7. January 2010 by Myke.

This is an follow up and update to the following post;  http://homerun-networks.com/2009/12/10/commvault-simpana-8-saving-lives-disk-space-and-relieving-stress/

We have been running Commvault Simpana 8 for 4 months and to be quite honest, it has been flawless and great.  As I mentioned before, we were concerned with future growth and what it would cost us for hardware for backups and more importantly, could we actually get backups the way we needed them?!?  Well, we nailed everything and then some.

We have had to restore multiple files including Exchange (single message and multiple messages), Exchange store (testing purposes), Server 2008 DC (testing purposes), VMWare virtual server (testing purposes), SQL database, Server 2008 system state (testing purposes) and multiple files on file shares.  Every single restore took less than 5 minutes except for the testing recoveries.  The testing recovery is part of an on-going plan to prepare for a major project, but it was still rock solid and flawless.

Domain rebuild recovery - We are in the planning process of re-building the entire domain and infrastructure of our company and I have begun the testing of Server 2008 recoveries and disaster recoveries.  So far I have tested recovering a 2008 domain controller after deleting multiple users and groups and replicating the change.  Easy as pie my friend, everything went into place and the replication took place and the domain was back up and running in minutes.  This domain rebuild has allowed me to test for just about every disaster possible and to document exactly every step in the case I get hit by a bus/train and the boss man has to take over for me.

All in all I could not be happier with our choice of moving our backups to Commvault.

*We received some e-mails in regards to Commvault and we have included those below*

What was your installation process like and how much time did it take you to convert from Symantec to Commvault?
-  The process itself was very easy and simple.  We disabled all the Symantec software and services and installed Commvault.  The install itself took about 2 hours, which included getting all the clients installed.  Once the suite was up and running we set the backup policies and that took another 2 hours.  All in all, it was smooth and very easy.

Did Commvault pay you for this article? (we got about 15+ of these emails)
-  No.  I firmly believe that sharing IT/IS knowledge with others in the industry is key to making all of our lives easier.  If I find something that rocks, I will tell everyone that wants to listen.  If I find something that sucks, I will tell everyone that wants to listen.  Any product that makes life as a systems engineer/systems admin/network engineer easier, why not share it with others?!  p.s. If Commvault is reading this article…I wear XXL shirts, love fast Italian cars, good beer, steak dinners and Amazon.com gift cards.

What do you think of the Commvault deduplication?
-  Do you remember Smeagol and his precious?  Well consider me being Smeagol and Commvault deduplication being my precious.  We must haves it, haves the precious we must.  We are currently getting a savings of 90.25% on physical storage space.  Or even easier to understand, we are getting an average of 13.4TB of backup data on 1.3TB of physical space.  Must haves the precious!

As always, if you have any questions please feel free to ask away.

posted by:Myke Reinhold

Posted in Backups | No Comments »

10. December 2009 by Myke.

I recently implemented Commvault version 8 with a company that was running Symantec Backup Exec.  The Symantec software was having trouble backing up the Exchange mailboxes (Exchange 2007) and this was a mission critical issue for the executives.  The Symantec software was also having a difficult time backing up Server 2008 and Citrix Xen Server.  After numerous calls and emails (18 calls and 22 emails) to tech support it was still not resolved.  So now the company was missing a massive amount of data and could not get the software to backup to an IP NAS device (Seagate Black Armor).  In the end this would have spelled disaster for the IT team and there would have been some very bent employees with a very bad taste in their mouth for the IT staff.  I made one suggestion…Commvault.  I used it in the past as a stand alone and in conjunction with Exagrid disk storage.  I loved it very much and wanted to get it in house ASAP.

First step was getting the management staff on board after showcasing it for the Director of IT/IS.  The Director loved it and only had one thing to say.  “Prove it in the first month of use and I am sold forever.”  The budget was approved and the purchase was made.

Second step was scheduling the fun of turning off Symantec and kick starting Commvault.

