CA Partners ExaGrid For Midmarket Backup

CA Technologies and ExaGrid Systems sign an agreement to address data growth, and the need for higher efficiency data backup among the midmarket and small enterprise community.

The two companies hope to provide a quicker and more efficient backup and disaster recovery system for physical and virtual servers.

Combined Backup

The new offering is aimed at addressing data protection challenges in complex mixed infrastructure environments by delivering fast backup and recovery as well as post-process data deduplication without impacting backup performance.

The custom offering combines the CA ARCserve D2D image-based backup and recovery software and the ExaGrid disk storage and deduplication appliance hardware. The new system is expected to help small and midsized businesses (SMBs) cut their storage requirements and related costs, while shortening backup windows, speeding recovery and delivering reliable off-site disaster recovery, according to the companies.

“Customers’ data protection requirements are evolving very quickly, and they want to make sure they get the right mix of functionality – but also efficiency, speed and simplicity – at the right ownership costs,” Chris Ross, vice president, worldwide sales, data management, CA Technologies, said in a statement. “By working with ExaGrid, CA Technologies is enabling its customers to fulfil their requirements.”

The CA ARCservce D2D operates on both physical and virtual Windows and Linux servers. Key features for Windows include Block-level Incremental (I2 Technology) backups that use less storage space, deliver faster backups and puts less of a load on production servers, and host-based, agent-less backup for VMware environments that protects all VMs on the hypervisor without requiring an install on each VM. It also provides speed recovery with a single snapshot backup with five restore types: files/folders, volumes, applications, Microsoft Exchange emails and bare-metal restore (BMR).

Key features for Linux include Block-level Incremental backups, hardware-independent BMR for faster system recovery, built-in compression, and speed recovery with file-level granular restore from any recovery point.

Data Growth

ExaGrid touts several key benefits for its disk storage with deduplication hardware. The appliance reduces disk space required by at least 10:1 and up to 50:1, and shortens backup windows by 30 percent to 90 percent. Other features include scalability with data growth, improved disaster recovery with off-site disk-based data retention, and less time the IT staff has to spend on backup management.

“With data growing exponentially across both physical and virtual servers while IT budgets remain tight, we are seeing great demand for a simplified solution like this that delivers reliable, resource-efficient backup and recovery in mixed infrastructure environments,” Marc Crespi, vice president, product management, ExaGrid, said in a statement. “We look forward to showing customers the power of a combined ExaGrid and CA ARCserve D2D solution, and how they can achieve faster recovery of their business systems and the best scalability in the industry as their needs grow.”

The CA ARCserve D2D software and ExaGrid disk storage appliances are available through authorised resellers and service providers.

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Originally published on eWeek.