Case Study: The Seattle Times achieves seamless scalability and easier, cost-effective backups with ExaGrid

The Seattle Times Chooses ExaGrid over Data Domain for Seamless Scalability

The Seattle Times, a long‑standing regional news organization, was backing up roughly 60 TB per week to multiple tape libraries — a process that was time consuming and costly (nearly $1,000/month in tape cartridges) and consumed 30–40% of two operators’ time. Facing constantly growing data and a need to automate backups and improve scalability, the IT team evaluated alternatives to tape and sought a solution that could expand without disruptive forklift upgrades.

They selected ExaGrid over EMC Data Domain and Quantum for its GRID architecture and post‑process deduplication. Starting with two appliances and easily adding a third, ExaGrid provided simple, non‑disruptive scaling, faster disk‑based backups, and significant storage reduction (via deduplication), which cut tape dependence, reclaimed operator time, and delivered more reliable nightly backups with responsive support.

The Seattle Times

Michael Fichtenholtz

Senior Unix Administrator