I'd like to steer this around a bit. Our sales folks are saying they are losing TSM opportunities to de-dup vendors. What specific business problem are customers trying to solve with de-dup?
I'm thinking the following: 1. Reduce the amount of disk/tape required to storage backups. Especially important for all an all disk backup solution. 2. Reduce backup times (for source de-dup I would think. No benefit in target de-dup for this). 3. Replication of backup data across a wide area network. Obviously if you have less stored you have less to replicate. Others? Relative importance of these? Does TSM in and of itself provide similar benefits in its natural state? >From this discussion adding de-dup at the backend does not necessarily provide much though it does for the other traditional backup products. Since we don't dup, we don't need to de-dup. Help me get it because aside from the typical "I gotta have it because the trade rags tell me I gotta have it", I don't get it! Thanks, (Once again not afraid to expose my vast pool of ignorance...) Kelly J. Lipp VP Manufacturing & CTO STORServer, Inc. 485-B Elkton Drive Colorado Springs, CO 80907 719-266-8777 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----Original Message----- From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Curtis Preston Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2007 1:08 PM To: ADSM-L@VM.MARIST.EDU Subject: Re: [ADSM-L] Data Deduplication >As de-dup, from what I have read, compares across all files on a >"system" (server, disk storage or whatever), it seems to me that this >will be an enormous resource hog Exactly. To make sure everyone understands, the "system," is the intelligent disk target, not a host you're backing up. A de-dupe IDT/VTL is able to de-dupe anything against anything else that's been sent to it. This can include, for example, a file in a filesystem and the same file inside an Exchange Sent Items folder. >The de-dup technology only compares / looks at the files with in its >specific repository. Example: We have 8 Protectier node in one data >center which equtes to 8 Virtual Tape Libraries and 8 reposoitires. The There are VTL/IDT vendors that offer a multi-head approach to de-duplication. As you need more throughput, you buy more heads, and all heads are part of one large appliance that uses a single global de-dupe database. That way you don't have to point worry about which backups go to which heads. Diligent's VTL Open is a multi-headed VTL, but ProtecTier is not -- yet. I would ask them their plans for that. While this feature is not required for many shops, I think it's a very important feature for large shops.
