Rio Hondo College Installs ExaGrid System
To increase data retention period and shrink backup window
This is a Press Release edited by StorageNewsletter.com on May 3, 2008 at 3:45 pmExaGrid Systems, Inc. announced that Rio Hondo College has selected the ExaGrid system to increase its ability to retain long term backup data on disk and to reduce its backup window.
Located in Southeast Los Angeles County, Rio Hondo College enrolls over 20,000 students each semester. Rio Hondo’s educational programs prepare students for transfer to four-year colleges and universities, grant two-year degrees in a number of specialties, issue certificates in technical or professional fields, provide contract training for employer workforces, and offer community service classes in subjects ranging from computer skills to cultural event fieldtrips. The college graduates close to 600 students every year, awarding two-year, Associate of Arts/Sciences degrees and nearly 500 specialty certificates.
Rio Hondo had been backing up using a disk-staging approach, backing up data to standard disk and then to tape. But as the college’s data grew, its IT staff struggled with data retention, and could only hold two days of backups on disk before the data needed to be offloaded to tape.
“We liked the speed and convenience of backing up to disk, but we needed a solution that offered data de-duplication so that we could keep more data locally on the system,” said Van Vuong, network specialist at Rio Hondo College. “The ExaGrid system was the ideal solution for our backup problems and it came highly recommended. The ExaGrid has the data de-duplication we were looking for along with the scalability we need to accommodate future growth.”
Rio Hondo purchased the ExaGrid Disk-based Backup System to back up nearly 40 servers, including those used by various academic departments, accounting and contract management offices and financial aid offices. The ExaGrid system works alongside Rio Hondo’s backup application, CommVault Galaxy.
Rio Hondo now keeps its desired four weeks of backup retention on the ExaGrid system. Every two weeks data is copied to tape and the tapes are sent to a safe on campus.
Since installing the ExaGrid system, Rio Hondo has experienced a 50 percent reduction in its backup window. Weekly full backups have been reduced from 24 hours to 12 hours, and nightly differential backups have been reduced from eight hours to four hours.
ExaGrid combines last backup compression along with data de-duplication, which stores changes from backup to backup instead of storing full file copies. This unique approach reduces the disk space required by a range of 10:1 to 50:1 or more, delivering unparalleled cost savings and performance. ExaGrid delivers extremely fast backup performance because data is written directly to disk, and data de-duplication is performed post-process after the data is stored.
ExaGrid’s GRID architecture will enable Rio Hondo to scale its system as its data grows. When plugged into a switch, additional ExaGrid systems virtualize into one another, appearing as a single system to the backup server, and load balancing of all data across servers is automatic.
“Many organizations turn to a disk-staging approach and then quickly realize that it falls short of their goals. They need disk-based backup with data de-duplication to affordably meet their data retention needs,” said Bill Andrews, president and CEO of ExaGrid. “ExaGrid’s disk-based backup system provides a cost-effective, turnkey solution for organizations seeking to reduce or eliminate tape and dramatically improve their backup processes.”
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