More Local Governments Using ExaGrid

ExaGrid Systems, Inc. announced that more city and county governments are replacing inline de-dupe appliances with its tiered backup storage, which sits behind more than 25 backup applications and utilities, for improved backup and restore performance,  scalability as data grows and a lower TCO.

The IT department at the City of Kennewick, Washington supports various city departments, and also the Bi-County Police Information Network (BiPIN) for Benton County and neighboring Franklin County, to maximize efficiency in sharing information between police departments in the two counties, with 13 entities participating.

“For many years, we used Veritas Backup Exec to backup data to Quantum tape drives, and then to Dell EMC Data Domain. One of the major drawbacks of using this solution was the licensing between Backup Exec and Data Domain. We had to purchase additional licensing from both to deduplicate and then to store de-duped data, and when we virtualized our environment, more licensing was required for VMware servers and VMDK saves. The licensing situation is very much analogous to buying a car without tires, and it was pretty frustrating. As a city department, we have to be mindful of the budget and it felt like we weren’t getting the best backup coverage for what we were paying,” said Mike O’Brien, city’s senior system engineer.

“ExaGrid’s scale-out architecture is one of its biggest selling points, especially the fact that we can mix and match different ExaGrid appliances to our existing system. Switching to ExaGrid was a no-brainer because its upgradability just blows away what Data Domain offers,” he added. “When we started to run low on space on our Data Domain system, we had hoped to increase the size of the drives that were in the original shelf and it was disappointing to find out that we would actually need to purchase another shelf, which turned out to be much more expensive than the first, even though it was almost identical.“

“Our backups with ExaGrid are incredibly fast, especially compared with how they used to run using Backup Exec and Data Domain,” he commented. “Our weekend backups used to start on Friday evening and wouldn’t be finished until Monday night, sometimes even running into the Monday night incremental backup job. Now, we’ve been able to stagger various backup jobs throughout the weekend and they are finished early Sunday morning, even with gaps in between the jobs.“

ExaGrid president and CEO, Bill Andrews, credits its firm’s scale-out architecture and continued updates and innovations to the tiered backup solution for ExaGrid’s growing list of customers that include local governments’ departments and agencies.

“Municipal organizations are looking to get the best value for their budgets, and the best backup and restore performance to ensure that their data is well-protected. ExaGrid continues to grow its feature set, which most recently has included the Retention Time-Lock for Ransomware Recovery,” he said. “As city governments are often targeted for ransomware attacks, we expect to see continued growth in this sector.“

Cases study:

• City’s Switch to Scalable Solution Eliminates Outdated Licensing Models and Avoids Forklift Upgrade
• ExaGrid-Veeam Solution Provides La Plata County Government with Optimal Backup Performance
• For Over a Decade, City Finds ExaGrid and Commvault to be a ‘Solid’ Backup Solution
• Canadian City Increases Data Protection with Reliable ExaGrid-Veeam Backup Solution