EMC Beefs Up Its Deduplication Offerings

EMC is expanding its deduplication storage system with a new midrange entrant into the Data Domain product family, the Data Domain DD670. The new platform offers up to 76TB of raw capacity and 56TB of usable capacity. EMC says customers can expect up to 2.7PB of logical storage capacity via deduplication. EMC has also announced a new deduplication option for Mainframes, the Disk Library for Mainframe (DLm). The option will allow a DLm960 to extend on-site retention, optimize replication and lower overall disk and tape storage costs. A third product, the DL5200, is a new scalable Virtual Tape Library (VTL) system reaching up to 2.8PB of logical capacity.

Deduplication is a hot topic because of its ability to reduce storage volumes and speed backups. According to an InformationWeek Analytics survey of over 400 IT professionals, 24 percent of respondents are using deduplication, while another 32 percent are evaluating or piloting the technology. EMC's Data Domain products deduplication data inline, which means the data stream is checked for redundancy in real time, before anything gets written to disk.

EMC claims the Data Domain DD670 is twice as fast as competing products. The company says the DD670 can back up 5.4TB per hour with the optional DD Boost software, or 3.6TB per hour without. EMC announced the DD Boost software in May of this year. The DD Boost software resides on backup servers and speeds the process by only sending data that has been added to the server since the previous backup. Other optional software packages include DD Virtual Tape Library, DD Replicator, DD Retention Lock and DD Encryption. Enabling encryption will exact a performance hit on backups, says EMC. The DD670 ships with redundant power supplies.

The product can serve as a hub for remote site fan-in. Enterprises with smaller or remote sites can back up and deduplicate local data and then replicate those backups to a central facility for consolidated backup management. Up to 90 Data Domain systems can replicate back to the DD670. The increased capacity is in part due to the enhanced ES20 shelves, which now support up 32TB of SATA Drives (16 drives at two TB per drive). Those shelves are also available for the DD80 and EMC's Global Deduplication Array. With higher density shelves, users will see improvements in price per terabyte, better rack efficiency, lower power consumption and simplified cable management.

The DD670 is hardly the first deduplication system for EMC. The company's deduplication line spans seven products. At the low end, the DD630 offers backup speeds of 1.1TB/hour and up to 430TB of logical capacity. At the high end the DD880 promises 5.4TB/hour (8.8TB per hour with DD Boost) and up to 7.1PB of logical capacity. Pricing for the DD670 starts at $110,000. The DL5100 and DL5200 virtual tape libraries are currently available, and start at $390,000 and $204,000 respectively. Expansion option for DLm960 will be available in the third quarter of 2010.