ExaGrid Issued Patent

ExaGrid Systems, Inc. received US Patent no. 8,412,848, "method and apparatus for content-aware and adaptive deduplication", to solve data protection problems for its customers.

The patent covers ExaGrid’s zone-level deduplication method, a core component of its deduplication technology.

Zone-level deduplication enables customers to benefit from a combination of scalability, support for a wide range of backup applications, and faster backup and restore performance.

• Seamless scalability: Zone-level deduplication is a  technology that enables disk backup solution to scale in a scale-out architecture – with full servers in a grid – by reducing deduplication metadata by a factor of 1000-times or more over all other deduplication solutions. ExaGrid offers the only scale-out disk-based backup system where as data grows, additional capacity is accompanied by compute resources to maintain performance and scalability. Competing solutions that scale by only adding disk shelves as data grows are performance-challenged and burden customers with costly forklift upgrades.
• Backup application support: Zone-level deduplication also allows to deliver deduplication capability for a wide range of backup and archiving applications. Historically, when customers have looked for faster, more reliable backups and restores along with scalability in a disk backup with deduplication solution, they have faced a tradeoff decision. They previously have had to choose either the scalability and performance of byte-level deduplication with limited backup application support, or the generic approach offered by block-level deduplication, which can support a range of backup applications but has performance and scalability challenges. The zone-level deduplication eliminates this tradeoff by making deduplication technology available with a range of backup applications, while also delivering performance and scalability. Customers benefit from generic and content-aware methods of deduplication, along with grid-scalability in a single product from a single vendor.
• Backup and restore performance: Zone-level deduplication technology enables faster backups and restores due to much more efficient processing of data streams. By processing larger chunks – from 2MB to 50MB zones – ExaGrid achieves the same or better deduplication rates versus competing technologies that use 4KB to 8KB (average) chunks, and create large and unmanageable hash tables which force these systems to use a front end controller with disk shelves.

"This latest patent is further confirmation of the uniqueness of ExaGrid’s technology, which provides performance and scalability while also working with a wide range of backup applications," said Dave Therrien, founder and CTO , ExaGrid. "ExaGrid continues to build on its long history of developing innovative technology and applying those innovations to difficult data protection challenges for our customers. Our growing intellectual property portfolio extends our technology lead in disk backup with deduplication and enables ExaGrid to offer our customers the fastest backup and restore performance, and most seamless scalability with support for the broadest range of backup applications and utilities. This latest patent again acknowledges the uniqueness of our technology, and reinforces ExaGrid’s place as a leader in the market for highly scalable disk-based backup."

CIO, CTO and Developer Resources
ExaGrid’s disk backup system with data deduplication supports the backup applications and utilities, including Acronis, CA ARCserve, Bridgehead, CommVault Simpana, Dell/Quest vRangerPro, HP Data Protector, IBM iSeries/Laservault, Tivoli Storage Manager, Idera SQL Safe, Linux/Unix dumps, SQL dumps, Oracle RMAN dumps, PHD Virtual, Red Gate Software, Symantec Backup Exec and NetBackup, Unitrends, Veeam Backup and Replication, VMware Backup.