Deduplication now focusing on primary storage - Storage Technology Magazine - Page 1

Deduplication now focusing on primary storage

IT managers have become as obsessed with reducing the amount of redundant data in their storage as Americans are with reducing their waistlines. But this trend has been focused mainly on secondary storage--backup and archiving apps, where most of the redundant data lives in storage infrastructures.

A handful of vendors are trying to take duplicate data out of primary storage even though there's a lot less redundant data in primary (tier 1) storage than in secondary storage. So data reduction ratios in primary storage will be much lower than the 15:1 or 20:1 ratios common when deduping secondary storage. "But you'll be getting a lot more bang for the buck because tier 1 disk is more expensive," says Eric Burgener, senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group in Hopkinton, MA.

But as the use of virtualization increases, more and more virtual machines are running on one physical server. This creates multiple instances of OSes and apps, which in turn will increase the level of redundant data on expensive primary storage.

The next question is: When data reduction is performed on primary storage, is it still dedupe or something else (usually compression)? One could claim that, at the file level, Microsoft Office offers some kind of generic dedupe functionality, according to John Matze, VP of business development at

    Requires Free Membership to View

    When you register for SearchStorage.com, you’ll also receive targeted emails from my team of award-winning editorial writers. Our goal is to keep you informed on the hottest topics, the latest news and the biggest challenges you face as a storage professional today.

    Rich Castagna, Editorial Director

    By submitting your registration information to SearchStorage.com you agree to receive email communications from TechTarget and TechTarget partners. We encourage you to read our Privacy Policy which contains important disclosures about how we collect and use your registration and other information. If you reside outside of the United States, by submitting this registration information you consent to having your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States. Your use of SearchStorage.com is governed by our Terms of Use. You may contact us at webmaster@TechTarget.com.

Hifn, which makes card-level data reduction accelerators. But "that's a partial dedupe that exists in Microsoft's file system," which he calls "poor man's data deduplication."

"Deduplication is well-suited for static, redundant data, but it's not well-suited for primary storage," says Peter Smails, VP of worldwide marketing at Storwize, which began shipping a primary storage data reduction appliance in 2005.

This was first published in November 2008

Join the conversationComment

Share
Comments

    Results

    Contribute to the conversation

    All fields are required. Comments will appear at the bottom of the article.