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ExaGrid Tiered Backup Storage: Faster Backups and Ransomware Recovery

Exagrid provides Tiered Backup Storage with a unique Landing Zone and scale-out architecture, offering the fastest backups and restores for enterprise IT.

Cloud Computing & Migration
Compute & Storage
Data Protection & Recovery

Overview

Exagrid is a leading provider of Tiered Backup Storage solutions designed to solve the performance and scalability challenges inherent in traditional disk-based backup with data deduplication. Founded in 2002 and headquartered in Marlborough, Massachusetts, Exagrid has established itself as a critical player in the data protection market, specifically focusing on the "storage" component of the backup ecosystem.

The company’s core offering is a scale-out hardware appliance that integrates seamlessly with over 25 industry-leading backup applications and utilities. While traditional backup storage solutions often struggle with "rehydration" delays and shrinking backup windows as data grows, Exagrid’s architecture utilizes a unique disk-cache Landing Zone and a separate Repository Tier. This dual-tier approach allows for high-speed ingest and rapid restores while maintaining the cost-efficiency of long-term deduplicated data storage.

Exagrid serves mid-market to large enterprise organizations, as well as government and public sector entities. Their market presence is global, with thousands of customers and a reputation for high reliability and customer satisfaction. The company does not provide the backup software itself; instead, it provides the optimized hardware target that makes software like Veeam, Commvault, Veritas NetBackup, and others perform at their peak. By focusing exclusively on the storage side of the backup equation, Exagrid has carved out a niche as a high-performance alternative to general-purpose storage and legacy deduplication appliances.

Positioning

Exagrid positions itself as the "performance leader" in the backup storage market, strategically distancing itself from both low-cost primary storage and legacy inline deduplication appliances. Their messaging centers on the "Backup Storage Gap"—the performance degradation that occurs when deduplication is performed inline during the backup process. By highlighting the speed of their Landing Zone, Exagrid targets organizations that have outgrown their current backup windows or those that require aggressive Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs).

The brand is positioned as a "Veeam-optimized" and "Commvault-optimized" partner, often co-selling alongside these software vendors to provide a best-of-breed alternative to integrated "all-in-one" backup appliances. Their competitive positioning is built on three pillars:

  1. Performance: Delivering the fastest backups and restores.
  2. Scalability: Providing a predictable cost model where the backup window stays fixed as data grows.
  3. Security: Offering a comprehensive "Retention Time-Lock" strategy for ransomware recovery.

In contrast to competitors like Dell, HPE, and Veritas, who often push proprietary end-to-end stacks, Exagrid positions itself as an open and flexible storage tier that enhances the customer’s choice of backup software. Their messaging is highly technical and ROI-focused, appealing to IT directors and storage architects who are concerned with long-term scalability and the hidden costs of forklift upgrades.

Differentiation

Exagrid’s primary product differentiator is its Tiered Backup Storage architecture, which stands in stark contrast to the inline deduplication appliances offered by competitors like Dell Data Domain. Exagrid utilizes a unique "Landing Zone"—a non-deduplicated disk cache where the most recent backups are written directly. This allows for the fastest possible backup performance and, more importantly, near-instantaneous data restores and VM boots because the data does not need to be "rehydrated" from a deduplicated state.

Key technical advantages include:

  • Scale-Out Architecture: Unlike "scale-up" systems that require disruptive forklift upgrades when the controller reaches capacity, Exagrid adds full appliances (including processor, memory, and network ports) to a single scale-out system. This ensures a fixed-length backup window regardless of data growth.
  • Retention Time-Lock for Ransomware Recovery: Exagrid employs a non-network-facing tier (a tiered air gap) with delayed deletes and immutable data objects. This ensures that even if a backup application is compromised, the long-term retention data remains secure and recoverable.
  • Global Deduplication: Data is deduplicated across all appliances in a system, maximizing storage efficiency without sacrificing the performance of the Landing Zone.
  • Adaptive Deduplication: Deduplication and replication occur in parallel with backups, ensuring the highest level of data consistency at the disaster recovery site without bottlenecking the primary backup ingest.

Ideal Customer Profile

The ideal ExaGrid customer typically fits the following profile:

  • Organization Size: Mid-market to large enterprise (100+ employees).
  • Data Footprint: Managing 10TB to multiple Petabytes of backup data.
  • Industry: Highly regulated sectors like Finance, Healthcare, Legal, and Government, or any organization with a low tolerance for downtime.
  • Technical Maturity: Organizations using professional backup software (Veeam, Commvault, NetBackup) who find that standard disk or cloud storage is either too slow for restores or too expensive at scale.
  • Budget Range: Organizations that prioritize long-term TCO and "buy it once" reliability over the lowest possible initial hardware cost.
  • Team Composition: IT teams that want to reduce time spent managing storage and need a "set it and forget it" backup repository.

