Hi @miriam1989 -

I haven’t used Exagrid, but haven’t heard much negative commentary on it. I think it’s a pretty solid product.

Many storage arrays are really good, so more than likely you could get many different answers here from those who have a bias towards a certain vendor or another I, myself, use HPE Nimble (Alletra), and have for 7-9 years. I’ve used EMC arrays before that, and was not impressed with them (now DELL products basically). Nimble arrays are inuitive, have decent performance (we use hybrid, but these do come in all-flash), and they have the ability to replicate to partner arrays (3-2-1-1-0 rule). 

To get best performance, if it is something you’re really needing for certain applications (mainly databases and highly-transactional applications), most any array which provides an all-flash optioin is your best bet. If the array doesn’t come already pre-configured in a certain RAID type, configuring it in a RAID 60 will give the best performance vs redundancy (dual disk failure).

For security, what you need to look for, beit Exagrid or other vendor, is if it has ability to implement immutability. Does it have multifactor auth (MFA)? Does it have role-based security access/control (RBAC)? Is command-line administration enabled or disabled? (CLI is generally disabled and only can be administered by vendor support engineers; some read-only or non-drastic tasks are generally allowed via CLI). Other security measures have to do with physical access and solely relies on you → control physical access to datacenter(s) where your array(s) are located.

Hope the info helps.

Exagrid is good storage as they have the facility to put the data mover on the appliance. I have never used them but hear good things.

There are many storage arrays that work with Veeam and if you are looking for Immutable storage there is Object First.  If you also want to look at other storage depending on budget Pure has great storage that works with Veeam as well.

This has a great list of storage and requirements for Veeam for integration - https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/storage/storage_system_requirements.html?ver=120

My experience with Exagrid appliances is excellent, especially with the dedicated support engineers. Every time I needed support, they were extremely fast and knowledgeable.  

It’s an excellent all-in-one solution! Efficient backup performance and the ability to utilize advanced Veeam features (such as Surebackup, Instant Recovery, etc.). Plus, the option for long-term and protected archiving. Exagrid has significantly improved backup performance for synthetic Full backups in its latest versions. It also integrates default security modules like MFA and Security Officer, alerting.

Having installed several of these solutions, I really appreciate the ease of implementation. As mentioned, there’s no need to install an additional gateway server; the Datamover is directly integrated. Another strong point, as previously mentioned, is having a dedicated engineer for support. Exagrid’s support is one of the best I’ve worked with.

One minor drawback is that it’s not always clear where the data is actually located whether in the Landing Zone or Retention Zone

Exagrid is also compatible for Microsoft 365 data backup

We are starting a project of installation and configuration with Exagrid. 

Exagrid use a owner space calculation based on source data. For our client was a good solution for use deduplication and replica of its backup data.

There product looks solid, and easy to use. 

It will require a large amount of network ports, and it’s still spinning disk. 

The “landing zone” isn’t deduped or compressed so it will be faster to retrieve than the archive tier which is.   Faster is still only as fast as the spinning disks can handle. If you want to bring up an entire environment from backups, an all flash array will be your best bet. 

I can also highly recommend ExaGrid. We've used it very successfully in many customer environments.

It's fast with backup and recovery and very secure due to the MFA authentication option and the need for an additional CSO role to manipulate the immutability settings.

Support is also fast and to the point as we have a dedicated support engineer model for each customer here in Germany.

ExaGrid's S3 support is not yet released. So no VBM backup at the moment. But it is announced and should be ready later this year. I'm already planning a blog post here in the hub about it.

If you are planning a larger environment (beyond a single ExaGrid box), keep in mind that you should aggregate the systems into SOBRs for easier backup administration. Therefore, they need to be exactly the same size due to specific technical requirements in ExaGrid's global dedupe mechanism. Make sure you acquire all the systems you need in the environment. We have had it, that a new line of systems that ExaGrid released came in different size options than the predecessors. It is not recommended to mix different volume sizes of ExaGrid systems in the same SOBR.

I’ve written a comprehensive blog post once on ExaGrid’s immutability option.

Find it here, if interested: https://www.elasticsky.de/en/2020/09/exagrid-time-lock-whos-still-afraid-of-ransomware/

Exagrid is a beast. It works wonders with Veeam. I would like to thank the entire Veeam team from here. There is a great integration between them. With fast backup, immutable solution, fast restore and SAN connection, backups are finished quickly without any delays.

It was great, thank you.