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Back-up & Deduplication Solutions

ExaGrid EX Series Disk-based Backup with De-duplication Product Line

The ExaGrid system is a cost effective and scalable disk-based backup solution that works with your existing backup application. ExaGrid combines high quality SATA drives, compression, byte-level data deduplication and a scalable GRID architecture for fast, reliable and secure backups and restores at 30 percent the cost of standard SATA storage. ExaGrid's disk backup solution helps IT departments comply with new, stringent compliance regulations surrounding data retention and security.

ExaGrid’s disk-based backup with deduplication product line revolutionizes how organizations backup and protect their data. By leveraging your current backup application and replacing tape in your nightly backup process, ExaGrid’s simple, turnkey appliance can:

Reduce the disk space required by at least 10:1, and up to 50:1
Shorten your backup window by 30-90%, ensuring all of your data is fully protected
Improve your disaster recovery plan through off-site disk-based retention of your data
Reduce the amount of time your IT staff spends on managing backups
Scale easily and cost-effectively with your data growth
Fully protect your virtualized environment
Reduce other costs associated with tape-based backup

ExaGrid’s disk backup appliances work seamlessly with the industry’s leading backup applications, and the appliance typically installs in about one hour. The product line’s six appliance models can combined into a GRID configuration for environments of up to 100TB.

Each model is rated for a full backup size plus months of retention. For example, a 5TB ExaGrid server (EX5000) can store a 5TB full backup (5TB of primary data) plus up to 16 weeks of retention/history. If a 100TB system is required, then ten EX10000Es are used and virtualize into a single, GRID-based system.

Because of ExaGrid’s unique Landing Zone Architecture, each model has roughly twice the amount of useable disk to the size of the full backup it can land and store.

ExaGrid appliances are comprised of Intel Quad Core XEON processors, enterprise SATA drives, RAID 6 hot spare, and ExaGrid software. Since each appliance includes the appropriate amount processor, memory, disk and GigE for the data size, as each server is plugged into the switch and virtualized into the GRID, performance is maintained and backup times do not increase as data is added. This combination of capabilities in a turn-key appliance makes the ExaGrid system easy to install, manage, and scale.

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Features and Benefits

Features	Benefits
Post-process Deduplication Provides Faster Backups and Restores	The backup data is written directly from the backup server to ExaGrid’s Landing Zone (disk) at the highest possible rate with no inline processing to interfere, resulting in the smallest possible backup window Once the backup job is complete and off the network, the data is protected and immediately available for restore or tape copy. Then the appliance deduplicates (and simultaneously replicates) the data in the background. Because ExaGrid’s product allows each full backup to first land to the landing zone, it caches that most recent backup for rapid restore.
Reduces the Amount of Stored Data	Minimizes the amount of data to be stored by using byte-level data deduplication across all received backups Byte-level delta technology stores only the changed bytes from backup to backup instead of storing full copies
Grid Scalability	Six core ExaGrid disk-based backup appliances include GRID computing software which allows them to virtualize into one another when plugged into a switch Any of the six appliance models can be mixed and matched into a single GRID system with full backup capacities up to 100TB (6 PB logical) Performance is maintained as your data grows Plug and play expansion Cost-Effective and Flexible Solution with No "Forklift" Upgrades Capacity utilization is load-balanced across servers

In addition to single site, ExaGrid supports multi-site topologies. Each site can act as a data backup target for storage of local backups. In addition, each site can transfer just the changed bytes over the wide area network (WAN) to an off-site location so that the off-site location can perform data recovery if the local site is lost. By deduplicating the data at the primary site before transferring it over the WAN, network bandwidth is reduced by as much as 50:1, thus making disk-based offsite backup and offsite tape replacement economically practical for many IT organizations.

This support is bi-directional allowing systems used as off-site repositories to also act as local targets for data backups at those sites. With two-site configurations, it is very common to have both systems act as a local data backup target and to cross-protect each other by replicating the local data to the opposing site. With multi-site topologies, a centrally located site may cross protect with one of the other locations for long-term retention and disaster recovery for the central site backup data.