Best Fit

ExaGrid excels in the following scenarios:

  • Rapid Data Growth Environments: When organizations face "backup window creep" where backups are taking too long to complete, ExaGrid’s Landing Zone provides the fastest possible ingest speeds.
  • Ransomware Recovery Strategy: For companies prioritizing data security, ExaGrid’s Tiered Backup Storage with Retention Time-Lock provides a non-network-facing air gap and immutable objects for reliable recovery.
  • Cost-Efficient Scaling: Organizations that want to avoid "forklift upgrades." ExaGrid’s scale-out architecture allows you to add appliances of any size or age to a single system, maintaining a fixed-length backup window as data grows.
  • Veeam Environments: While ExaGrid supports 25+ backup apps, it is a premier partner for Veeam, offering unique integrations like the ExaGrid-Veeam Accelerated Data Mover and support for Veeam Fast Clone.

Offerings

ExaGrid offers a range of appliance models that can be mixed and matched:

  • EX Series Appliances: Ranging from the EX6 (6TB raw) to the EX189 (189TB raw).
  • Scale-Out Grid: Up to 32 appliances can be combined into a single scale-out system, providing a total capacity of up to 6PB of full backup in a single system.
  • SEC (Secure) Models: All appliance sizes are available in "SEC" versions, which include FIPS-compliant Self-Encrypting Drives (SEDs).
  • ExaGrid Cloud Tier: An option to replicate deduplicated data to AWS or Azure for long-term offsite retention or disaster recovery.
  • Maintenance & Support Packages: Comprehensive support including an assigned Level 2 engineer, proactive monitoring, and all software updates.

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Buying Guide: Exagrid

Everything you need to evaluate Exagrid— from features and pricing to implementation and security.

Introduction

This guide provides a comprehensive evaluation framework for ExaGrid’s Tiered Backup Storage. Unlike traditional deduplication appliances that use a "scale-up" approach—often leading to performance bottlenecks as data grows—ExaGrid utilizes a unique scale-out architecture with a disk-cache Landing Zone. This guide is designed for IT directors, storage administrators, and CISOs who need to understand how ExaGrid solves the dual challenges of backup performance and long-term retention. You will learn about ExaGrid’s "Retention Time-Lock" for ransomware recovery, its cost-effective scaling model, and the technical requirements necessary to integrate it into your existing backup environment. By the end of this guide, you will be able to determine if ExaGrid’s performance-tier approach is the right fit for your organization’s data protection strategy.

Key Features

ExaGrid’s architecture is built around three core value pillars:

  • Tiered Backup Storage (Landing Zone): Unlike standard deduplication appliances that deduplicate data "on the fly" (slowing down backups), ExaGrid writes directly to a disk-cache Landing Zone. This results in ingest speeds 3X faster than competitors and near-instant restores/VM boots.
  • Scale-Out Architecture: When capacity needs to increase, you add full appliances (including processor, memory, and network ports) to the grid. This ensures that as data grows, the backup window remains fixed in length.
  • Retention Time-Lock for Ransomware Recovery: This feature creates a non-network-facing tier with a delayed-delete policy and immutable data objects. If a primary backup is compromised, the data in the ExaGrid repository remains available for recovery.
  • Global Deduplication: Data is deduplicated across all appliances in a scale-out system, maximizing storage efficiency without sacrificing performance.
  • Adaptive Deduplication: Deduplication and replication occur in parallel with backups, ensuring the highest level of data consistency at the Disaster Recovery (DR) site without impacting backup windows.

Use Cases

  • Scenario 1: Ransomware Recovery: A healthcare provider suffers a ransomware attack that encrypts their primary storage and backup server. Because they used ExaGrid’s Retention Time-Lock, the "Retention Tier" remained invisible to the attacker. They were able to recover their entire EMR system in hours rather than days.
  • Scenario 2: Eliminating the Backup Window: A manufacturing firm’s nightly backup was spilling into business hours. By switching to ExaGrid’s Landing Zone, they reduced their 12-hour backup window to 4 hours without changing their backup software.
  • Scenario 3: Multi-Site Disaster Recovery: A global law firm uses ExaGrid at three regional hubs. Data is backed up locally for fast restores and cross-replicated to other hubs for DR, ensuring that even a total site loss results in zero data loss.
  • Scenario 4: Instant VM Recovery: An e-commerce company experiences a server failure during a peak shopping period. Using ExaGrid with Veeam, they boot the failed VM directly from the ExaGrid Landing Zone, restoring services in minutes while the data migrates back to primary storage in the background.

