New “Straight Talk” book offers IT leaders and CIOs guidance on avoiding the 10 costliest mistakes of disk backup

London – Jan 10, 2013 – ExaGrid Systems, Inc. (http://www.exagrid.com/), the leader in scalable and cost-effective disk-based backup solutions with data deduplication, today announced that the company has published a book offering IT professionals and CIOs straightforward and pragmatic guidance to help choose a disk backup system.

Titled “Straight Talk About Disk Backup with Deduplication,” and authored by ExaGrid’s CEO, Bill Andrews, it’s the most comprehensive guide to disk backup with deduplication available. By reading the 29-page book, IT professionals and CIOs can gain insights into the right questions to ask and which factors need to be considered when choosing a disk backup system, so that they can avoid the 10 costliest mistakes that could negatively impact their backup infrastructure for years.

“Every IT professional looking to move from tape backup to disk-based backup with deduplication who wants to avoid costly unforeseen pitfalls should get a copy of this book,” Andrews said. “From this guide, you’ll learn why disk backup with deduplication isn’t simply a commodity storage product that you think of in quick-fix tactical terms, but instead calls for a purpose-built approach and more detailed [strategic] consideration because the solution will impact your IT operations and costs for years in the future.”

With data growth rates averaging 30% or more annually, an increasing number of organisations are moving from tape to disk backup with deduplication. Depending on the disk backup architecture chosen, a backup environment can either be improved or worsened, since the former tape-based challenges may simply be replaced with new, more expensive disk-based challenges.

Drawing on experiences with more than 5,000 disk backup installations, the book describes the many technical considerations when choosing a disk backup system, such as the product’s deduplication method, whether the solution provides adequate compute with capacity to keep up with an organisation’s data growth, and whether the product inhibits restores due to a lengthy rehydration process.  Making the wrong decision could mean the backup window will expand as data grows, IT will face forklift upgrades costing up to hundreds of thousands of pounds, and the organisation’s productivity will be impacted as longer restores increase the downtime on critical systems.

The book is broken into five chapters, exploring backup to tape, disk staging, different data deduplication approaches and architectures and sizing considerations. The fifth chapter outlines an extensive list of nearly 50 questions and recommended steps IT leaders and CIOs should consider when choosing a disk-based backup product.

To obtain a copy of “Straight Talk About Disk Backup with Deduplication,” visit www.exagrid.com/straighttalk.