ExaGrid Supporting Optimized Synthetic Backups

ExaGrid Systems, Inc. was named the first third-party deduplication appliance to be certified by Symantec Corp. for Optimized Synthetic Backups with NetBackup.

Optimized Synthetics offers a way to eliminate a full backup every week and achieve backup window reduction by allowing storage administrators to backup only changed files for prolonged periods of time. ExaGrid’s support for optimized synthetic backups was built under the Symantec OpenStorage API integration (OST).

‘Synthetic full’ backups – synthesizing full backups from a previous full and a long series of subsequent incremental backups – have had the potential to improve traditional backup by reducing the amount of data backed up and moved over a network. However, the increased processing overhead on the backup server with no reduction in backup times has limited their adoption. Optimized Synthetics now addresses these limitations by using metadata to create a roadmap for recovering a full backup without actually doing the data movement to rebuild the full. This allows the administrator to perform a full recovery with a single action from any point when an ‘Opt Synth’ was executed, with no performance lag during the backups themselves.

The Optimized Synthetics operation happens on a deduplication storage system, such as ExaGrid’s disk backup with deduplication system. The result for an administrator is a shorter backup window with no impact to recovery time.

How does Optimized Synthetics
benefit ExaGrid and NetBackup users?

• Less disk needed for backup: since changes are periodically merged on top of existing full/synthetic backups.
• Faster backups: from backing-up only changed files for prolonged periods of time without weekly fulls, and from removing storage I/O as a potential bottleneck.
• Faster restores: recovery times are reduced since the backup administrator will need to use only one unified backup file.
• Reduced CPU power and network traffic: since the synthetic backup was created without using the resources from the client, backup server or network.

Marc Crespi, Vice President of Product Management for ExaGrid Systems, said: "ExaGrid is dedicated to improving data protection, and has maintained a long-standing relationship and product integration with Symantec to reduce complexity for IT users. Symantec’s certification of ExaGrid as the first third-party deduplication appliance supporting Optimized Synthetics verifies the importance of the partnership and of this advanced backup capability. Our end users benefit by shorter backup windows and gaining the ability to recover full backups without having to rebuild full images on their systems."

Brian Dye, Vice President Product Management for Symantec, said: "Symantec’s OST initiative allows third-party appliance vendors to support Symantec’s advanced backup and recovery features. ExaGrid is the first partner to support Optimized Synthetics, and this certification recognizes delivery of an important capability that helps customers using Symantec NetBackup and ExaGrid get faster backups and restores."

Features and Benefits of ExaGrid EX Series Appliance
ExaGrid’s approach to disk-based backup delivers performance and scalability without requiring costly forklift upgrades as data grows. ExaGrid customers achieve fast backup times because data is written directly to disk, data deduplication is performed post-process after the data is stored but most importantly ExaGrid adds full servers which include processor, memory, disk and bandwidth versus just adding disk.

In addition to NetBackup, ExaGrid’s disk backup system with data deduplication supports the backup applications and utilities, including CA ARCserve, CommVault Simpana, EMC NetWorker, HP Data Protector, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager, Idera SQLsafe, Linux/Unix File System Data Dumps, LiteSpeed for SQL Server, Microsoft SQL dump, Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN), Quest vRanger, Red Gate SQL Backup, Symantec Backup Exec, Veeam Backup & Replication, and VMware Backup.

The ExaGrid Optimized Synthetics capability will be released in January 2012.