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Customers worldwide depend on EMC Avamar for fast, reliable VMware backup

EMC backup and recovery helps users accelerate their virtualisation initiatives.

Issued by Redline a division of DRAFTFCB for EMC Southern Africa
Johannesburg, 16 Sep 2011

News summary:

* Customers around the world are realising exceptional results for backup and recovery of their VMware virtual environments using EMC Avamar.
* Curtin University of Technology used Avamar to overcome significant virtual backup difficulties; saved AUD$100 000 in tape costs alone; and is now 90% virtualised with 530 virtual machines.
* SPAR Group reduced VMware backup times from three days to just four hours, and now stores 189 terabytes of backup data on just six terabytes of disk.
* Elliot Health System is 80% virtualised, with 298 virtual machines protected by Avamar, which is “blazing fast for backup and recovery of virtual machine image data”.
* Avamar is optimised for VMware, and is helping customers accelerate their virtualisation initiatives.

Full story

EMC Corporation has announced that customers around the world are realising exceptional results for backup and recovery of their VMware virtual environments by using EMC Avamar.

The tight integration between Avamar and VMware vSphere, de-duplication and advanced replication capabilities deliver fast and reliable virtual machine backup and recovery.

For the multimedia version of this press release and related content, please go to: http://www.emc.com/about/news/press/2011/20110824-01.htm.

“Customers using Avamar to protect their VMware environments typically share several characteristics,” says Sumash Singh, Business Unit Manager: Backup Recovery Systems, EMC Southern Africa. “First, many have achieved a high percentage of virtualisation in their environments and have no issues with common virtual backup challenges, such as resource contention and data growth.

“In addition, they all report extremely fast backup and recovery of virtual machines, and minimal bandwidth consumption during replication for disaster recovery. These common characteristics are no accident. Avamar is optimised for VMware, and is helping customers on their journey to fully virtualised environments by overcoming the challenges associated with legacy backup solutions.”

More enterprises are deploying Avamar systems to optimise their VMware backup and recovery, extending the leadership of EMC in the backup and recovery market. According to the new IDC Worldwide Purpose Built Backup Appliance 2010-2015 Market Analysis and Forecast, 2010 Vendor Shares report (May 2011), EMC had a 64.2% share of the Purpose Built Backup Appliance market (1). Customer experiences, however, best illustrate the reasons for choosing Avamar for VMware backup.

Avamar customers weigh in from around the world

Curtin University of Technology (Australia):

Located in Perth, Curtin is western Australia's largest university, with 16 campuses and education centres across the region, supporting 48 000 students. Curtin's IT environment is now over 90% virtualised using VMware, with 530 virtual machines in place as well as a VCE Vblock Infrastructure Platform.

“With Avamar, we are saving more than AUD$100 000 in tape costs alone, and with two IT staff redeployed to help us focus on our data centre strategy, the total savings are even greater. The performance we are seeing with Avamar is incredible.

“Our backup de-duplication rates range from 95% to over 99% across all of our key applications and databases. Avamar has given us greater flexibility to provision and protect new virtual machines, and I'm not up at night worrying about how I would recover data if something went wrong.” Peter Nikoletatos - Chief Information Officer, Curtin University of Technology

Elliot Health System (United States):

Elliot Health System (EHS) is the largest provider of comprehensive healthcare services in southern New Hampshire. The storage infrastructure at EHS leverages VMware virtualisation and a variety of EMC products, including Symmetrix VMAX, Symmetrix DMX and CLARiiON storage systems, as well as EMC FAST technology for automated storage tiering, EMC VPLEXTM virtual storage technology and EMC Avamar.

“EHS has a highly virtualised environment. With 298 virtual machines, we are presently 80% virtualised. We recently conducted a proof of concept trial with Avamar, and liked it so much that three weeks later we purchased and implemented it at our data centre for backup, with replication to our secondary site for disaster recovery.