It was a warm fall day in 2009 and Myke the Master Geek went to work in his workshop.  I started by disabling the Symantec service on all servers and disabling the software on the backup server.  Next up, getting my Commvault Media Agent and Commserve on-line and ready to go.  The Media Agent was a new Dell R710 loaded with Server 2008 64 bit with a Powervault connected to it.  Then we added 2 Seagate Black Armor 4.5TB devices for the disk storage.  The Commserve was actually a VMWare virtual server loaded with Server 2003 32 bit.  Once the devices were loaded, connected and talking…it was on to deploying the agents on each server to be backed up.

The ultimate goal was to have about 4 weeks of backup data on disk and then a weekly full backup on tape.  We had a decent size of data that was backed up daily so we purchased the deduplication license with our Commvault software.  This would allow us to deduplicate our data and use less disk space for our backups.  With that in mind we expected a disk savings of about 50% to 60%.  We were wrong and wrong big time.  After running the Commvault backups with deduplication for about 2 months, we were getting a disk savings of 89.88%.  We were storing 10.074TB of data on 1.019TB of actual disk space.  That was saving us 9.055TB of disk space.  We were very excited about this as this gave us a great amount of room for growth and gave us a baseline to look forward to in the future.  Needless to say, the Director of IT/IS was very happy.

So with backups running to disk and tape now we had to verify that everything worked as planned.  So I began to test restores of data.  I started by restoring data from disk back to file servers, mailboxes and SQL servers.  Everything worked as planned and with great speed.  Now I began the tape restore process.  I selected a file and the software came back and told me what tape it need and bam, there it was…restored.  I tested about 35 different files ranging from SQL to Exchange to general Office file types.  Everything worked as planned and promised.

To this day everything has worked perfect and we have been very happy with our backups since.  This has saved on restless nights of sleep having nightmares about backups and restores and it has dropped our stress level by a huge margin.

Thanks Commvault!

I would also like to say that the new Dell R710 server runs like a champ and is a solid server.  We are also very pleased with our low cost NAS devices from Seagate, Black Armor 440.

p.s.  If you are from Symantec or really like Symantec and find this post to be offensive…good.  That is exactly what it was meant to be.  Once Symantec bought Backup Exec, the software fell apart and has fallen way behind the times and needs of the IT/IS world.

posted by: Myke Reinhold

Posted in Backups, Storage | 4 Comments »

24. June 2009 by Myke.

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. 

Posted in General Hardware, Servers, Backups, Storage | No Comments »

15. May 2009 by Myke.

GFI has released a fully functional free version of their backup software.  This software works great compared to NT backup and you can even backup to a remote location such as an FTP site.  The greatest thing about the backups is that it uses ZIP files for the backup files as opposed to a proprietary file.  This means you can restore your backup files anywhere from any machine.

GFI note:
To assist home PC users in these troubled economic times and to help them understand the importance of data backups, GFI Software is offering for free its newly-developed backup and recovery software GFI Backup 2009.

GFI Backup 2009 will allow all home PC users to keep regular and updated copies of their precious memories in the form of pictures, video, and other files and safeguard their data in case something goes wrong.

Loss of data for individuals can be heartbreaking as memories, personal documents and important files are lost due to hard disk failure or a virus attack. With this free software, we are assisting people to be better prepared, especially when they are trying to cut costs wherever possible. Because we care!

GFI Backup 2009 is an easy-to-use backup and recovery software solution that allows users to backup all their important files and, when-needed, recover the data within minutes using the product’s wizard-driven interface. GFI Backup 2009 does not use a proprietary format; all data is saved to common ZIP files. This makes it easy to restore data to a computer that may not have GFI Backup installed on it.

Data can be stored on virtually any storage device available such as internal or external hard disks, on local area network (LAN) locations, CD/DVD media, removable media devices (USB sticks, memory sticks, flash memory, floppy disks, ZIP disks, JAZ, etc.) and remote locations using FTP with upload auto-resume. Data can also be protected with military-strength 256-bit AES strong encryption.

