ExaGrid Detailed Product Description

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In contrast, other appliances that use inline, block-level deduplication rely on a top-tier processor with

large amounts of very fast memory and disk just to keep up with backup data. The premium cost of these

components means higher cost compared to ExaGrid appliances. In addition, since the inline scale-up

appliances have a fixed and limited ingest, in order to increase ingest, they need to use compute from

elsewhere in the environment. To this end, they deploy software on media servers and certain application

servers in order to do some of the deduplication work away from the inline appliance. Not only is deploying

agents frowned upon by most IT organizations, but even with this approach, the ExaGrid will still be three

times the ingest performance, and with ExaGrid there are no agents to deploy or manage.

When comparing ExaGrid appliances deduplication in the backup application software, it is important to keep

in mind that using deduplication in the backup application software typically requires greater resources on

the backup server—more processing power, more memory, and more disk. Software deduplication merely

shifts the backup performance bottleneck to the media server. Using data deduplication in the backup

software uses more disk and bandwidth over time and does not allow for backup environment flexibility such

as using a separate utility for virtualized backup, direct TAR backups, and direct database dumps such as SQL

dumps or Oracle RMAN dumps. ExaGrid’s deduplication will be three to ten times more efficient. In addition,

ExaGrid allows Veeam and Commvault deduplication to be turned on and ExaGrid with further deduplicate

that data greatly increasing the deduplication ratio to save on storage costs.

Cost Effectiveness as Data Grows

ExaGrid’s integrated Landing Zone with unique architecture—full appliances in a scale-out architecture is the

most cost-effective way to scale as data grows. Each ExaGrid appliance added to the system includes a full

server with additional processor, memory, bandwidth, and disk resources. Total backup capacity keeps pace

with continued data growth over time by simply adding ExaGrid appliances to the system. There are no forklift

upgrades and no additional future costs to consider.

Other appliances that use inline, block-level deduplication do not support a scale-out architecture and are

therefore more costly to scale. Instead of adding capacity by adding full servers, only disk shelves are added

over time as data grows. But, at some point, the single front-end controller becomes a bottleneck due to its

fixed processor, memory and bandwidth resources and can no longer handle the backup load. Eventually,

the entire front-end server must be replaced with the next higher capacity unit in a “forklift upgrade.” In fact,

you may have to spend as much for the front-end controller upgrade as you originally spent on the original

system, including disk shelves. In addition, all data is always deduplicated. For each restore, recovery, and copy

request, the data has to be put back together, or “rehydrated,” which can take hours to days.

In addition, unlike other appliances that “end-of-life” in as little as 18 months and are incompatible with

newer models from the same vendor, ExaGrid’s scale-out architecture allows you to “mix and match”

different capacities and generations of appliances within a single system. Only ExaGrid protects your backup

investment from obsolescence.