This is an exciting time at the moment with a number of cool projects. One is which to minimise the number of media tapes we use and the other is to reduce the backup window. The answer, disk de-duplication! I’ll be looking at Symantec, HP StoreOne and Quantum offering this service, what features it offers and the costs. I’ll also be looking at budget basic system, all which must integrated into Netbackup.
After my first meeting with a Symantec sales person (not really Symantec) it turns out that no de-duplication which actually reduce the amount required to backup to tape. After trying to sell me every product under the Symantec range I found out the useful information:
These devices reduce the backup time and increase the backup rates. (Well it’s disk right, so expected)
It does cut the backup set 10:1 which is pretty good and in some cases 20:1 but lets not get too excited. So you 15TB of data will be around 1-4TB on disk. It uses block by block comparison and if 2 block are the same it just backup up one block.
The Symantec has a couple of appliances, a Media Server with disks and the de-duplication appliance. One is a bunch of disks in a chassis and the other is bunch of disks with a media server built in. I guess there’s some software built in to optimise the performance.
The de-duplication anyway you cut it is a license, which is or is not included with the device. We will see what the top venders have to offer for their BIG BUCKS! (And yes, you may need to sell you house to buy a pair!) No I’m serious!! LOL