NC May-Jun 2022

PRODUCT REVIEW
ExaGrid x
Commvault =
Enhanced Storage
Economics
PRODUCT REVIEW
PRODUCT
REVIEWPRODUCT RE
ExaGrid stands tall in the enterprise data
backup and disaster recovery market as
its Tiered Backup Storage family of EX
appliances deliver a unique data protection
solution with a sharp focus on performance
and reduced storage costs. Even more
compelling is ExaGrid's data deduplication
technology, as its patented Landing Zone with
Adaptive Deduplication solves the performance
challenges inherent in traditional inline data
reduction techniques. That's not to say that
ExaGrid wants to replace your existing data
protection solution. Far from it, as its Tiered
Backup Storage solution works hand in glove
with over 25 leading enterprise backup
applications where it can enhance their
capabilities immensely.
Commvault fans will approve of this approach
as they can retain their existing data protection
infrastructure and integrate ExaGrid into it to
provide the backend storage. More importantly,
they can continue to enjoy the clear benefits of
Commvault's deduplication engine and allow
ExaGrid to deduplicate backup data further on
its target storage, with combined reduction
ratios improved up to an impressive 20:1.
These numbers are very compelling, as
combining ExaGrid and Commvault into one
backup strategy will reduce its storage footprint
by as much as 300%. Extrapolate this over a
number of years and it's clear that substantial
savings can be made.
A key feature of ExaGrid's appliances is their
Landing Zone, where data from the Commvault
backup application is written directly to a disk
cache. As backups complete, the data in the
Landing Zone is 'tiered' and written to a separate
long-term retention repository where it is
compressed and deduplicated.
This has no impact on performance, and as
copies of the most recent backups are retained
in the Landing Zone, restore operations are
much faster as data doesn't need rehydration
and decompression. Data security and
protection against ransomware attacks are
further enhanced as while the Landing Zone is
network facing, the repository has a tiered air
gap between the network-facing Landing Zone
and the non-network-facing retention repository
which is only visible to ExaGrid. From the
Commvault administrator's perspective, there is
very little they need to change as ExaGrid
storage is presented as CIFS/NFS shares, so all
they need do is declare them to Commvault
storage policies as backup destinations. They
can leave the Commvault MediaAgent inline
deduplication and data integrity validation
services enabled as well.
Keeping Commvault's deduplication in play
brings extra rewards by reducing space
requirements for the ExaGrid Landing Zone, as
it is already receiving deduplicated data.
Conversely, disabling Commvault's
deduplication and only using ExaGrid's services
means the MediaAgents can be installed on less
powerful host systems.
This solution clearly works very well and
demonstrates significant storage savings. For
testing, ExaGrid used a 15.5TB dataset
comprising system data, SQL Server databases
and multiple VMware VMs. ExaGrid's mighty
EX84 appliance was called up to provide the
backend storage plus an 84TB landing zone
which was presented to Commvault as a
CIFS/SMB network share. A 15-day simulation
comprising multiple full and incremental
backups generated a total of over 123TB of
backup data. On completion, Commvault's
own deduplication had only sent 27TB to the
EX84, resulting in an initial 4.5:1 reduction
ratio. ExaGrid's adaptive deduplication
subsequently squashed this down further to only
8.7TB resulting in an impressive overall
reduction ratio of 14:1.
Enterprises looking for new ways to energise
their data protection strategies and reduce
ongoing storage costs will find this ExaGrid and
Commvault team provides an innovative
solution. ExaGrid's scale-out architecture
delivers huge, cost-effective backup capacities,
its smart Landing Zone provides a boost in
performance, and combining its Adaptive
Deduplication with Commvault's own highly
efficient data reduction technologies offers
industry-leading storage savings. NC
Product: EX84
Supplier: ExaGrid
Web site: www.exagrid.com
Tel: +44 (0) 1189 497 051
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