What is our primary use case?
Some of our typical use cases involve the current installation of Veeam software and its expanding capabilities. Particularly, the focus is on duplication and backup protection. Introducing Veeam has brought about new backup and protected storage solutions.
What is most valuable?
The tool has improved backup and recovery times. One of the key features contributing to this improvement is the landing zone and deduplication retention zone. When data is in the landing zone, the process is fast, ensuring smooth backup and recovery operations at high speeds. However, the process becomes slower for long-term backups moved to the retention zone due to fragmentation. So, if the data is older than a few days, the speed may be limited, especially for non-deduplicated data in the landing zone.
What needs improvement?
The tool reduces storage footprint. However, clients are now storing data for longer durations with increasing requirements to retain backups for longer periods, particularly as a defense against ransomware attacks. As a result, the retention zone with duplicated data is experiencing more demand, leading to space constraints. This necessitates using higher-end, more expensive models to address the issue.
I was asking about the mutual appliance, which would provide the same features as the integrated client without the hardware. This would allow it to be used in the public cloud, which I heard might be available soon. However, the private cloud is not reliable.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with the product for five to six years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
ExaGrid EX Series is very stable; I rate it as nine out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The tool's scalability is very good, and no issues were encountered. One of the best aspects is combining newer and older models. These models support the latest software versions. However, support for older models can be expensive, so investing in new ones with updated support and potentially better discounts is often more cost-effective. My company has thousands of users for the ExaGrid EX Series.
How are customer service and support?
Tech support might be slow at times when solving problems.
How would you rate customer service and support?
How was the initial setup?
The ease of initial setup depends on the complexity of the design. For simple designs, it's straightforward. However, in highly secure environments with many firewalls, setting up replication can be challenging due to the requirement for numerous ports.
The product doesn't require a lot of maintenance. Once it's set up, it runs smoothly without much intervention. Occasionally, issues like unfinished backups or broken processes might require manual deletion with support assistance. However, such instances are rare.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I rate ExaGrid EX Series' pricing eight to nine out of ten.
What other advice do I have?
The tool's integration with backup software, such as Veeam, is natural. It includes a module that replaces the need for a proxy server, which helps with deployment and speeds up backups. Additionally, it has good integration with Commvault software. However, testing with IBM Spectrum Protect wasn't as successful, but the issue lies more with IBM Spectrum Protect's handling of disk space rather than the ExaGrid EX Series itself.
I rate the overall product a nine out of ten. It is good.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
