Data De-duplication and Disk-to-Disk Backup Systems

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ESG Report
Data De-Duplication and D2D Backup Systems
Disasters will happen. They can range from a file being lost, to a data center being flooded, to an entire
building being destroyed. Some of these incidents are common ones, such as file loss or data corruption,
systems and infrastructure going down and becoming unavailable, disk drives failing, and users err
(remember, humans invented human error). Then there are the somewhat common incidents, including
facility disasters involving flooding or fire. Even though the odds are less likely, there may be major natural
disasters to contend with including earthquakes, tornadoes, and hurricanes. And there have been a few
recent incidents of large geographic blackouts that take hours or even days to correct.
The fact that most companies and organization still use tape as their primary defense against these events
is troubling. Once, there was an economic rationalization to use it, but data de-duplication-enabled
solutions invalidate this. There are end-users that are mandated to use tape for governance and regulatory
reasons, but they can use data de-duplication-enabled solutions to augment their environments. For those
companies not so encumbered, they should certainly consider data de-duplication to complement and even
replace their tape systems.
Data de-duplication is a powerful form of virtualization—the ability to logically view and manage physical
assets for greater utilization and automation of otherwise manual tasks. Data de-duplication achieves both
of these goals by significantly reducing the amount of capacity required to store backup data—5:1, 10:1,
20:1 and beyond. Additionally, data de-duplication reduces or even eliminates the need to manage tapes.
Dealing with tape media management is archaic in this digital age. It is analogous to someone still
stubbornly hand washing the dishes even though he or she has dishwasher right next to the sink.
Tape will be around for some time to come. There are still governance and regulatory mandates that
ensure its survival. Additionally, incumbency often trumps innovation and the change management policy
is to not change anything. There is still a great deal of education that also needs to occur. Not enough
people know about data de-duplication or are skeptical about its abilities.
Data de-duplication is very real and provides excellent value. ESG believes that it will become prevalent
over time within D2D backup and all storage and application tiers. However, it is important to not only
evaluate data de-duplication capabilities, but the entire product, customer references, market and company
success. ESG encourages you to ask the questions outlined in this report in order to leverage the benefits
that can certainly be derived by data de-duplication. Data de-duplication changes the data protection
landscape and is one of the few categories that offers such a clear “no-brainer” value proposition.
Enterprise Strategy Group Page 14