Download your free copy of GFI Backup 2009 from here:
http://www.gfi.com/downloads/register.aspx?pid=bkuphm&lid=en

For more information about GFI Backup and its features visit:
http://www.gfi.com/backup-hm/

Posted in Desktops, Laptops, Servers, Backups | No Comments »

27. January 2009 by Myke.

So you know that your hard drive will die sooner or later, but how do you proactively figure that out?  Magic 8-ball used to be the best method but as of recently we can do a much better job.

The standard IDE/SATA hard drive today is still the most mechanical piece of equipment sitting in your present day PC. And this will continue to be the case until solid state drives become much cheaper and much more compatible for present day hardware. The most unfortunate part of the problems with these drives, is how incredibly critical they are to the state of your computer. A hard drive failure means a dead computer - unless you are lucky enough to be running in some type of RAID environment, which most home users won’t be.

So those of us here at Homerun decided maybe we should put together a list of tools to help everyone else out that would like a better Magic 8-ball.  Below you will see our four choices and a brief description of the tool.  One thing to remember, these are Windows based tools and they are to be used at YOUR own risk, not ours. 
Crystal Disk Info

CrystalDiskInfo is a S.M.A.R.T. based utility that supports not only internal drives, but both USB and IEEE1394’s as well. It displays an incredible amount of simple and advanced disk information, and may always be running in the background. This includes temperature readings, read/write errors and power management tools, running at all times of the day.

General Drive Info

Advanced Diag of your drive

 HD Tune

HD Tune is a much simpler hard drive disk scanning utility that has benchmarking, advanced diagnostics, similar to Crystal and a disk scanning utility, very similar to the Windows version, but can be run in real-time. It also includes real-time temperature monitoring.

Benchmarking

Disk Scanning

HDD Health

HDD Health is another similar product. It includes temperature and real-time monitoring, but includes a health indicator, simply by percentage and nothing more. It does include the same advanced diagnostic tools as the other SMART utilities as well.

General Information

Extended Drive Information

HDD Scan

HDD Scan not only includes many SMART diagnostic utilities, but other disk utilities as well. It includes many advanced testing modes, such as reading, writing and erasing in linear. In comparison to the other products, HDD Scan might get you more bang for the free buck.

Various HDD Scan Tools

Available Surface Tests

Manufacturer Specific Products

Some people might trust products designated for their specific hard drive more then any other. So I’ve provided a list of all the major manufacturers with a link to their diagnostic tools. A few of these may even support different manufacturers.

Fujitsu - Supports all forms of internal connection and is capable of doing in depth surface and diagnostic testing.

Hitachi - Several diagnostic tools for Hitachi drives. Analyze, optimize and protect your drive from failure.

Samsung- The Samsung utility will only work with Samsung drives and is an offline bootable disk that can be run no matter what the state of your drive.

Seagate/Maxtor- The Seagate tools, also known as Seatools, are Windows specific tools that can quickly and comprehensively determine the state of your present Seagate or Maxtor hard drive.

Western Digital - In order to determine your appropriate tools, you’ll first have to select your specific product and browse to a compatible ‘Data Lifeguard Diagnostic Tools’. Thorough test and repair utilities for West Digital drives.

All of the tools above may or may not be able to resolve serious disk errors on your drive. But if you are worrisome about the state of your current HDD and you’d like to confirm it, these tools will help to do so. It will force you to begin transferring data, or backing up your data on a regular basis before the inevitable happens. Play with each of tools, and find the best that suits your situation.

Posted in Microsoft, General Hardware, Desktops, Laptops, Backups, Servers, Storage | No Comments »

17. December 2008 by Myke.

ExaGrid Announces Customer-Focused Enhancements to Disk-based Backup System with Data Deduplication
New Features and Enhancements Deliver Added Performance, Expanded Data Handling, Instant DR Capabilities and Automated System Health Reporting

