Case Study: University System of GA SSC achieves rapid backups and robust disaster recovery with ExaGrid

University System of GA SSC Better Protected Against Data Loss with ExaGrid

The University System of Georgia Shared Services Center (SSC), which provides payroll and benefits processing for all 34 institutions in the system, needed to upgrade its aging backup infrastructure to improve reliability, reduce storage requirements, and strengthen disaster recovery. After consulting with partners experienced with ExaGrid, SSC chose a new disk-based backup solution to replace its previous system.

ExaGrid was deployed as the primary backup target (integrated with Symantec Backup Exec and VMware agents) with a second ExaGrid at a remote site and tape copies sent offsite for extra protection. The system’s post-process, zone-level deduplication and disk landing zone delivered fast 3–4 hour backups, dramatically reduced disk usage (typical savings 10:1 to 50:1, with some servers showing up to 1000:1), simplified management, proactive vendor support, and a tested disaster-recovery workflow that lets SSC quickly restore operations from the remote ExaGrid.

University System of GA SSC

Joshua Humphrey

System Administrator