Labat-Anderson Chooses Exagrid to Replace Tapes

ExaGrid Systems, Inc., in cost-effective and scalable disk-based backup solutions with byte-level data de-duplication, announced that Labat-Anderson (Labat) has selected the ExaGrid system to eliminate tape, reduce the backup window by achieving faster backups and improve its disaster recovery operations.

Labat-Anderson Incorporated is a worldwide consulting firm specializing in information systems and services, environmental services and litigation support. Based in McLean, Virginia, Labat has been in business for more than twenty years, and counts several government agencies and large organizations as its clients.

Labat has purchased the ExaGrid solution to replace its existing tape backup system and to improve disaster recovery. The ExaGrid solution works alongside Labat’s existing backup application, Symantec Backup Exec.

The IT staff at Labat had been dealing with long nightly backups and weekly full backups that took up to 72 hours. After installing the ExaGrid system, Labat’s nightly backups have been significantly reduced and its weekly full backups have been reduced to eight hours. Labat uses its centrally-administered ExaGrid system to backup nearly all of its corporate and client data. The firm also has ExaGrid systems at secure offsite facilities for disaster recovery.

“The ExaGrid solution was about 30 percent the cost of standard SATA-based storage and it has enabled us to save time and money because we were able to significantly reduce our backup window and eliminate tape,” said Donald McMillan, director of litigation and administrative support services for Labat. “ExaGrid’s byte-level data de-duplication is incredibly effective at reducing our data so it takes up less disk space, and our restores are much, much faster. Also, our disaster recovery operations are now seamless and very efficient.  Because ExaGrid only moves the bytes that change across our secure WAN, we’re able to rapidly back up to our offsite disaster recovery center.”

ExaGrid’s byte-level data de-duplication technology stores only the changes from backup to backup instead of storing full file copies, reducing the amount of disk space needed by a range of 10 to 50:1, or more. When used offsite for disaster recovery, ExaGrid acts as a live disk-based data repository, and is extremely cost-effective because the byte-level data de-duplication technology only moves changes, requiring minimal WAN bandwidth.

“Organizations like Labat, who are struggling with the limitations of tape, can look to ExaGrid to cost-effectively implement disk-based backup,” said Bill Andrews, president and CEO of ExaGrid. “ExaGrid is extremely attractive for those companies seeking to streamline their nightly backup and disaster recovery operations. By employing byte-level data de-duplication technology, backups can be stored on a small footprint of disk and further allows only the byte-level changes to be moved across the WAN for effective offsite disk-based backup.”

By moving its backups to the ExaGrid system, Labat has been able to comply with rigorous new regulations for reporting, auditing and internal security standards.

“ExaGrid helps us better meet the stringent new electronic discovery mandates and other requirements,” said McMillan. “With ExaGrid, we are able to perform more granular backups so that we can tailor our backup strategies to meet the needs of each client,” said McMillan.

ExaGrid Systems, Inc.