Disk-based backup helps organisations address many of their data challenges, but can also result in a high level of capital expenditure. Consequently, data deduplication technology should be a key part of any data backup and protection strategy.
Rapid storage growth across organisations, both inside and outside the data centre, has challenged traditional backup approaches whereby data would be written to tape each night and sent to remote sites for disaster recovery protection.
With the business world now operating 24×7 and the level of electronically held information continuing to grow exponentially, it’s simply no longer acceptable for the system to experience ‘downtime’ for data backups and related maintenance.
One of the key ways that organisations can reduce the sheer weight of data being pushed to backup is through data deduplication. Data deduplication involves looking for redundant instances of backup data at a sub-file or block level across all backup data and all locations, thereby allowing companies to reduce the amount of storage needed for backups. It can occur as part of the backup process on the source server — greatly reducing the bandwidth needed for backup data — or as a separate process after data has been sent to a backup application, but before writing it to disk. In addition to improving the backup process, data deduplication technology can enhance disaster recovery by reducing the bandwidth needed to transmit large volumes of data between different sites.
The Solutions
Symantec NetBackup PureDisk offers secure, storage-optimised, data protection for remote offices, data centres, and virtual environments. NetBackup PureDisk combines disk-based backup with global data deduplication technology to improve backup performance and reduce both the storage and bandwidth consumed from backups. Web-based administration and data recovery allow flexible administration from any location as well as drag-and-drop recovery of files. With less tape media, storage, and network resources to manage, IT teams can more consistently enforce data management and compliance policies across the organisation.
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HP D2D Backup solutions with StoreOnce deduplication offer disk-based data protection for data centres and remote offices. Automate and consolidate the backup of multiple servers onto a single rack-mountable disk device to improve reliability while reducing the potential for errors caused by media handling. In addition, HP StoreOnce deduplication software enables cost-effective long term offsite data retention on disk. HP StoreOnce software delivers the only technology that deduplicates data only one time. In addition, deduplication enables replication with lower bandwidth requirements, thereby making it easier to consolidate backup information from multiple remote locations.
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DXi disk-based deduplication from Quantum improves protection and reduces costs. Customers report an average 125% increase in backup performance, 87% fewer failed backup jobs, and typical disk capacity reductions of 90% or more – 95% in virtual environments. Plus, you can reduce media purchase expenses by nearly one-half, cut overall backup management time by 63%, and report 97% average lower media recall costs – all with a typical four- to six-month payback on investment. While data deduplication is important, it’s even more important to know how easy it is to integrate this technology into your existing backup. Deduplication solutions from Quantum offer simple NAS and virtual library interfaces, and built-in replication provides automated remote protection for satellite offices over existing WANs. They also link easily to tape systems, providing a single point of management and support. Best of all, these solutions work with all leading backup software, including Symantec’s OpenStorage interface, for seamless integration into your existing backup system.
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CommVault’s Simpana® 9 deduplication solution fully integrates both source and target-side deduplication into a unified data management solution that dramatically reduces time-to-backup. CommVault was the first backup and recovery software provider to fully integrate deduplication into a single solution. Building on its leadership in this area, Simpana 9 software expands deduplication benefits to address real bottlenecks by bringing efficiencies as close to the source as possible. The third generation of CommVault deduplication is designed to reduce data at the source, use fewer network resources, dramatically shorten backup windows, and eliminate the lock-in associated with appliance based approaches. Furthermore, Simpana software continues to be the only solution that provides integrated deduplication to tape, allowing businesses to take advantage of tape media for long term retention.
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