The Veeam-ExaGrid Solution Offers Better Data Availability
After more than 10 years of using Veeam solutions in his previous roles, Sanders was confident in Veeam’s backup performance, especially in virtual environments. He introduced Veeam to Trustpower’s ISP business, initially only as a backup solution but later as a replication tool as well. Veeam now safeguards the ISP’s mail system and other critical services that run on over 50 virtual servers. Sanders elaborated, “One of the great benefits of Veeam is its granularity in backup – I can restore entire virtual machines or drill into backup images to restore files – for example, pulling out individual mailboxes or messages from our mail platform backups very easily. So, if any of our customers accidentally deletes important email, we can help them restore it.”
To store and protect the ISP’s main production data, Trustpower chose a mixture of Pure Storage and HPE Nimble for their primary storage, as both vendors were validated by Veeam and integrated well, allowing Sanders’s team to do snapshots and restores seamlessly. Similarly, for the secondary storage of backup data, Trustpower wanted a Veeam-validated system that would also work well with VMware.
In 2018, Sanders attended the VeeamON Forum in Auckland where he met an ExaGrid representative who explained how ExaGrid’s backup solution integrates seamlessly with Trustpower’s existing virtual environment and Veeam backup system. Trustpower was assigned an ExaGrid support engineer to take Sanders and his team through the evaluation and installation process, offering close regional support throughout installation and through the life of the product. ExaGrid provides a support package in each time zone, which includes responsive support from a level-2 engineer, opt-in remote system monitoring, next-day shipping of hot-swappable hardware replacements, and free software upgrades.
By implementing the Veeam-ExaGrid solution it enabled Trustpower’s ISP ICT team to establish a nightly backup schedule and convert geographically diverse passive sites into active sites that cross-replicate backups for greater data protection. Data is backed up to the local ExaGrid system and then cross-replicated to Trustpower’s multiple sites, using ExaGrid and Veeam’s replication technologies, so that data is available and recoverable from any of its sites. Sanders has tested the data restoration process and is pleased that he can recover data quickly and keep customers connected to the Internet. “I’m able to sleep better at night, with the confidence that we can restore critical services if required. After all, a backup strategy is only as good as the last validated restore,” he said.
Switching to the Veeam-ExaGrid solution enabled Trustpower’s ICT team to establish a nightly backup schedule and convert passive sites into active sites that cross-replicate backups for greater data protection. Data is backed up to the local ExaGrid system and then cross-replicated to Trustpower’s multiple sites, using ExaGrid and Veeam’s replication technologies, so that data is available and recoverable from any of its sites. Sanders has tested the data restoration process and is pleased that he can recover data quickly. “I’m able to sleep better at night, with the confidence that we can meet our RTO and RPO. After all, a backup strategy is only as good as the last restore that’s been done,” he said.
ExaGrid writes backups directly to a disk-cache Landing Zone, avoiding inline processing and ensuring the highest possible backup performance, which results in the shortest backup window. Adaptive Deduplication performs deduplication and replication in parallel with backups for a strong recovery point (RPO). As data is being deduplicated to the repository, it can also be replicated to a second ExaGrid site or the public cloud for disaster recovery (DR).
ExaGrid and Veeam can instantly recover a file or VMware virtual machine by running it directly from the ExaGrid appliance in the event that the file is lost, corrupted or encrypted or the primary storage VM becomes unavailable. This instant recovery is possible because of ExaGrid’s Landing Zone – a high-speed disk cache on the ExaGrid appliance that retains the most recent backups in their complete form. Once the primary storage environment has been brought back to a working state, the VM backed up on the ExaGrid appliance can then be migrated to primary storage for continued operation.
Sanders concluded, “Veeam and ExaGrid are the core of our backup and replication strategy. The way Veeam integrates with VMware and manipulates the virtual environment is superb. The combined Veeam-ExaGrid solution has cut our backup times in half, and the seamless movement of data between our data centres has been invaluable to the company. I wouldn’t be comfortable with any other product combination for backup and replication in our environment.”
“Our solution now is completely VMware, Veeam, and ExaGrid. It’s solved our problems and with the success of this roll-out, we plan to replicate this infrastructure more widely across our business network,” said Sanders.
