Explore ExaGrid's tiered backup storage solution: Fast backups, efficient deduplication, and robust ransomware protection for enterprise data centers.
In the ever-evolving landscape of enterprise data management, backup storage remains a critical yet often overlooked component. ExaGrid, a Massachusetts-based company, is challenging the status quo with its innovative tiered backup storage solution. At a recent IT Press Tour in Boston, ExaGrid CEO Bill Andrews shared insights into the company's unique approach to solving enterprise backup challenges.
The Backup Storage Dilemma
Traditional backup storage solutions often force IT teams to choose between performance and efficiency. Primary backup storage offers speed but at a high cost and limited scalability. Deduplication appliances provide storage efficiency but suffer from slow backups and restores due to inline deduplication. ExaGrid aims to offer the best of both worlds with its tiered backup storage architecture.
ExaGrid's Tiered Approach
ExaGrid's solution consists of two tiers:
Landing Zone: A front-end disk cache that receives backup data directly without inline processing.
Repository Tier: A long-term storage area where deduplicated data is kept.
This architecture allows ExaGrid to deliver several key benefits:
Fast Backups: By writing directly to the Landing Zone without inline deduplication, ExaGrid can ingest data as fast as disk.
Quick Restores: The most recent backups are kept in their native, non-deduplicated format in the Landing Zone, enabling rapid restores and instant VM boots.
Efficient Long-term Storage: Data in the Repository Tier is globally deduplicated, significantly reducing storage requirements for retained backups.
Fixed-Length Backup Window: ExaGrid's scale-out architecture allows organizations to add appliances as data grows, maintaining consistent backup performance.
Targeting the Upper Mid-Market and Enterprise
ExaGrid focuses on larger organizations, typically those with thousands to tens of thousands of employees. The company's average selling price is over $100,000, indicating the enterprise-grade nature of its solution. ExaGrid's primary point of contact within organizations is usually a director-level IT professional responsible for backup operations.
Market Positioning and Competition
ExaGrid operates in a market dominated by large storage vendors. According to Andrews, about 60% of the time, ExaGrid competes against primary storage solutions from companies like Dell, HPE, NetApp, IBM, Pure Storage, Hitachi, and Huawei. In 25% of cases, they compete against dedicated deduplication appliances, primarily Dell Data Domain.
The remaining 15% of opportunities arise when customers change their backup application and look at solutions like Commvault, Veeam, Cohesity, or Rubrik. In these scenarios, ExaGrid often partners with Commvault or Veeam to provide a complete backup solution.
Key Differentiators
ExaGrid's success in this competitive landscape stems from several key differentiators:
Backup-Focused Development: Unlike primary storage vendors, ExaGrid's entire R&D effort is dedicated to optimizing backup performance and efficiency.
Integration with Backup Applications: ExaGrid has deep integrations with major backup software, including Veeam, Commvault, and Veritas NetBackup. These integrations enable features like Veeam synthetic full backups and Commvault Dedupe Accelerator.
Scale-out Architecture: ExaGrid's approach allows customers to start small and scale seamlessly as their data grows, without forklift upgrades or performance degradation.
Ransomware Recovery: ExaGrid's unique "non-network-facing tier" provides an additional layer of protection against ransomware attacks. This tiered air gap, combined with delayed deletes and immutable data objects, offers robust recovery options.
Cost-Effective Long-term Retention: By efficiently deduplicating data in the Repository Tier, ExaGrid makes it economically feasible to retain backup data for extended periods, addressing operational and compliance needs.
Performance and Scalability
ExaGrid claims to reduce backup windows by 40% to 60% compared to primary storage solutions. This improvement stems from various optimizations, including:
Job concurrency, allowing parallel backup streams
Integration with advanced backup application protocols
Tweaked operating systems optimized for large backup jobs
Encryption at the drive level, offloading this task from the backup software
The company's scale-out architecture can handle up to a petabyte in a single system, and regardless of data size, there is a consistent six-hour backup window.
Security and Ransomware Protection
ExaGrid has implemented several security features to protect against ransomware and other threats:
Tiered air gap: The Repository Tier is not network-facing and is accessible only by ExaGrid's internal code.
Delayed deletes: Customers can set a delay period (e.g., 20 days) before data is permanently removed from the system.
Immutable data objects: Once written, backup data cannot be modified or deleted until the retention period expires.
Two-factor authentication: Helps prevent unauthorized access even if passwords are compromised.
Cloud and Disaster Recovery
While ExaGrid primarily focuses on on-premises deployments, they offer flexible disaster recovery options:
Replication to a second ExaGrid system in another data center
Support for private cloud and colocation facilities
Virtual machine deployments in public clouds like AWS and Azure
The company finds that most of its enterprise customers prefer to keep their DR data in their own data centers or colocations, citing concerns about bandwidth limitations and recovery time objectives when using public cloud storage for large-scale backups.
Integration Ecosystem
ExaGrid supports over 25 backup applications, but their deepest integrations are with Veeam, Commvault, and Veritas NetBackup. These integrations enable features like:
Veeam Data Mover: Offloads processing to ExaGrid appliances for faster synthetic full backups
Commvault Dedupe Accelerator: Further deduplicates already deduplicated Commvault data
Veritas OST: Enables optimized synthetic fulls and Accelerator backups
Future Directions
While ExaGrid remains focused on its core backup storage offering, the company is exploring ways to enhance its product with AI and machine learning capabilities. Potential areas of development include:
Improved pattern recognition for differentiating between normal operational deletes and potential ransomware activity
Advanced encryption detection to distinguish between legitimate encrypted backups and potential ransomware attacks
Intelligent multi-tenancy features for managed service providers, including automated quota management and billing
Conclusion
ExaGrid's tiered backup storage approach offers a compelling solution for enterprises struggling with backup performance, scalability, and cost. ExaGrid has carved out a niche in a market dominated by large storage vendors by focusing exclusively on backup workloads and deeply integrating with popular backup applications.
For developers, architects, and IT professionals managing large-scale backup environments, ExaGrid's solution addresses several pain points:
It eliminates the trade-off between backup performance and storage efficiency.
It provides a scale-out architecture that grows gracefully with data, avoiding disruptive upgrades.
It offers robust ransomware protection features, which are increasingly critical in today's threat landscape.
It integrates seamlessly with popular enterprise backup applications, simplifying deployment and management.
As data volumes grow and cyber threats evolve, solutions like ExaGrid's that can efficiently manage and protect large-scale backups will likely play an increasingly important role in enterprise data centers. While the company faces stiff competition from industry giants, its focus on backup workloads and impressive customer retention rates suggest that its approach resonates with enterprise buyers seeking specialized solutions for their backup challenges.
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