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Unitiv, Inc. is a professional provider of enterprise IT solutions. Unitiv delivers its services from its headquarters in Alpharetta, Georgia, USA, and its regional office in Iselin, New Jersey, USA.
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The article recently published about data deduplication on Forbes.com, "A Better Way to Store Data" is an excellent opportunity to hear from Bill Hobbib, VP Marketing of Exagrid: The issues with tape backup that Bill mentions in the article ("Backups fail. Restores fail. It's probably the dirtiest job left in IT, but there has been no way to solve it") and the significant value of disk backup with deduplication brings are among many things that make ExaGrid a great company in an exciting space.I invite you to consider the analogy made in the article between old VCRs with VHS tapes and DVDs. How many of those reading this post still use VHS tapes for viewing movies at home? And how many of you moved to DVDs or DVRs, even before your old VCR died? Tape libraries, like the old VHS tapes, represent "old technology that's well past its limits." Just like DVD players have reached a price/performance level that for most people has made them a no-brainer versus VCRs, we're now at the inflection point where disk with deduplication costs about the same as tape. Given the advantages of faster backups and restores, greater reliability, ease-of-use, scalability, and cost parity, it should be a simple decision to move to disk. Do you agree?
For more information on Exagrid, please go to http://www.unitiv.com/partners/storage-partners/exagrid/.
I was chatting with fellow CIOs recently and discussing architecture design in the era of server virtualization and disaster recovery. The one idea that I brought up was that data deduplication should be considered. I noticed a few blank stares which made me realize this may be a new term or concept.Data deduplication (often called "intelligent compression" or "single-instance storage") is a method of reducing storage needs by eliminating redundant data. Only one unique instance of the data is actually retained on storage media, such as disk or tape. Redundant data is replaced with a pointer to the unique data copy. The absolute best example for practicality is email. In a typical email system, there might be 100 instances of the same one megabyte (MB) file attachment. If the email platform is backed up or archived, all 100 instances are saved, requiring 100 MB storage space. With data deduplication, only one instance of the attachment is actually stored. Therefore each subsequent instance is just referenced back to the one saved copy. In this example, a 100 MB storage demand could be reduced to only one MB. Data deduplication offers other benefits. Lower storage space requirements will save money on buying more storage, i.e. disks. I realize that the cost of disks has continually gone down, but for those who rely on tape for offsite storage, it reduces the time for tape backups to run and may ensure a clean backup. Data deduplication also reduces the amount of data that must be sent across a WAN for remote backups, replication, and disaster recovery. In actual practice, data deduplication is often used in conjunction with other forms of data reduction such as conventional compression and delta differencing. The triad of techniques can be very effective at optimizing the use of storage space.Again, If you do not know what you are doing in this space, back away, and hire experts to help you out.
Dan Webber is a CIO in Atlanta, GA. He delivers his unique perspective as Chief Information Officer on technology, business, and the Atlanta IT industry. He is a recent recipient of Oracle's CIO of the quarter award.
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