“Avamar is blazing fast for backup and recovery of virtual machine image data - it's just fantastic. We're not only pleased with how efficiently the product protects our virtual environment, but with the fact that Avamar is staying in lockstep with the latest VMware developments such as vSphere 5 and vCloud Director 1.5. With Avamar, we are confident that we will always have support for the latest VMware technologies so we can continue to evolve the protection of our virtual environment.” Tom Fairfield, IT Manager for Elliot Hospital

SPAR Group Limited (South Africa):

SPAR Group provides distribution and retail services to over 800 stores located throughout the country through six distribution centres. As the company migrated to a VMware data centre infrastructure, its existing tape-based backup system was simply not up to the task of protecting SPAR's VMware environment.

Backup operations were highly protracted, weekly full backups needed to be performed over weekends, and backups frequently failed or were incomplete. SPAR turned to Dimension Data, an EMC Velocity Signature Solution Centre partner and hosted service provider, to provide a backup solution that would allow SPAR to maximise the value of its technology investment in VMware.

By delivering a hosted EMC Avamar backup solution, SPAR's 189 terabytes of backup data is stored on just six terabytes of disk. However, the most dramatic benefits were felt in terms of the speed, accuracy and regularity of full backups, which now run daily in just four hours. The tapes and tape services costs (approximately R60 000) are now long gone and their virtual machines are readily recoverable.

“The Avamar system has been rock solid since it was implemented. Prior to implementing Avamar, our backups, which had been running for up to three days in some cases, are now completed in three to four hours.” Greg Hay - Group Network Services Manager, SPAR Group

For more information about EMC Avamar and additional EMC Backup and Recovery solutions, please visit the Backup and Recovery Products page on the EMC Web site.

(1) IDC Document #224526: Worldwide Data Protection and Recovery Software 2010-2014 Forecast, August 2010.

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EMC Corporation is a global leader in enabling business and service providers to transform their operations and deliver IT as a service. Fundamental to this transformation is cloud computing. Through innovative products and services, EMC accelerates the journey to cloud computing, helping IT departments to store, manage, protect and analyse their most valuable asset - information - in a more agile, trusted and cost-efficient way. Additional information about EMC can be found at http://www.EMC.com.

EMC, Avamar, CLARiiON, DMX, Symmetrix, VMAX and VPLEX are trademarks or registered trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Vblock is a trademark of EMC Corporation in the United States. VMware, VMware vCenter, VMware vSphere and VMware vStorage and VMworld are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of VMware in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. The use of the word “partner” or “partnership” does not imply a legal partnership relationship with VMware or any other company. All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

This release contains "forward-looking statements" as defined under the Federal Securities Laws. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of certain risk factors, including but not limited to: (i) adverse changes in general economic or market conditions; (ii) delays or reductions in information technology spending; (iii) the relative and varying rates of product price and component cost declines and the volume and mixture of product and services revenues; (iv) competitive factors, including but not limited to pricing pressures and new product introductions; (v) component and product quality and availability; (vi) fluctuations in VMware's operating results and risks associated with trading of VMware stock; (vii) the transition to new products, the uncertainty of customer acceptance of new product offerings and rapid technological and market change; (viii) risks associated with managing the growth of our business, including risks associated with acquisitions and investments and the challenges and costs of integration, restructuring and achieving anticipated synergies; (ix) the ability to attract and retain highly qualified employees; (x) insufficient, excess or obsolete inventory; (xi) fluctuating currency exchange rates; (xii) threats and other disruptions to our secure data centres or networks; (xiii) our ability to protect our proprietary technology; (xiv) war or acts of terrorism; and (xv) other one-time events and other important factors disclosed previously and from time to time in EMC's filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. EMC disclaims any obligation to update any such forward-looking statements after the date of this release.

Editorial contacts

Debra de Wet
Redline, a division of DRAFTFCB
(011) 566 6000
Sonelia du Preez
EMC Southern Africa
(011) 581 0033