Entries categorized under “Deduplication”

Last week's blog took a look at the 10 most read blogs in 2009 that were written in 2009. This week I wanted to step even further back and reflect upon the top 10 most read blogs in 2009 regardless of when they were written as I find this insightful in two ways. It lets me know what information continues to hold the attention of readers on as well as what topics from the past might become new trends in 2010. So while there is definitely some overlap between the two, there are also some entries that appear on this list that knock some of the top 10 blogs from last week off the list. (read more)

Deduplication is now widely recognized as a prerequisite technology for next generation data protection. While this is a correct view, to classify it as the only new technology that organizations need to consider in order to successfully redesign their backup infrastructure does not paint a complete picture. More specifically, the recent and rapid maturation of continuous data protection (CDP) has put organizations in a position where they need some criteria to make an informed decision as to how to proceed with these two technologies. (read more)

This is one of my favorite blogs of the year to write. Even though this is only the second time since DCIG launched its blogging site two years ago that I have had the opportunity to write a blog in this format, I have been looking forward to looking back all year. In case you have not yet figured it out, today I take a look back at the top 10 most read blogs in 2009 on the DCIG site. However this year I am doing a two part series with today's blog examining the 10 most read blogs in 2009 that were written in 2009. (read more)

It is hard to believe it is approaching the end of 2009 already but what a year it has been. While 2009 has arguably been one of the toughest economic years in anyone's recent memory (and I for one am not convinced the economic slump is by any means approaching an end), from a storage technology perspective it has been one of the most innovative and exciting in recent memory. Deduplication has gone main stream, cloud storage is on every organization's radar screen and all organizations (storage end-users and providers alike) are beginning to grasp just how disruptive solid state drives (SSDs) are going to be. (read more)

In the last year or so a number of articles and blogs have appeared on the topic of inline and post-processing deduplication in an attempt to answer the question, "What is the best approach for deduplicating data during disk-based backup?" Unfortunately what these pieces fail to quantify is, "What objectives are enterprise organizations looking to accomplish with disk-based backup and recovery?" The problem this creates is that without first establishing these objectives, it makes it very difficult to arrive at any sort of meaningful conclusion about how to best proceed with deduplication. (read more)

Perhaps the biggest industry buzz coming out of the October 2009 SNW show was not any product announcement or new technology but an interview with EMC's Frank Slootman that appeared on SearchDataBackup.com. Minimally this interview made a number of revelations about EMC's current strategy and future direction for its Data Backup Division. But of greater concern for those enterprises planning to use EMC's products, it revealed a lack of understanding on Slootman's part in terms of what enterprise organizations are looking for in disk-based backup and deduplication solutions. (read more)

While attending SNW last week and receiving a briefing from WhipTail Technologies CTO James Candelaria, Bob Farkaly, Director of Marketing for Exar's Storage System Products, was never far away. Because of the brevity of my meeting with Candelaria, I never really had a chance to formally talk with Farkaly at the show and connect all of the dots between Exar and WhipTail, other than to assume some component of Exar was an integral component of WhipTail's Racerunner solid state storage appliance. (read more)

Deduplication contributes to expedited backups and recoveries, high backup and recovery success rates and frees up IT staff time associated with managing these tasks. Yet in the face of these benefits that deduplication offers, many midsize organizations still continue to use other technology as their backup target, citing cost and complexity as their primary reasons for not adopting deduplication. It is these specific obstacles that the new DXi6500 family from Quantum seeks to overcome. (read more)

In today's blog I simply wanted to recap some of the tidbits of information that I picked up while chatting with various folks while walking and talking at the Fall 2009 SNW show as well as comment on some interesting developments at a couple of companies. (read more)

Yesterday and today I am attending the Bare Metal Data Conference in Nashville, TN, which is a small gathering by all accounts (50 attendees). But what I enjoy about this conference is that it is a gathering of a select group of records management providers that provide paper and tape storage along with online backup services to their clients. The invaluable insight that I glean from this conference is a reality check as to the current state of tape. This time it revealed something new: Tape is still doing just fine but for the first time I am detecting genuine concern among the attendees about tape's future. (read more)

Making backup software easy and simple to use is the mantra for almost all products today. Yet knowing whether or not users will perceive a product as "simple and easy to use" is almost impossible to quantify until it is widely deployed in the field and users get some hands on experience with it. Well, apparently Symantec received a lot of feedback on what would make its NetBackup PureDisk 6.5 simpler and easier to use and took it to heart. (read more)

It is hard to believe that it is October 2009 already and that we are over a year removed from last year's economic meltdown even though everyone keeps talking about it like it just happened yesterday. However, the upside of the situation that we are in right now is that it is prompting more organizations to think outside of the box and look for better ways to do things.This is resulting in companies choosing some technologies that they may have overlooked or not considered in the past. (read more)

