Entries categorized under “Deduplication”

Charge back is one of those pesky little details that every IT person hates to address as it can be painful to implement and then equally cumbersome to administer. Yet the upside of implementing it provides data centers the ability to justify their costs as well as opens the door for them to have conversations with their clients as to what additional service offerings they want. (read more)

Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is well on its way to becoming the next big trend in virtualization in enterprises but before that can happen, a viable back end storage solution must emerge that can cost-effectively deliver VDI's conflicting capacity, cost and performance demands. One specific configuration that end-users find particularly appealing are those storage solutions that deliver both deduplication and SSDs. (read more)

Desktop and laptop protection has been at most a blip on the radar screen of IT priorities. But with these devices increasingly being used to store more critical enterprise data, organizations are putting new emphasis on backing up data stored on these devices for reasons ranging from increasing productivity to corporate compliance and data security all the way to business intelligence. (read more)

Deduplication is indeed a technology with tremendous benefit for organizations, and a single deduplication algorithm across an entire enterprise will certainly revolutionize backup and disaster recovery operations. Although realization of that vision is still some time away, the technology building toward it can be seen in the HP D2D4324 Backup System with StoreOnce deduplication. (read more)

To date EMC's deduplication solutions broke down primarily into one of two camps: EMC Avamar or EMC Data Domain. The only problem with offering deduplication in these two variations is that as organizations redesign their backup infrastructures, they are put in a position where making a decision as to which deduplication solution to use becomes an either/or choice. Today's announcement that EMC has integrated Avamar with Data Domain means organizations no longer have to make that call. (read more)

Over the last few months I have been talking to a number of end-users about their implementations of deduplication technology. In the process of doing so, they have provided me with valuable insight into how they are implementing deduplication when using disk-based targets that deduplicate data. Based upon that feedback it appears that most are adhering to the following five guidelines as they implement deduplication in their environments. (read more)

About a year ago DCIG decided to do something completely different in the analyst space: a side-by-side independent comparison of products in a particular market segment in the form of a Buyer's Guide. The end result of that was the DCIG 2010 Midrange Array Buyer's Guide. But believe it or not, a year has already passed since that was produced and it is now time to update and refresh that Buyer's Guide for a number of reasons. (read more)

One of the more interesting but overlooked tidbits of information that came out of EMC's "Mega" event on January 18, 2011, was EMC's new support for the IBM i backup to EMC Data Domain deduplication storage systems. While that might seem insignificant when compared to some of the other news that EMC announced that day, it means something to the hundreds of thousands of IBM i users looking for a better, faster way to back up their data. But what they may not know and will be encouraged to find out is that the IBM i and deduplication are literally made for one other. (read more)

Right here, right now, it's time to state what may sound preposterous to some and obvious to others. Disk has officially forever replaced tape as the primary target for backup software. But the reasons for this go much deeper than disk just now being cheaper, faster and easier to manage than tape. (read more)

Depending on whose numbers you believe, enterprise organizations may achieve deduplication ratios that range anywhere from as low as 4x to as high as 500x. Yet these ratios primarily make for good headlines and are only seen in rare circumstances in real world enterprise environments. Further, these numbers are of little use when enterprises are trying to set realistic deduplication expectations. (read more)

This is it. The last day of 2010. So time to reveal what the top three most viewed blog entries on DCIG's website were in 2010. (read more)

Moving from "D2D2T" to "D2D2D" is sometimes seen as an unattainable hurdle that enterprise organizations cannot overcome when tape is used for secondary roles such as archiving or disaster recovery (DR). But replacing the "T" in "D2D2T" with a "D" is now practical, possible and affordable. Doing so simply means enterprises need to demonstrate that disk offers the same or more functionality than tape when used in these capacities while costing the same or less. (read more)

Over the last few months I have been doing a series of interviews with end users and then preparing more formalized DCIG case studies based upon these interviews. In these particular instances, all of the end users have been EMC Data Domain users but what I have found particularly intriguing in my conversations with these end users is that while "data deduplicaton" initially grabs their attention, after EMC Data Domain gets implemented, it simply becomes the icing on the backup to disk cake. (read more)

