ExaGrid Systems, Inc. announced that is has expanded its product line with the addition of the world's first de-duplication gateway for iSCSI storage, the ExaGrid iSCSI De-duplication Gateway. The gateway has been tested with DELL EqualLogic PS5000 Series iSCSI arrays to enable economical disk-based backup solutions that are easy to deploy and manage.

The ExaGrid iSCSI Gateway with Dell EqualLogic PS Series storage provides organizations with a disk-based backup solution that delivers on the promise of backing up to iSCSI SAN disk at the same or lower price than tape-based approaches.

"For some time now, we've used the PS Series for our primary storage and ExaGrid's disk-based backup system to shorten our backup windows, improve recovery times and reduce our backup costs dramatically," said Mark Rivard, CIO of Johnson Health Network, a Connecticut-based healthcare organization serving 96,000 patients annually. "This new gateway will allow us to leverage and expand our existing infrastructure while simplifying overall management of our storage. It makes great sense for us to use the ExaGrid and Dell EqualLogic products together to achieve cost-effective and reliable backups. It's a very smart combination."

With the ExaGrid iSCSI De-duplication Gateway, organizations can achieve:

• A 30 to 90% reduction in backup and restore timesCost-neutral replacement of tape via disk-based backup with byte-level data de-duplication
• Lowered disk capacity requirements that reduces infrastructure, power and cooling costsDisk-based off-site data protection for disaster recovery
• The ability to leverage existing investments in Dell EqualLogic PS Series storage for efficient backups
  
  

"Unified storage means delivering rapid, flexible deployment of storage and reducing the time and cost required to manage, protect and grow a SAN environment - whether the data stored is for primary use, weekly backups or even disaster recovery operations," said Kevin Wittmer, senior manager for Dell EqualLogic Product Marketing. "ExaGrid's iSCSI Gateway, in combination with Dell EqualLogic PS Series iSCSI storage arrays, provides a cost-effective, easy-to-deploy and manage disk-based data de-duplication backup solution. These are factors that are important to Dell customers wherever they need to store, access or protect their data."

Keeping weeks, months or even years worth of backups on disk was previously unaffordable. Now, with the ExaGrid iSCSI De-duplication Gateway and Dell EqualLogic PS Series storage, customers can realize the potential of disk-based backup at a cost that is the same or often less than tape. ExaGrid's unique byte-level data de-duplication works directly with high performance Dell EqualLogic iSCSI SANs to dramatically reduce the amount of disk space required to store all of an organization's backup data by 10, 20 or even 50 to 1.This includes all types of data, as well as backups of full virtual server environments.

"ExaGrid has established itself as the performance leader in the disk-based backup with data de-duplication market," said Marc Crespi, ExaGrid's vice president of product management. "This new gateway extends this leadership and provides customers with the flexibility to enhance their unified storage infrastructure and leverage it for cost-effective storage of backup data. "ExaGrid's patented byte-level data de-duplication is a natural fit with Dell EqualLogic iSCSI storage. We're proud to bring this product to market as a tested solution for Dell EqualLogic PS Series, a proven leader in the iSCSI storage market."

The ExaGrid iSCSI De-duplication Gateway is expected to ship by the end of April.

ExaGrid Systems, Inc.