ExaGrid Releases Software 4.9 With Expanded Deduplication & Oracle RMAN Support

by Adam Armstrong August 17, 2015

written by Adam Armstrong August 17, 2015

Today ExaGrid Systems Inc. announced that it has updated its software for its line of backup storage appliances to the latest version, 4.9. This update offers two key features: supporting data deduplication globally across all NAS shares and all appliances in a single scale-out GRID and enhancing support for Oracle RMAN Channels. This new support enables users the ability to backup Oracle databases, up to 800TB, and to write to multiple NAS shares across multiple devices for backup performance and failover.

The global deduplication ensures all data is deduplicated across all NAS shares and applications in a single scale-out GRID. 4.9 enables users to maintain data deduplication across the GRID while they redirect backup jobs to any NAS share on any appliance, at any time. ExaGrid’s largest storage system can take an 800TB full backup and it can store the most recent backup in un-deduplicated form for faster backups, restores, VM boots, and tape copies. ExaGrid can keep deduplicated data long term, up to years. As data grows the backup window stays fixed. ExaGrid adds compute along with capacity by adding full appliances to its scale-out GRID.

ExaGrid utilizes its “Landing Zone” to speed up restores and VM boot speeds. As we stated previously, the Landing Zone allows this appliance to accomplish such fast restorations, as 90% of restorations utilize the most recent backup. In addition, the Landing Zone stores a full, uncompressed backup resulting in shorter backup windows and faster restore and VM boot speeds. ExaGrid points out that not only is the up front cost lower but over time the overall cost is lower compared to large brand vendors.

ExaGrid’s enhanced support for Oracle RMAN Channels enables multiple target NAS shares across a GRID. ExaGrid can handle multi-hundred terabyte Oracle RMAN backups, where other solutions may not be able. RMAN Channels write sections in parallel to all NAS shares, if there is a failure, the sections are automatically redirected to the next available NAS share.

Advantages of RMAN Channels with ExaGrid:

The Oracle database can be hundreds of terabytes in size and can be backed up in parallel to a single ExaGrid scale-out GRID.
The database backup performance is accelerated as the sections are backed up in parallel across multiple appliances in a scale-out GRID.
The database backup performance is maximized as each new section is automatically sent to the highest performance availability NAS shares and/or appliance, resulting in the best possible performance based on the NAS share and appliance ingest availability.
If any appliance in a GRID fails, the sections are automatically redirected to the active appliances, providing for automatic failover – which allows database backups to occur if an appliance fails.
The most recent database is stored in an un-deduplicated form in the ExaGrid landing zone allowing for the fastest restores while still allowing for storage efficiency as all long-term retention data is stored in deduplicated form. This avoids the lengthy data rehydration process of inline scale-up appliances that only store deduplicated data.
As the database data grows, the backup window stays fixed in length as full appliances are added into a scale-out GRID bringing compute with capacity. This eliminates the forklift upgrades associated with inline scale-up deduplication appliances.

Availability and pricing

The upgrade to version 4.9 is free to customers with an active maintenance and support contract with ExaGrid. The upgrade is expected to be available by the end of August this year.

ExaGrid main site

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