Westborough, Mass. - December 17, 2008 - ExaGrid® Systems, Inc. (http://www.exagrid.com), the leader in cost-effective and scalable disk-based backup solutions with data deduplication, today announced that it has enhanced its Disk-based Backup System with several customer-focused enhancements, including an industry-first, instant disaster recovery (DR) capability, higher performance connectivity options, expanded data handling and automated system health reports. These product enhancements allow customers to significantly improve the way they manage their backups by providing greater flexibility in handling disparate backup data types, delivering backup data more rapidly for DR purposes and providing proactive system health reporting on key operational metrics.“We speak with IT professionals every day who struggle with tape backup and are eager to move to disk backup with deduplication,” said Lauren Whitehouse, analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. “ExaGrid’s Disk-based Backup System has the ingredients many organizations need to address their backup issues.  Customers stand to benefit from ExaGrid’s focus on increasing performance, expanding DR capabilities, a growing list of supported data types, and automated email-based reporting that reduces the system management burden.”  The latest version of the ExaGrid Disk-based Backup system includes the following important enhancements and customer benefits:Support for Higher Performance 10 Gigabit Ethernet Interfaces:

• ExaGrid’s Disk-based Backup product line will now support the use of higher performance 10 gigabit Ethernet interfaces for connectivity to a customer’s backup environment. This capability provides the speed of fibre channel connectivity without the higher cost or hassle. 

Instant DR Capability for Fastest Data Restoration from Remote Sites:

• ExaGrid’s Disk-based Backup System has always maintained a full copy of an organization’s most recent backup at the site where the backup was performed. To ensure the fastest possible recovery time during a disaster, ExaGrid now keeps the most recent full backup at a customer’s disaster recovery site in its non-deduplicated form, ready for high-speed recovery in the event of a disaster at the primary location. ExaGrid is the first and only disk-backup with deduplication vendor to deliver this capability.
• By using the innovative, byte-level delta data deduplication technology, this instant DR capability is accomplished while still sending only deduplicated data over a customer’s wide-area network, preserving a 50 to 1 WAN efficiency, versus sending entire non-deduplicated backups. This instant DR capability provides significantly faster restores than competing solutions, which have to reassemble deduplicated backups from millions or even billions of deduplicated fragments. 

Additional Data Type Support Provides Increased Flexibility:
Beyond its interoperability with industry-leading backup applications, ExaGrid now supports additional data types. ExaGrid delivers a 10 to 50:1 deduplication ratio, replicates the deduplicated data to a disaster recovery location, and can report a deduplication ratio by the individual backup jobs (Oracle RMAN and Unix/Linux data dumps). Additional supported data types include the following:

• Oracle RMAN Backups – customers can now simply send Oracle backups via the RMAN utility set directly to an ExaGrid disk-based backup system, bypassing the use of a backup agent. 
• Unix/Linux File System Data Dumps – customers can now simply transfer file system data from Unix or Linux systems, bypassing the use of a backup agent. 
• Non-deduplicating Data – customers now have the flexibility to simply allocate portions of the ExaGrid disk-based backup system for any type of data they want to protect on the ExaGrid system but do not wish to deduplicate.

With this release, ExaGrid supports leading backup applications such as Symantec Backup Exec™ and NetBackup™, CA ARCserve ®, EMC Networker®, CommVault® Galaxy™, and Vizioncore vRanger Pro; as well as other data types including VMware® VMDK, Oracle® RMAN, Linux/Unix data dumps and Microsoft ™ SQL dumps. ExaGrid’s future product plans include the support of many additional backup applications and utilities.Automated System Reporting for Ease of Management:
With the release of this version, each ExaGrid Disk-based Backup System will deliver a daily status to a defined set of administrators, lowering the management touch time of the system even further. This easy to understand report includes:

• System status
• Current and past data deduplication ratios
• Replication status
• Detailed status by backup job

