The big news on the second day of EMC World was all about new Data Domain software that speeds up deduplication.
EMC’s (NYSE: EMC) fast-growing data deduplication product lineup overshadowed some midrange announcements surrounding the company’s fully automated storage tiering (FAST) technology, suggesting just how big an opportunity the data storage giant sees in its dedupe and backup business.
As reported last month, Data Domain and Avamar deduplication products more than doubled their sales year-over-year. Frank Slootman, president of EMC’s backup and recovery systems division (encompassing Data Domain, Avamar, NetWorker and Disk Library), headed up the press conference.
“Data Domain alone may well surpass $1 billion in sales this year, as the demand is huge,” said Slootman.
That growth will be assisted by the latest upgrade to Data Domain. Known as Boost, it speeds up both backup and deduplication. What it does, essentially, is move the bulk of the work from the Data Domain target device back upstream to the backup media server.
“Boost is a software client that transfers the compute-intensive work of segmentation and fingerprinting onto the backup server,” said Slootman. “This reduces the load on the backup server and frees up even more bandwidth for the Data Domain appliance.”
He reported 20 to 40 percent drops in backup load due to fewer copy requests. Instead of sending all the data to the Data Domain target, the backup server determines what needs to be forwarded and then transmits only that info. That means 80 to 99 percent less backup LAN bandwidth and a 50 percent faster Data Domain box. Boost is currently available for Symantec NetBackup and Backup Exec. In the second half of the year, it will be integrated into EMC NetWorker.
Slootman gave some insight into the guts of the system. Traditional backup servers typically use protocols such as NFS or CIFS. However, these wire protocols were not developed for backup and they perform it inefficiently. Data Domain first began to bypass the old approach when Symantec (NASDAQ: SYMC) released its Open Storage Technology (OST).
“OST already claims 22 percent of the Data Domain customer base,” said Slootman. “It dramatically speeds up performance and users love it.”
Boost is a generalization of Data Domain’s OST-related code so it can operate beyond the constraints of NetBackup, and it has added functionality that makes it faster and more efficient than the OST-only version. Used with a DD880 deduplication device, it changes throughput from 5.5 TB per hour to 8 TB.
In a few months, those installing EMC NetWorker will find Boost already included as a free addition. When they install the backup software, their Data Domain box will recognize it. Meanwhile, existing Data Domain customers can receive the software free of charge as a plug in for NetBackup and Backup Exec as part of their maintenance contracts.
“EMC is serious about integration,” said Slootman. “We have made it possible to replicate directly from the NetWorker console with no need to touch Data Domain.”
Source:http://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/hardware/news/article.php/3881516
