Expanding Role Of Data Deduplication
Posted by
Behzad Behtash
May 25, 2010
However, Reed has run into problems with legacy applications, such as the company's Xerox DocuShare document management system, that must run on super-large volumes. That system has grown to more than 4 TB on a single Windows iSCSI volume on a NetApp 3040 cluster, which doesn't support deduplication on volumes larger than 4 TB. Data deduplication is particularly effective in reducing the storage capacity required for disk-to-disk and backup applications. It can also reduce the amount of bandwidth consumed by replication and disaster recovery. We discuss specifics of how data dedupe works in detail in our full report.
For those on the fence, recent market events--notably EMC's and NetApp's bidding war for Data Domain--illustrate the importance of dedupe. Companies that don't at least investigate the benefits could be hamstrung by spiraling storage costs.
Lay The Groundwork
Before we go more into dedupe, we want to give a shout out to a cornerstone of any solid data life-cycle management strategy: tiered storage. By matching different types of data with their appropriate storage platforms and media based on requirements such as performance, frequency of access, and data protection levels, tiered storage lets CIOs save money by applying expensive technologies, including data deduplication and thin provisioning, to only the appropriate data.
In a tiered strategy, Tier 1 storage is reserved for demanding applications, such as databases and e-mail, that require the highest performance and can justify the cost of serial-attached SCSI, Fibre Channel SANs, high-performance RAID levels, and the fastest available spindles--or even SSD drives.
Direct attached storage (DAS) is still the top choice of our survey participants for Tier 1 storage of applications such as databases and e-mail. Fibre Channel came in a close second, with 45% of respondents reporting use of Fibre Channel SANs, mainly for Tier 1 storage. Fibre Channel remains strong despite countless predictions of its rapid demise by most storage pundits--and the downright offensive "dead technology walking" label attached by a few.
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