“ExaGrid continues to hear from organizations, which are eliminating tape from their backup and archive operations, that they want the full benefits of disk in terms of performance, scalability and ease-of-use,” said Marc Crespi, vice president of product management, ExaGrid Systems. “Too many disk-based backup products with deduplication rob disk of its natural performance and scalability through their deduplication implementation. With this software enhancement release, ExaGrid further extends our product leadership by providing significantly faster recovery time at DR sites, increased flexibility in data protection and tools to even further reduce necessary system management touch time.”
About ExaGrid Systems, Inc. Headquartered in Westborough, Massachusetts, ExaGrid® Systems is the leader in cost-effective and scalable disk-based backup solutions with byte-level data deduplication. A highly scalable system that works with existing backup applications, ExaGrid is ideal for companies looking to quickly eliminate the hassles of tape backup while reducing their existing backup windows. ExaGrid’s patented approach minimizes the amount of data to be stored by providing standard data compression for the most recent backups along with byte-level data de-duplication technology for all previous backups. Customers can deploy the ExaGrid system at a primary site and at secondary sites to supplement or eliminate offsite tapes with live data repositories or for disaster recovery. For more information, contact ExaGrid at 800-868-6985 or visit www.exagrid.com. # # #
ExaGrid is a registered trademark of ExaGrid Systems, Inc.  All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.For a complete listing of ExaGrid news releases, please visit our News and Events on our web site.

Posted in Backups, Storage | 1 Comment »

22. July 2008 by Myke.

Okay boys and girls.  We have been asked to post how our current ExaGrid system is doing and what kind of deduplication stats we are seeing.  To say the least, myself and Travis have not seen this kind of backup in our entire careers and it is pretty damn awesome to say the least.

Deduplication Ratio - 8.63:1
Total backup data - 36TB
Space consumed - 4.1TB

To show that we have 36TB of data taking only 4.1TB is just crazy.  We have had nothing but success with this system.  And with the software package from CommVault, our backups at this location are going great.  We could not be happier.

Posted in Backups | No Comments »

22. July 2008 by Myke.

Multi-site Data Center Cross Protection:

• ExaGrid supports two-site or multi-site cross protection for up to 9 data center locations.
• Because ExaGrid only moves the byte-level changes from the local site to offsite systems, only about 1/50th of the data has to traverse the WAN.
• Eliminates or supplements off-site tape with live disk-based repositories for long-term off-site retention or disaster recovery.
• Simplified multi-site management — a user with appropriate privileges can manage the entire multi-site environment via a single web-based user interface, versus products that require each site or device to be managed separately.

Backup-Job-Aware Reporting:

• Advanced reporting correlates backup jobs stored on the ExaGrid with the backup application providing unprecedented visibility into the true status of the backup data.
• ExaGrid’s disk-based backup system is the only product that shows de-duplication ratio by backup job, allowing organizations to optimize the results of byte-level data de-duplication.
  • The ExaGrid system is the only product that shows replication status by backup job, ensuring that any remote site restores are executed from complete backup jobs, and that the most recent data possible is being used versus resorting to a guessing game during a critical recovery scenario.

High Capacity, Scalable Virtualized GRID Architecture:

• Store a 30TB full backup, plus weeks or months backup history/retention, in a single GRID system with a single management console (6 x 5TB ExaGrid servers = 30TB Virtualized GRID system). 
• Plug-and-play growth — new systems virtualize together automatically — no splitting data or losing de-duplication efficiency across separate systems.
• Performance scales with data growth since processing power, memory and bandwidth are added along with storage capacity.
• Automatic data load balancing across all servers in the GRID.
• Multiple 30TB GRID systems can be installed for increased capacity.

Best Performance for Shortest Backup Window and Fastest Data Restoration:

• Fastest backup performance due to post-process de-duplication. Write directly to disk without any on-the-fly processing to slow down backups.  (ExaGrid Backup throughput: up to 4.08TB/hour.)
• By keeping the most recent backup in its whole form and storing all previous versions as the byte-level changes (de-duplication), ExaGrid is the only vendor that offers rapid restore of backup jobs and fast tape copy for offsite tapes — unlike other solutions which require re-assembly of every backup job from millions, or even billions of small blocks tracked in large hash tables.  (ExaGrid Restore throughput: up to 2.6TB/hour.)

