Primary Data Storage Integration with Local & Remote Data Protection
Posted by Bill Hobbib on Fri, Jul 01, 2011 @ 12:28 PM
ExaGrid Issued U.S. Patent for Integrating Primary Data Storage with Local and Remote Data Protection
This week, ExaGrid announced our 4th patent, #7,925623, for a “Method and Apparatus for Integrating Primary Data Storage with Local and Remote Data Protection.” This patent continues to build on our history of developing technical innovations and applying them to the data protection problems faced by our customers. The technical innovation behind this patent covers ExaGrid’s architecture for a two-tiered backup storage system with a front-end landing space and back-end data deduplication repository. In short, by using our advanced two-tiered storage appliances, customers benefit from optimal backup and restore performance. The front-end landing space combined with our post-processing approach to deduplication creates the fastest possible backups because the backups are landed to disk immediately and deduplication occurs after the data is already fully protected on disk. This approach also allows for the rapid creation of tape copies for offsite storage because the tape copy is created from a full, intact version of the backup rather than having to recreate the tape copy by “rehydrating” the deduplicated data as is necessary with other competitive systems. The separate back-end repository also conserves disk storage capacity and inter-repository WAN/MAN bandwidth by incorporating zone byte-level data deduplication. Since each ExaGrid disk backup appliance within a system contains both a front-end landing space and back-end repository space, multiple appliances can be configured into a single GRID backup storage system, allowing end users to seamlessly scale systems in increments of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10 or 13TB to a total capacity of 130TB without disruption. As each appliance is added to the GRID, additional networking, CPU horsepower and memory are also included with the additional disk storage. This allows the overall performance of the GRID of ExaGrid appliances to scale along with growing backup capacity, all without the need for costly forklift upgrades required with competitive single controller architectures.This 4th patent follows three previous patents awarded. On file with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the two most recent data protection patents are: U.S. Patent No. 7,246,140 “Method and Apparatus for Storage System to Provide Distributed Data Storage and Protection” and U.S. Patent No. 7,246,275 “Method and Apparatus for Managing Data Integrity of Backup and Disaster Recovery Data.” The benefits to customers from these two most recent ExaGrid data protection patents include the following:NAS-based disk-based backup system with byte-level delta data deduplication
- Allows weeks to years of backup history to consume very little disk storage capacity and reduce WAN bandwidth requirements between the primary site and disaster recovery site
- Simplifies configuration and management with NAS interface to backup applications
- Enables a cost-effective, scalable architecture that increases performance and capacity as backup data continues to grow
Long-term data protection integrity and recoverability
- Maintains the highest levels of backup data integrity over the life of the backup data, from weeks to years
- Eliminates customer concerns of not being able to successfully restore files that have been accidentally deleted by users, or recover backup data after a system or site disaster
Click here to learn about the 5 ways disk backup with data deduplication improves backup effectiveness, cost-efficiency and data protection.