ExaGrid announced the
release of software Version 6.2, which begins shipping in early
December 2022.
ExaGrid is constantly driving improvements in five key areas: ingest
performance for the fastest backups and shortest backup window, fastest
restores to keep user productive, scalability to ensure a fixed-length
backup window as data grows as well as no forklift upgrades and no
planned product obsolescence, lowest cost up front and over time, and a
strong security story including the ability to recover after a security
attack such as ransomware.
ExaGrid's Unique Architecture employs:
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Front-end disk-cache Landing Zone for fast backups
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Optimized for large backup jobs, parallel backup support (job
concurrency), no inline deduplication to slow backups down, encryption
at the drive level to increase performance, and integrations with key
backup applications for front-end load balancing.
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Fast restores as the data is in the native backup application format and
is non-deduplicated to avoid compute-intensive data rehydration
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Scale-out architecture
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Keeps a fixed-length backup window as data grows
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Eliminates disruptive and costly forklift upgrades
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Can mix and match any age and any size appliance eliminating planned product obsolescence to reduce costs over time
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Non-network-facing Repository Tier
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Deduplicated data to efficiently store all current and long-term retention data for cost savings
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Not visible or accessible from the network
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Delayed deletes to ensure data deleted on the front-end Landing Zone is
not immediately deleted in the repository ensuring data is ready for
recovery after an attack
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Immutable data objects that are not deleted, changed, or modified to ensure recovery from encryption events
5 Key Updates in Version 6.2
Veritas NetBackup Single Target Storage Pool
ExaGrid has integrated with NetBackup and presents a single
virtualized target pool of storage at each site. This approach automates
job management between Veritas NetBackup and ExaGrid, where backup data
is automatically sent to available ExaGrid appliances for front-end
performance. Backup data is directed into any ExaGrid appliance as all
ExaGrid appliances are in a single integrated scale-out system. ExaGrid
automatically load balances all data across all non-network facing
repositories for full storage utilization and globally deduplicates data
across all repositories for maximum storage savings.
Veritas IT Analytics
ExaGrid has integrated with Veritas IT analytics, allowing
reporting on key data statistics from the ExaGrid storage. This allows
enterprises to include ExaGrid Tiered Backup storage along with unified
insights for backup, storage, and virtual infrastructure.
ExaGrid, including Single Target Storage Pool and support of NetBackup
Analytics, now has a total of 9 Veritas NetBackup integrations,
including support of NetBackup Accelerator, OST Integration, integration
with NetBackup media server hardware, AIR (Auto Image Replication), and
GRT (granular level restore), optimized deduplication, and instant
recovery.
New ExaGrid Cloud Tier Features and Integrations
ExaGrid physical appliances on premise in the data center can
replicate data to the public clouds for disaster recovery (DR). ExaGrid
has improved the performance and scalability of its ExaGrid Cloud Tier
for Amazon AWS and has added ExaGrid Cloud Tier support for Microsoft
Azure. ExaGrid physical on-site appliances replicate the deduplicated
data in the repository to AWS or Azure, which is then written to AWS or
Azure storage for long-term retention. The deduplicated data uses about
1/50th of the bandwidth versus undeduplicated data. ExaGrid encrypts the
data in transit, and the cloud providers encrypt the data at rest.
Improved Performance
ExaGrid has improved its Adaptive Deduplication performance,
increasing the Repository Tier's overall performance and further
increasing the scalability and recovery points of data in the
non-network-facing Repository Tier and offsite disaster recovery copy.
ExaGrid has greatly improved the performance of Veeam synthetic fulls
(Veeam V12) by adding support for Veeam's Fast Clone technology in
ExaGrid repositories. The synthetics fulls are at least 30X faster than
previous versions.
Improved Security
ExaGrid has a strong ransomware recovery solution with a
non-network-facing Repository Tier (tiered air gap), delayed delete
policy, immutable data objects, and 2FA support. ExaGrid has added two
new features:
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An alert on large delete is generated as an early detection warning if a
threat actor/hacker is trying to delete a large amount of recently
ingested data (above a set operational threshold) on the ExaGrid
front-end Landing Zone.
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An alert on data deduplication change is generated when the
deduplication ratio changes below a set threshold signaling that a large
amount of encrypted data is being sent to the ExaGrid front-end Landing
Zone or that the data on the Landing Zone is being encrypted.
These features add an early alert warning in addition to the current
ExaGrid Retention Time-Lock (RTL) functionality, ensuring that the data
in the non-network-facing tier is available for recovery.
"ExaGrid continues to focus on improving backup and restore performance,
scalability, cost savings, and security," said Bill Andrews, CEO of
ExaGrid. "Since ExaGrid is 100% focused on backup storage, all we do is
obsess about making backup storage better. We are the only company
worldwide focusing solely on backup storage. It is a testament to the
product that we are installed in over 80 countries worldwide, have 99%
of our customers on yearly maintenance and support contracts, have a NPS
of +81, and a customer retention rate of 95%. All of these numbers are
market-leading in storage. ExaGrid is a financially healthy and growing
company that is cash positive, P&L positive, and EBITDA positive.
The combination of our product, customer support, and financial strength
is why customers trust ExaGrid Tiered Backup Storage."