Experiencing Data De-Duplication: Improving Efficiency and Reducing Capacity Requirements

White Paper


Experiencing Data De-Duplication:
Improving Efficiency and Reducing Capacity
Requirements By Heidi Biggar Storage Analyst, Data Protection Enterprise Strategy Group February, 2007 Copyright © 2007. The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ESG White Paper Experiencing Data De-Duplication
Table of Contents
Table of Contents .................................................................................................................................................. 1 Introduction............................................................................................................................................................ 2 Old Habits Die Hard............................................................................................................................................. 2 Enter Data De-duplication.................................................................................................................................... 3 Overview................................................................................................................................................................. 4 Data De-Duplication Defined ............................................................................................................................... 4 Applying Data De-Duplication to Traditional Backup........................................................................................... 5 Data De-Duplication's Benefits............................................................................................................................ 7 Implementing Data De-Duplication...................................................................................................................... 8 Data De-Duplication the Quantum Way .............................................................................................................. 9 Conclusion........................................................................................................................................................... 10
Enterprise Strategy Group Page 1 ESG White Paper Experiencing Data De-Duplication
Introduction Old Habits Die Hard For years, we were mired in a deep data protection rut. We backed up the only way we knew how: nightly to tape. As for recovering data, we crossed our fingers and prayed we'd never actually be asked to do a restore. After all, recovering from a system outage or some other type of data-loss event was uncertain and could take days, weeks or more to complete. Downtime wasn't just a potential risk of tape-based backup recovery. It was an everyday concern - one with potentially devastating business consequences. And for the many users who still back up solely to tape today, these risks still exist. But that was before ATA/SATA disk and, importantly, well before data de-duplication. With the advent of ATA/SATA disk as a backup target, data protection got much better seemingly overnight. Backup speeds improved drastically and, importantly, so did recovery performance. For the first time, we started thinking about data protection in recovery, and not just backup, terms. And our recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs) started getting a lot more aggressive. Today, disk-based data protection solutions, such as virtual tape libraries (VTLs), are widely used by organizations of all types and sizes, and ESG expects adoption to continue to increase over the next 12 to 24 1months. In fact, in a recent ESG Research survey , 32% of respondents said they already use VTL for backup operations and another 32% said they plan to implement the technology within two years (Figure One).
Figure One: Current VTL Use for Backup
Does your organization currently utilize virtual tape library (VTL) technology for backup operations? (Percent of respondents, N = 163)
No, and we have no plans to implement VTL within the next 24 Yes, 32%months, 36%
No, but we plan to implement VTL within No, but we plan to 12 months, 15%implement VTL within 24 months, 17%
However, while backing up to VTL or other disk-based backup targets has gr... [download for more]