ExaGrid Sets Record Straight

ExaGrid Systems, Inc. set the record straight around its offering that competes with Dell EMC Data Domain deduplication appliances.

In a recent presentation to the reseller channel, Dell discussed the ExaGrid backup storage line product line, and some of the information presented was either outdated or inaccurate according to ExaGrid.

While ExaGrid respects Dell’s professionalism and technical proficiency, some statements were not in line with what ExaGrid offers.

Here are 8 notable corrections: 

• ExaGrid’s Adaptive Deduplication process provides deduplication in parallel with backups resulting in backups that are 3x faster than other solutions, and is not post-process.
• An ExaGrid system can scale out to a 2PB full backup, with up to 32 appliances in a single system at 432TB/hour ingest rate.
• Throughput is over 300TB/hr. at the same 1.5PB that a Dell DD9900 is rated for at 94/TB with DD Boost.
• With the latest copy of all backups stored in the ExaGrid disk-cache landing zone, VM boots and data restores are 20 times faster than other solutions.
• Scale-out architecture adds compute with capacity in order to keep the backup window fixed length as data grows.
• Scale-out technology incorporates automatic load balancing and deduplication with a single UI for easy backup management.
• Has automated job management with Veeam SOBR, Oracle RMAN Channels, Commvault Spill & Fill, among other features.
• Also replicates data offsite, encrypts the data, and offers the same RPO at the DR site.

Answer is Side-by-side Testing for Real-world Results:
ExaGrid encourages every reseller to have their customers test different backup solutions side-by-side. Many of newly acquired customers are replacing Dell EMC Data Domain appliances due to these test results. The company wins the majority of the time when a POC is complete.

“We are replacing low-cost primary storage (from Dell, HPE and NTAP) as well as Dell Data Domain, HPE StoreOnce and Veritas appliances behind Veritas NetBackup, Commvault, Oracle RMAN, Veeam, and many other backup applications, as ExaGrid is far less expensive than low-cost disk for longer term retention and faster for backups and restores as well as lower cost than deduplication appliances,” said Bill Andrews, CEO.

The firm is different by providing tiered backup storage with a front-end disk-cache landing zone, the performance tier, which writes data directly to disk for the fastest backups and restores directly from disk for the fastest restores and VM boots. The long-term retention data is tiered to a deduplicated data repository, the retention tier, to reduce the amount of retention storage and resulting cost. This 2-tiered approach provides the fastest backup and restore performance with lowest cost storage efficiency.

In addition, the firm provides a scale-out architecture where appliances are added as data grows. Each appliance includes processor, memory and network ports, so as data grows, all resources required are available to maintain a fixed-length backup window. This scale-out storage approach eliminates expensive forklift upgrades and allows for mixing appliances of different sizes and models in the same scale-out system which eliminates product obsolescence while protecting IT investments up front and over time.