“We listened carefully to our customers and added several important new capabilities that greatly improve the way they execute and manage their backups,” said Marc Crespi, VP of product management, ExaGrid Systems, Inc. “This latest product version allows customers to deploy multi-site cross protection for up to 9 data center locations, simplifying multi-site data center backup and improving disaster recovery capabilities.  Also, with the addition of backup-job-aware reporting, ExaGrid provides unprecedented visibility into the true status of backup data at every stage of its lifecycle within the system.  These enhancements, combined with ExaGrid’s post-processing data de-duplication and scalable GRID architecture, provide customers with the shortest backup window and fastest restores possible even as their data grows.”Taneja Group Technology Validation Report:

Download the complete Taneja Group report about the ExaGrid Disk-based Backup System via: http://www.exagrid.com/why_exagrid/industry_analyst_perspectives.asp. Availability:

The latest version of ExaGrid Disk-based Backup System is expected to ship within the next 30 days.

Posted in Backups | 1 Comment »

21. July 2008 by Myke.

Well we have been rocking and rolling with this backup solution for a few weks now and it has totally changed how we backup data. the data deduplication that the Exagrid hardware/software does has been amazing.

Check out these stats:

All Data
Deduplication Ration - 3.78:1
Total backup data - 12,441.08GB
Space consumed - 3,292.32GB

Misc Data
Deduplication Ration - 5.81:1
Total backup data - 4,413.62GB
Space consumed - 760.00GB

NAS Data
Deduplication Ration - 3.17:1
Total backup data - 8,027.46GB
Space consumed - 2,532.32GB

Our amount of tapes has dropped by 65% and our backup times are cut down by almost 75%. So now we are saving on backup times, amount of tapes being used and stored off-site and we will have about 12 weeks of backups on-site on hard drive. That means we can do restores from hard drive and in a worst case scenario we can request a tape from 13+ weeks ago.

Next step is to launch this as our remaining sites.

Posted in Backups | No Comments »

21. July 2008 by Myke.

“Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey, goodbye” - My ode to Arcserve

We have been limping along and dragging bloody stumps for some time now using Arcserve as our backup solution. Well not anymore kids, we now have a great solution in place. We have moved our company over to a disk-to-disk-to-tape solution using Exagrid (disk based backups), CommVault (backup software) and Quantum (tape libraries). This has changed our backups so dramatically it is almost unbelievable. The speeds, the success rates and ease of deployment/restore are amazing. This will change how any and all backups are setup and all restores are done for our company. I cannot tell you how many sleepless nights I have had over the last few years working with unstable and not very effective backup solutions. I can honestly say that backups will be a second thought now. If you are a small, medium or large business, this is the solution for you. I have worked with many solutions as a consultant and this is by far the greatest and most reliable to date.

Imagine that you want to backup a server…and all you have to do is point and click and the agent is deployed (no restart required) and then that evening your backup runs without issue. Now I do not want to overload you with technical blah blah but the way this solution is running, our backups are faster and more efficient and the restores are so “Dummy” proof that you can almost let your end users do their own restores. Of course we will not do that as this will cause some serious confusion and of course the training time. I will post some pictures and diagrams later.

I have not even got to the greatest part of all yet. SUPPORT! How many times have you called and either got the south-side of India or the north-side of India? I hate those calls man, I mean I really hate those calls. And for the love of God, stop pretending your name is Bob or Erik or Tammy. We know your names are tough for us in the USA but trying to use a common American name only pisses us off even more. Sorry I got a bit carried away again. All three of our vendors have support here in the USA! That rocks man.

I will keep you all posted as we grow with this new solution and how much it helps us out on a daily basis.

New solution numbers
Backup times - cut down by an average of 53% (this will continue to get faster as we work out some backup issues, not the fault of the system but from us learning and debugging)
Backup space - cut down by an average of 75% (this is due to Arcserve kicking back improper space usage and the fact that the Exagrid system has a de-duplication ability and CommVault will not keep backing up the same file over and over unless it really has changed)

Here are a few articles that will also be helpful:

http://www.exagrid.com/backup_applications/CommVault_Galaxy.asp

http://www.commvault.com/qualified/exagridsystems.asp

http://www.cio.co.uk/whitepapers/index.cfm?whitepaperid=4566

http://travis.sarbin.net/2008/06/13/mid-deployment-report-commvault-exagrid

Posted in Backups | No Comments »