CommVault® Simpana® 9 has been out for just about two months now and, having had a chance to discuss some of its new features with its product management team as well as look them myself, these are the top five (5) features that caught my eye as being the most likely to make an immediate impact on enterprises from a data management perspective. (read more)

More storage capacity and faster performance in new storage systems is anything but new these days. If anything, in this day and age enterprise organizations want to feast on these features PLUS options that keep them lean by enabling them to more efficiently use these resources, requiring less time to manage them and quickly integrating them with their emerging virtual environments. It is these features and more that NetApp served up to enterprises earlier this week. (read more)

It is almost universally recognized that protecting and recovering applications and application data that reside on Linux, UNIX, VMware or Microsoft Windows servers is a necessity no matter what the cost. Yet most organizations still fail to have a good response for backing up the growing amount of data that resides on the desktops and laptops because of the 1 and 2 TB HDDs that they now possess. (read more)

To say that FalconStor has had some struggles over the past few weeks would probably be a bit of an understatement. Any time that a company's CEO abruptly resigns with "certain improper payments" cited as the reason for his departure, it can leave a company floundering and seeking direction. However having had an opportunity to chat with FalconStor's new CEO, Jim McNeil, at SNW over dinner this past week, he is already helping FalconStor move past the CEO's departure and regroup and refocus under his leadership. (read more)

Last week Josef Pfeiffer, a Symantec NetBackup product manager, posted a comment in response to a blog entry that I wrote regarding the CommVault® Simpana® 9 release. In his comment, he touched on one of the new debates that is occurring in the new battle for backup by posing the following question, "Why not upgrade to the latest release (NetBackup 7) and get more functionality rather than settle for less features and a big migration that may or may not work?" (read more)

The combination of cloud computing, cloud storage, inexpensive hardware, virtualization and heightened user demands for near real time backup and recovery are creating a crisis in traditional backup methodologies. It is a crisis in the sense that there is no way any emerging virtualized data center is going to find that how these backups work and are managed even slightly acceptable in the very near future. This suggests that in 2011 the transformation in backup that many have predicted will occur and it will go well beyond just deduplicating backup data stored to disk. (read more)

Even as interest by small and midsize enterprises (SME) in cloud computing and cloud storage continues to swell, the last thing any SME wants is a solution that introduces more complexity into its environment. Rather solutions are needed that automatically plug into the cloud and take advantage of the features that it offers. (read more)

I cannot think of a technology event that I have ever attended where record crowds were the best indicator that the economy is still struggling. But if there was ever an exception to that rule, VMworld 2010 is probably it. (read more)

Talk all you want about the different features and functions found in backup software. If an IT administrator in a small and midsize enterprise (SME) thinks about backup at all it is in the context of "How easy is it to get it to work?" and "How much does it cost?" However, calculating any backup software's ease of configuration and price is tricky at best. (read more)

If past VMworld conferences are any indication, more than 10,000 individuals will head to San Francisco the last week of this month looking for the latest advancements and news regarding VMware at VMworld 2010. But with so many organizations confronted with new backup challenges that are part and parcel of any VMware implementation, as well as looking to take advantage of the new recovery options that it creates, do not be surprised if data protection steals some of the spotlight at this year's event. (read more)

Usually everyone waits until the end of the year to talk about trends in the storage industry but being fully in the throes of the dog days of summer here in Omaha, I thought I would use this week's weekly recap blog entry to reflect on some of the trends that are taking place in 2010. In doing so, I looked back to a blog entry that I wrote in January 2010 where I forecast six subtle storage trends for 2010 to see how right (or wrong) I was on my predictions. Turns out I was more right than I anticipated but I have encountered some trends that I did not expect. (read more)

Not that many years ago the debate around how to best deduplicate data centered on inline versus post processing deduplication as data was archived or backed up. While that debate still simmers, a new one is brewing that was spurred in part by the recent announcement that Dell plans to acquire Ocarina Networks. (read more)