ExaGrid, a leading provider of disk-based backup storage with data deduplication and sole Visionary in Gartner's 2015 "Magic Quadrant for Deduplication Backup Target Appliances,"1 today announced that its EX32000E appliance has been named "Product of the Year in Backup Hardware" by Storage magazine/SearchStorage.com.
These annual awards, now in their 14th year, showcase the year's latest and greatest innovations in technology. A total of 146 nominees were judged by a panel of Storage magazine/SearchStorage.com writers and editors, users, analysts, and consultants. Eighteen winners were chosen from a total of 70 finalists across six categories based on performance, ease of integration and use, manageability, functionality, and value.
According to Storage magazine's Sonia Lelii, "Winners in the backup hardware group for the 2015 Products of the Year awards faced a crowded competition this year […] The hardware among backup vendors continues to evolve, with sellers emphasizing the use of deduplication to shorten backup windows and systems that are more efficient."
ExaGrid's EX32000E v4.9 increased full backup capacity to 32TB per appliance and 800TB per single scale-out GRID. (ExaGrid's subsequent release of its EX40000E appliance further increased full backup capacity to 40TB per appliance and with 25 appliances in a scale-out GRID, a single system can take in up to a 1PB full backup with total ingest of 200TB/hr. In contrast, the EMC Data Domain 9500 can only scale to an 860TB full backup with ingest of 58TB/hr. using DD Boost. ExaGrid scales larger and provides over three times the backup ingest rate of the DD9500.) With ExaGrid's unique landing zone, restores, offsite tape copies, and VM boots are five to ten times faster than its closest competitor.
The v4.9 release provides global deduplication, which ensures that all data is deduplicated across all NAS shares and appliances in a GRID. Global deduplication also provides the flexibility to redirect backup jobs to any NAS share, on any appliance, at any time while maintaining data deduplication globally across the entire GRID.
ExaGrid's v4.9 release also enhanced support for Oracle RMAN Channels, which provides the ability to back up Oracle databases up to 800TB in size (subsequently increased to 1PB with the EX40000E) and to write to multiple NAS shares across multiple devices for optimal backup performance and failover.
"We are thrilled to have been chosen by the Storage magazine/SearchStorage.com panel of judges as recipient of Product of the Year in Backup Hardware," said ExaGrid's CEO, Bill Andrews. "This top distinction further validates ExaGrid's unique architecture and second generation approach of using a landing zone and scale-out architecture for disk-based backup with data deduplication."
Comparatively, other vendors simply add data deduplication to a scale-up storage architecture (i.e., front-end controller with disk shelves) or to the backup application media server. ExaGrid's unique approach provides up to a 3X ingest performance; a 5X to 10X restore, tape copy, and boot performance; and a fixed-length backup window as data grows. ExaGrid has the only second generation product on the market.