Pricing Models

ExaGrid’s pricing is transparent and designed to prevent "hidden" long-term costs:

  • Appliance-Based Pricing: Costs are driven by the specific hardware model (capacity) purchased. There are no separate software licensing fees.
  • Price Protection: ExaGrid offers a "Price Protection" guarantee where the price paid for the initial appliances is the same price you will pay for future appliances for 5 years.
  • Maintenance & Support: A flat percentage of the hardware cost, which includes all software updates, point releases, and the "assigned support engineer" program.
  • No Forced Obsolescence: Older appliances can be mixed and matched with newer, larger appliances in the same scale-out grid, eliminating the need for forklift upgrades.
  • Five-Year Maintenance Price: ExaGrid guarantees that the maintenance and support price will not increase by more than 3% per year.

Technical Requirements

To deploy ExaGrid, your environment must support:

  • Networking: 10GbE (SFP+ or RJ45) or 25GbE connectivity. It is highly recommended to have a dedicated backup VLAN.
  • Power/Cooling: Standard rack space (2U per appliance) with appropriate PDU capacity for the number of appliances in the grid.
  • Backup Software: A supported version of a compatible backup application (e.g., Veeam v10+, Commvault v11+, etc.).
  • Management: A web browser (Chrome, Firefox, Edge) for the management GUI; no local software installation is required for management.
  • Offsite Link: For DR replication, a WAN link with sufficient bandwidth to handle daily change rates after deduplication.

Business Requirements

To successfully deploy ExaGrid, organizations should meet the following prerequisites:

  • Process Readiness: A defined backup policy and retention schedule must be in place to configure landing zone and retention tier ratios correctly.
  • Staffing: While ExaGrid is "low touch," a backup administrator is required to manage the primary backup software (e.g., Veeam, Commvault) that interfaces with the storage.
  • Stakeholder Buy-in: Financial stakeholders must understand the "Total Cost of Ownership" (TCO) model, which favors ExaGrid over 3-5 years due to the lack of forced hardware obsolescence.
  • Network Planning: Coordination with the networking team is required to ensure sufficient 10GbE or 25GbE ports are available for the scale-out grid.

Implementation Timeline

A typical ExaGrid implementation follows this schedule:

  • Phase 1: Discovery & Sizing (1-2 Weeks): ExaGrid engineers work with your team to analyze current backup data, growth rates, and retention requirements to recommend a specific appliance configuration.
  • Phase 2: Shipping & Physical Setup (1-2 Weeks): Hardware arrives and is racked/cabled.
  • Phase 3: Configuration & Integration (1 Week): Working with an assigned ExaGrid support engineer, the system is initialized, shares are created, and the backup software is pointed to the new storage.
  • Phase 4: Testing & Optimization (2 Weeks): Initial full backups are run to verify ingest speeds and deduplication ratios. Tuning is performed to ensure the backup window is met.
  • Phase 5: Go-Live: The system moves into full production. Total time from contract to go-live is typically 4-6 weeks.

Support Options

ExaGrid is well-known for its unique support model:

  • Assigned Level 2 Support Engineer: Customers are not routed through a general call center. You are assigned a specific, senior-level engineer who knows your environment and history.
  • Proactive Monitoring: The system can "phone home" to alert your assigned engineer of hardware issues or performance anomalies before they cause downtime.
  • Software Updates Included: All firmware and software updates are included in the standard maintenance agreement.
  • Hardware Replacement: Next-business-day hardware replacement is standard for failed components.
  • Documentation: Comprehensive online knowledge base and technical guides for integrated backup applications.

Integration Requirements

ExaGrid offers broad compatibility across the backup ecosystem:

  • Backup Applications: Supports over 25 backup applications and utilities including Veeam, Commvault, Veritas NetBackup, Dell NetWorker, and IBM Spectrum Protect.
  • Protocols: Supports standard protocols including NFS, CIFS/SMB, and OST (OpenStorage Technology).
  • Veeam Integration: Deep integration with Veeam Scale-Out Backup Repository (SOBR) and the Veeam Accelerated Data Mover.
  • Oracle RMAN: Support for Oracle RMAN channels to provide high-speed database backups with deduplication.
  • Physical Connectivity: Standard 10GbE SFP+, 10GbE RJ45, or 25GbE connectivity options.

Security & Compliance

ExaGrid provides robust security features to protect backup data:

  • Retention Time-Lock: Provides a tiered air-gap, immutable snapshots, and delayed deletes to prevent ransomware from purging backup history.
  • Encryption: Support for FIPS 140-2 Validated hardware-based disk encryption (SEDs) for data at rest.
  • Secure Replication: Data replicated between sites (Cross-site replication) is encrypted during transit via WAN-optimized tunnels.
  • Access Control: Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) and Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) for management console access.
  • Compliance: Helps organizations meet SOC2, HIPAA, GDPR, and PCI-DSS requirements by ensuring data integrity and availability.

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