, instant VM recoveries and tape copies. ExaGrid adds full server appliances into a scale-out GRID architecture, maintaining a short backup window as data grows while eliminating the need for expensive forklift upgrades.

"Most IT departments are experiencing data growth of more than 30 percent per year. As data grows, backup storage systems need to scale in order to maintain a fixed-length backup window. ExaGrid is the only solution that provides full appliances in a scale-out GRID architecture in order to maintain the fixed-length backup window,” said Bill Andrews, CEO and president at ExaGrid.

The new software will allow for:

• More capacity. 14 appliances in single GRID system, increasing ingest to 60.48TB per hour and capacity to a 294TB full backup in a single GRID; a 40 percent increase over previous versions of the software.
• Expanded cross data centre replication for disaster recovery. 16 systems in a data centre cross-protection topology, with 15 spokes to a hub, replicating data to a major data centre for disaster recovery and cross-replicating the major data centre to a second data centre for disaster recovery.
• Adaptive deduplication. Enable deduplication and replication to occur in parallel during nightly backups in order to greatly improve the recovery point at the disaster recovery site, without impeding backup performance.
• New Integrated ExaGrid-Veeam Accelerated Data Mover that improves performance for all Veeam backups and restores. The Veeam backup server communicates to the Veeam data mover on ExaGrid appliances with an enhanced protocol, versus simple CIFS. In addition, ExaGrid greatly improves the performance of creating a Synthetic Full Backup, as the entire process can be completed on the ExaGrid appliances, freeing up the Veeam backup server and network resources for other tasks.

“With all other disk-based backup solutions, the backup window grows as data grows until the front-end controller eventually, and inevitably, needs to be replaced, forcing forklift upgrades. Meanwhile, IT teams are under increased pressure to bring operations online quickly after any business continuity interruption,” said Andrews. “ExaGrid is the only provider that maintains the most recent backups in their full undeduplicated form for fast restores, instant VM boots (in seconds to minutes) and fast offsite tape copies. ExaGrid’s deduplication implementation improves backups, rather than hindering backup and restore performance.”

A Growing, Strategic Partnership
Veeam and ExaGrid together enable faster, more efficient storage and recovery of virtual machines using ExaGrid’s backup storage appliances to serve as the backup target for virtual machine backups. The two backup leaders are pleased to announce a milestone in the two companies’ partnership with the integrated ExaGrid-Veeam Accelerated Data Mover.

“Veeam is an incredibly important partner for us, and this is a very exciting time to be working together so closely. The new ExaGrid-Veeam Accelerated Data Mover is just one of many steps we hope to take with Veeam, as we both work to meet the needs of our customers,” said Andrews.

The new software will be available in September and is available at no charge to all customers who have a valid maintenance and support agreement.

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