September and October are the traditional months that many midsize businesses start to forecast what projects they hope to accomplish in the upcoming year and then put together budgets in support of those plans. Projects currently being given the highest priority are those that are power efficient, space efficient and cost efficient to meet organizational "Green" initiatives. (read more)

The NEC HYDRAstor grid storage platform is best described as one that can evolve and grow on an as-needed basis while introducing newer technologies as they become available. Today's announcement continues to reinforce this compelling value proposition that the HYDRAstor platform delivers. In today's software release NEC improves HYDRAstor's performance, adds in-flight encryption to its replication feature and extends its support of application-aware deduplication to Tivoli Storage Manager and EMC NetWorker all at no extra charge to HYDRAstor users. (read more)

Dedupe is an easy concept to grasp. At its most basic level it reduces storage requirements and touts the improvement in backup and recovery times. It seems as if it is a "win-win" scenario and, for the most part, it is. But let's not lose sight of the fact that dedupe is still in its infancy and is being continually fine-tuned and changed. This should keep us from becoming lackadaisical in our perception of this technology and how it is still in its early stages. (read more)

I arrived home from VMworld 2009 last night after spending much of the flight reflecting on what I learned, the conversations that I had and the technologies that I had a chance to view. However at every conference there is usually one technology that piques my interest and this one was no different as I had a chance to do a deeper dive into one company's method of doing virtual machine backup while at the show. What made this technology transcend other virtual machine backup approaches is that it is by far the most scalable, easiest to implement and simplest to manage that I have yet encountered. (read more)

A recent Enterprise Systems article reported on the results of a recent SHARE survey of about 400 IT professionals. It revealed that nearly 70% of these users had virtualized some or all of their servers, 50% of their storage infrastructure and some are even starting down the path of virtualizing their desktop and network infrastructures. But what is notably absent in this article is any discussion around data protection in these newly virtualized infrastructures. (read more)

Over the last couple of weeks my weekly recap blogs touching on the subject of cloud storage has prompted a lot of emails and phone calls to me in the background to discuss this topic so I wanted to touch on that again this week. In addition, I've also been doing a little research into some of Data Domain's claims (and the counterclaims of its competitors) in regards to the advertised performance numbers on its new DD880 and under what conditions enterprise users might expect to achieve those numbers. Finally, I wanted to comment on some of the statements that I made last week about a CEO change and a corporate acquisition and end up with a new rumor that is circulating in the storage industry. (read more)

Two topics - really on opposite ends of the storage spectrum - captured my attention this week. The first had to do with an announcement that Imation made this past Wednesday regarding it being the first and only company currently licensed to manufacture LTO-5 tape media. The other had to do with cloud storage and some of the conversations that I continued to have with various providers in terms of how ready (or not ready) cloud storage is for prime time. (read more)

Again, I have nothing against deduplication when used appropriately and other factors are uncontrollable. But in a properly architected database I am still skeptical about the fit. Databases are just too dynamic with temporary sort, rollback, and redo areas and high transaction rates that make me question what there could possibly be to dedup in the first place. (read more)

Yesterday's announcement of the new Nexsan DeDupe SG solution should particularly appeal to current resellers. As a company, Nexsan already has a solid reputation as a storage system provider, is experiencing steady growth and was on track to do an IPO last year before last fall's stock market decline. But maybe more attractive to resellers, Nexsan sells 100% of its product through the channel. (read more)

Changes in buying behavior among companies are probably a big motivation behind Quantum's recent announcement to include esXpress backup software with its disk-based DXi-Series backup systems. While most mid-size companies and larger are looking to deploy disk-based backup that incorporates deduplication into their backup infrastructures (which the DXi-Series certainly addresses) it is not always that simple. (read more)

Most VARs who have had success selling Data Domain systems over the last couple of years are feeling a bit uncomfortable right now: EMC has announced its official take-over of Data Domain. VARs have made a good living on Data Domain, contributing to Data Domain's success as having one of the best-selling, fastest-growing deduplication storage systems in the market. VARs are now feeling vulnerable to EMC's goodwill - or probable lack thereof. (read more)

Maybe it has always been this way, but when a vendor hosts a customer event, it always seems that you (Mr. Customer) must pay to go and to learn about their (Mr. Vendor's) product. To me, this has always seemed somewhat backwards. You (Mr. Customer) pay a whole bunch of money for their product in the first place, then another 15 - 20% annually for support, then more for training and then, to add insult to injury, they make you pay for airfare, hotel and a registration fee to attend their annual customer event. (read more)

"We were getting to the point where we had more and more data and less and less time to back it up", says Mike Fishell, Director of Information Technology for Hay House. "And then there were the increasing expenses of doing the backups. Between time, money and storage space, we needed a new solution." (read more)