ExaGrid's tiered backup architecture

Data deduplication is a valuable technique that reduces storage requirements and minimizes bandwidth usage for replication. However, improper implementation can significantly impact backup speed, restore operations, and the overall backup window, especially as data volumes increase. The compute-intensive nature of data deduplication means that performing it during the backup window or restoring/booting from deduplicated data can lead to performance degradation.

To address these challenges, ExaGrid offers Tiered Backup Storage, which combines high-speed backup and restore performance with a disk-cache Landing Zone. This approach ensures swift backups and restores while avoiding the performance drawbacks of deduplication. Additionally, ExaGrid provides a tiered long-term retention deduplicated data repository, leveraging advanced data deduplication techniques to achieve optimal storage efficiency.

ExaGrid's innovative approach, known as "Adaptive Deduplication," combines a disk-cache Landing Zone tiered with a long-term retention repository featuring deduplicated data. This powerful combination delivers exceptional backup performance, offering up to 6 times faster backups compared to traditional inline deduplication appliances. Moreover, it achieves remarkable restore and VM boot performance, up to 20 times faster.

With ExaGrid's Tiered Backup Storage, the disk-cache Landing Zone allows backups to be swiftly written directly to disk without inline deduplication processing. This ensures fast backups and significantly shortens the backup window. Meanwhile, deduplication and offsite replication take place in parallel with the backups, without ever obstructing the backup process. They are intelligently prioritized as secondary tasks, guaranteeing uninterrupted backup operations.

ExaGrid's Adaptive Deduplication approach optimizes backup performance and eliminates the drawbacks typically associated with deduplication appliances. It provides a seamless and efficient backup solution, enabling organizations to achieve rapid backups, quick restores, and accelerated VM boot times.

By writing backups directly to the Landing Zone, the most recent backups remain in their complete, undeduplicated state, readily accessible for any operation. Whether it's local restores, instant VM recoveries, audit copies, tape copies, or any other request, there is no need for data rehydration and are as fast as disk speed.

For instance, instant VM recoveries take only seconds to minutes, compared to hours required by inline deduplication approaches that store only deduplicated data requiring rehydration for every request.

The system comprises complete appliances with dedicated processors, memory, bandwidth, and disk capacity, all within a scale-out architecture. As your data expands, ExaGrid allows you to add additional resources, including more Landing Zone space, increased bandwidth, enhanced processor and memory capabilities, and expanded disk capacity.

With ExaGrid, the backup window remains consistent regardless of data growth, eliminating the need for costly forklift upgrades. Unlike the inline, scale-up approach that requires guessing the appropriate front-end controller size, ExaGrid enables a pay-as-you-grow model. You can simply add appropriately sized appliances as your data volume increases. 

ExaGrid offers various appliance models to provide you the flexibility to mix and match appliances of different sizes and ages within a single system. This empowers IT departments to acquire compute power and storage capacity based on their specific needs. Additionally, this evergreen approach eliminates concerns about product obsolescence.