Transcript
FlightSafety Services Corporation Makes Backups Soar with ExaGrid CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY
Customer Overview
“The ExaGrid system is simply the best piece of equipment I have purchased in years. Our backups now run each and every night without fail and the system is extremely reliable. The ExaGrid was cost-effective, solved our backup and restore issues, and it saves us a tremendous amount of time each & every day.” Kenneth Hunter Network Manager FlightSafety Services
FlightSafety Services Corporation provides quality total training systems, training system management and integration, training delivery services and contractor logistics support to the U.S. government, prime government contractors and commercial entities. FlightSafety Services Corporation is an integral part of the world’s premier crew-training organization, FlightSafety International, which annually delivers more than one million hours of air crew, ship crew and maintenance training to civilian and military customers. FlightSafety Services Corporation trains 10,000 to 14,000 student events annually and has been providing air crew training systems to the United States Air Force and its Air Reserve Forces since 1984. Based in Centennial, Colorado, the company’s expertise in simulation technology, coupled with a dedicated team of experienced instructors, technical staff, courseware developers, and simulator maintenance technicians support the delivery of quality military training.
Long Backup Times, Retention and Restore Issues As a government contractor, FlightSafety’s IT department must adhere to rigorous data protection requirements. In an effort to simplify its nightly backup processes, the company’s IT department had begun backing up its data to disk instead of tape but retention quickly became an issue and restoring data from tapes stored offsite was a nightmare. Each night, FlightSafety’s IT staff backed up the company’s information to standard disk but could only keep one day of information online before the data had to be offloaded to tape. The tapes were transported offsite each morning in case they were needed for disaster recovery. All in all, backing up its data in this disk-to-disk-to-tape (D2D2T) process took a full 12 hours each night for incremental backups and weekly full backups ran all weekend. The IT staff also began experiencing network slowdowns due to the lengthy backups and restoring data from tape took hours. “Our backup situation was ugly, to say the least,” said Kenneth Hunter, Network Manager at FlightSafety Services Corporation. “As time went on, we were pushing the envelope each and every night and our tapes weren’t always finished in time to get them off for pickup in the morning and restoring data from tape was a tremendous drain on our staff.”
ExaGrid Integrates Seamlessly with Backup Exec to Provide Instant Relief
FlightSafety began looking for a new solution to alleviate its long backup windows, difficult restore processes and retention issues and chose ExaGrid’s disk-based backup system with data de-duplication. The ExaGrid system is located in the company’s datacenter in Centennial and works alongside FlightSafety’s existing backup application, Syamantec’s Backup Exec™. “We looked at a few different solutions but ExaGrid’s feature set was unmatched and was extremely cost-effective,” said Hunter. “Some of the other solutions we looked at required us to purchase new backup software and we liked the fact that the ExaGrid system worked with Backup Exec. It enabled us to leverage our existing investment in Backup Exec and we didn’t have to learn new software or change our backup processes. It’s been our experience that the two products work together seamlessly.”
Backup Times Cut in Half with ExaGrid, Restore Times Reduced from Four Hours to Less than Five Minutes FlightSafety’s data is first backed up to the ExaGrid and then sent to tape each night for DR. Prior to installing the ExaGrid system,
the entire disk-to-disk-to-tape (D2D2T) process took in excess of 12 hours but has been reduced to only six hours with the ExaGrid system. Weekly full backups now take less than 12 hours, including backing the ExaGrid up to tape.
matched into a single GRID system with capacities of up to 60TB full backup plus retention. Once virtualized, they appear as a single system to the backup server, and load balancing of all data across servers is automatic.
“With the ExaGrid system, we are now able to complete our backups well within our windows each and every night,” said Hunter. “We’re no longer stressed about getting our backups completed before the start of the workday and we’re meeting our goals with ease.
“ExaGrid’s GRID architecture will enable us to grow our system easily and without installing new technology to meet our needs well into the future,” said Hunter.
ExaGrid’s data de-duplication technology really helps make our backups and restores faster.”
Symantec Backup Exec provides cost-effective, highperformance, and certified disk-to-disk-to-tape backup and recovery – including continuous data protection for Microsoft Exchange, SQL, file servers, and workstations. High-performance agents and options provide fast, flexible, granular protection and scalable management of local and remote server backups.
ExaGrid combines last backup compression along with data de-duplication, which stores changes from backup to backup instead of storing full file copies. This unique approach reduces the disk space required by a range of 10:1 to 50:1 or more, delivering unparalleled cost savings and performance. ExaGrid delivers extremely fast backup performance because data is written directly to disk, and data de-duplication is performed post-process after the data is stored to reduce data.
Increased Retention, Fast Restores With only one day of retention on disk, the IT staff at FlightSafety found that responding to requests for restores was extremely difficult and time consuming because most of its data was kept offsite on tape. Hunter estimates that restoring a file from tape took over four hours because the data had to be retrieved from tape. And because of delivery schedules, restores often couldn’t be performed until the next day. With the ExaGrid system, FlightSafety is now able to retain six months of data on its ExaGrid system and restores take just minutes. “Our users were losing confidence in our backup system and in our ability to restore files,” said Hunter. “The ExaGrid system enables us to perform restores in minutes and has taken the constant burden of retrieving data for our users off our shoulders.
ExaGrid Makes Compliance Easier, GRID Architecture Provides Easy Scalability “The ExaGrid system makes it easier for us to adhere to our compliance mandates and to other regulations we have to meet as government contractors,” said Hunter. “We constantly test our backup systems to ensure that we can meet various requirements and retrieve our backup data in a timely fashion. With the ExaGrid system, we are confident that our data is protected one hundred percent of the time.” As FlightSafety’s data grows, the ExaGrid system can be easily expanded to protect more data. ExaGrid’s GRID computing software makes the system highly scalable, and when plugged into a switch, different sized configurations can be mixed and
ExaGrid and Symantec Backup Exec
Organizations using Symantec Backup Exec can look to ExaGrid as an alternative to tape for nightly backups. ExaGrid sits behind existing backup applications, such as Symantec Backup Exec, providing faster and more reliable backups and restores. In a network running Symantec Backup Exec, using ExaGrid in place of a tape backup system is as easy as pointing existing backup jobs at a NAS share on the ExaGrid system. Backup jobs are sent directly from the backup application to the ExaGrid for onsite backup to disk.
Intelligent Data Protection ExaGrid’s turnkey disk-based backup system combines high quality SATA drives with byte-level data de-duplication, delivering a disk-based solution that is more cost effective than standard SATA drives. ExaGrid’s byte-level data de-duplication technology stores only the changes from backup to backup instead of storing full file copies, reducing the amount of disk space needed by a range of 10:1 to 50:1, or more, resulting in a solution that is 25 to 30% the cost of standard SATA drives. ExaGrid is easy to install and use and works seamlessly with popular backup applications, so organizations can retain their investment in existing applications. ExaGrid can be used at a primary site and at a second site to supplement or eliminate offsite tapes with a live data repository or for disaster recovery. When a second site is used, the cost savings are even greater because ExaGrid’s bytelevel data de-duplication technology moves only changes, requiring minimal WAN bandwidth. For more information about ExaGrid, please visit us at www.exagrid.com or call us at 1-800-868-6985.
ExaGrid Systems, Inc. | 2000 West Park Drive | Westborough, MA 01581 | 800.868.6985 | www.exagrid.com ExaGrid reserves the right to change specifications or other product information without notice. ExaGrid and the ExaGrid logo are trademarks of ExaGrid Systems, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders. © 2008 ExaGrid Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
