Life without ExaGrid and CommVault

There I was living the life of luxury with my backups running via CommVault software over to my ExaGrid disk storage and then to tape.  Backups were fast and the deduplication was AMAZING!  I basically set it then forgot about it each day.  I would get my daily reports telling me “hey, your backups worked of course and they are still kicking butt and taking names”.  Then came D-Day for my career at that job.  I walked away proud of my environment and what I left behind.  I was proud of where I took my job to, technology wise.  Servers went from white box to HP, server software went from 2000/2003 to 2003/2008.  i created virtual server after virtual server.  I put in an HP Blade Enclosure and all power was controlled via APC.  It was a true Enterprise setup for an Enterprise company.

I took the next 4-5 weeks pulling myself to the conclusion that I will never work on that equipment again.  I started with a very small group with my new career that has potential to become the largest Gold mining/production/exploration/reserve companies in the World.  Backups are controlled by an unnamed software vendor and it is not all that great.  The backups are about 30% fail to 70% complete each day and they are slow.  They eat tapes like there is no tomorrow and it is only going to get worse each day as we grow.  So what do I do to make my new job run as streamlined as my previous job?  How do I make backups a non-issue?

Simple, I work a budget that allows me to move forward with each piece one step at a time.  My first goal of 2010 will be to get ExaGrid in house to help create a disk based backup solution with some serious deduplication abilities.  The deduplication process will basically take my backups and compress them into smaller chunks of data (sorry for the non-IT explanation).  Take for instance, you have about 20TB of backup data and you run it through the ExaGrid…you will get about 15:1 (based upon my very own first hand knowledge) on space usage.  What does that mean to the non-IT person who is in charge of reducing backup costs???  That means I will get about 15TB worth of raw data and have it backed up on an ExaGrid using 1TB of actual disk space.  That’s right folks…15:1 on an average and that is being generous on the small side.  I have seen deduplication results close to 60:1 and 70:1.

Some folks have asked if I sell ExaGrid or CommVault or if I get paid by them or receive free hardware…no.  Like we have said before, we share the truth with no biased answers or results.  We want what works best for the IT World and truthfully, ExaGrid is the King of disk based backup solutions.

Links to previous ExaGrid posts.

http://homerun-networks.com/2008/12/17/exagrid-announces-customer-focused-enhancements/

http://homerun-networks.com/2008/07/22/exagrid-deduplication-update/

http://homerun-networks.com/2008/07/22/exagrid-announces-enhancements-with-latest-version/

http://homerun-networks.com/2008/07/21/exagrid-and-commvault-a-perfect-backup-solution-update/

http://homerun-networks.com/2008/07/21/exagrid-and-commvault-a-perfect-backup-solution/

p.s.  Dear ExaGrid - It would be very nice if I could borrow a couple 1TB units for about 1.5 years or so.  I promise to love and care for the units at all times. 

This entry was posted on 24. June 2009 at 21:31 and is filed under General Hardware, Servers, Backups, Storage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.