Case Study: Bureau of Reclamation achieves year-plus retention and reliable, fast backups with ExaGrid

Bureau of Reclamation Replaces Quantum with Next-Gen ExaGrid

The Bureau of Reclamation, a federal agency that manages dams, reservoirs and hydropower across the western U.S., was struggling with a failing Quantum backup environment that caused frequent hardware failures, costly maintenance and limited retention. Backing up more than 90 TB, the IT team could only retain 25–30 days of backups, wanted to eliminate tape, and needed a more reliable, scalable solution to meet disaster-recovery and long-term retention requirements.

After evaluating ExaGrid, Quantum and EMC Data Domain, Reclamation deployed ExaGrid with Veeam across a two‑site GRID. The new system delivered easy install, reliable replication and dedicated support, enabled synthetic fulls for large 15 TB volumes, and eliminated the downtime and support battles they experienced before. Post-Veeam deduplication averages about 7:1 (with combined Veeam+ExaGrid dedupe of roughly 6:1–10:1), and the agency expects retention to increase from one month to 12–24 months while improving restore speed and DR confidence.

Bureau of Reclamation

Eric Fahrenbrook

IT Specialist