AllChoosing the Right Deduplication Solution for Your Organization
Choosing the Right Deduplication Solution for Your Organization
Client 1
Client 2
Client 3
Media server 1
Client 100
Media server 3
Media server 2
Media server 5
Media server 4
Media server 6
SAN or local storage 10 / 15K
Figure 2. With software-based deduplication, avoiding logjams requires adding
more media servers, which increases costs and complexity.
To avoid logjams, customers often add
media servers equipped with greater
CPU and memory resources (see
Figure 2). While this approach spreads
out the extra load, it also obviously
increases complexity and costs.
Appliance-based deduplication
Because purpose-built backup to disk
appliances absorb deduplication and
replication workloads, current backup
environments can remain unchanged.
Complexity is avoided because there
is no need to beef up the number
and horsepower of media servers
(see Figure 4).
3
Purpose-built backup to
disk appliances absorb
deduplication and
replication workloads, so
the media server workload is
limited to:
• Processing client backup data
• Creating tape copies from disk
Figure 3. Appliance-based
deduplication puts no extra load on the
media server.
With appliance-based
deduplication, there
is no need to beef
up the number and
horsepower of media
servers.
Client 1
Media server 1
Purpose-built
deduplication
appliances are built
to simultaneously
handle deduplication
loads across multiple
backup applications.
Client 2
Client 3
Client 100
Media server 2
Purpose-built backup-to-disk appliance
Figure 4. Appliance-based deduplication does not put additional load on
media servers.
What if the backup environment is
already equipped with bigger and faster
media servers with no logjams? Does
this diminish the value of appliancebased deduplication? Definitely
not. In fact, if desired, purpose-built
backup to disk appliances can offload
the deduplication processing from
the appliance to a number of media
servers. If enough media server
resources become engaged, the
deduplication process for backups can
become faster than the appliance itself.
Costs
Vendors of backup software
deduplication and compression
solutions tout significant costs
savings when compared to dedicated
appliances, pointing out that existing
investments in SAN, NAS and DAS
storage systems can be utilized to
support backup storage needs.
However, these vendors fail to include
in their calculations the tenfold
increase in media server workloads
with software deduplication solutions
and the resulting significant cost of
spreading this additional workload
across a greater number of media
servers with big CPUs and memory
to avoid logjams. In addition, meeting
service level agreements (SLAs)
often requires fast — and therefore
4
Media server 3
expensive — solid state disk (SSD)
drives be used for target repositories.
These costs wash out the touted
backup software deduplication and
compression savings.
Flexibility
Software-based deduplication
Each backup software application
implements a proprietary approach
to deduplication and compression.
Thus, if an environment uses multiple
backup software applications, two or
more software-specific deduplication
technologies are being implemented,
which can make the environment more
complex and difficult to manage.
Appliance-based deduplication
On the other hand, purpose-built
deduplication appliances are not
anchored to any specific backup
software product — they are built to
simultaneously handle deduplication
loads across multiple backup
applications. This capability is
extremely valuable to IT environments
that use multiple backup products.
Moreover, as updates or changes to
backup software occur in the future,
the deduplication appliance can
continue to be used, maximizing the
value of the investment.
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