New Simpana 8 Deduplication Features Should Give Enterprises Pause on their Deduplication Strategy
Today's release of CommVault Simpana 8 continues to reflect CommVault's commitment to deliver enterprise data protection and management using a single product with multiple application modules. Yet it is Simpana 8's new global block-based data deduplication feature and new ability to deduplicate data stored to tape that is likely to raise excitement. Making these features integral to Simpana 8, CommVault does more than just give enterprises another deduplication option or simply lower tape costs. Instead it starts to put CommVault on a collision course with deduplicating storage appliances and even traditional tape devices while giving organizations new reason to ponder their longer term deduplication strategy.
Data protection in whatever form it takes is becoming almost inextricably linked with data deduplication. In this respect, Simpana is no stranger to deduplication as it has provided file-based deduplication (single instance store or SIS) for some time. But the big news in Simpana 8 is the introduction of client-side, global block-based data deduplication and extension of deduplication to tape.
The benefits of client-side deduplication are already well known in that it reduces the overhead on physical servers and network infrastructure by deduplicating new blocks of data on the client before transmitting them. This helps to reduce backup windows, reduces the performance overhead on both the source server and target storage device and ultimately results in less traffic on the network.
The advantage that block-based deduplication provides over file based deduplication will vary by organization. Using the new block-based deduplication, it is now reasonable for organizations to expect to achieve a four to five fold improvement in deduplication rations assuming they can attain a 20:1 data reduction ratio using block-based deduplication versus the file-based deduplication method that delivers approximately a 4:1 ratio.
Organizations that will benefit the most from this new form of block-based deduplication are those that use Simpana to protect MS Exchange data stores and Oracle and MS SQL databases. File-based deduplication provides little or no benefit from a deduplication benefit for application databases since databases are more regularly updated and file-based deduplication techniques cannot analyze these data stores to remove empty spaces. This is a major reason organizations would still see benefits using block-based deduplicating storage appliances in conjunction with the previous release of Simpana.
Simpana 8 changes that assumption. Now that organizations can deduplicate data at a block level instead of at a file-level, the reason to deploy a block-based deduplication storage appliance to store backup data becomes moot.
In fact, the argument against using a deduplication appliance for organizations using CommVault becomes even stronger due to CommVault's decision to extend the storage of deduplicated data to tape. Normally when organizations implement deduplication, only data stored to disk is deduplicated. This does not take into account that many organizations still copy data to tape for archival and offsite data protection purposes. But to store deduplicated data on tape requires they first reconstitute the deduplicated data before copying it to tape. This adds overhead and time to the copying process as organizations must first rehydrate data plus rehydrated data consumes significantly more tape than if it were left in a deduplicated state.
Simpana 8 eliminates this need to reconstitute backup data before sending it to tape. Instead it copies deduplicated data directly from disk to tape as it can track what deduplicated data is stored on each tape and then rebuild files without adding undue latency to restore times. By overcoming this important hurdle, it speeds the time organizations can copy data from disk to tape plus it can reduce the number of tapes that organizations need to create and store data on by as much as 90%. This reduces both upfront tape cartridge and drive costs and ongoing offsite storage costs for tape since less tape is sent offsite.
Now having said all this about Simpana's new deduplication capabilities, there a couple of other new features in Simpana 8 that I also wanted to highlight and will plan to dive into further detail in forthcoming blog entries:
Enterprises want a data protection and management platform that can gracefully age and grow. The introduction of desktop and laptop support, more compliance functions and new integration with enterprise storage systems for more recovery option and agentless support for virtual servers indicate that CommVault is delivering on these less-publicized enterprise demands. So while its new block-based deduplication and deduplicating data to tape are the ones that will likely grab the headlines and prompt organizations to rethink their deduplication strategies, it is these other evolutionary changes that also impact enterprises on a day-to-day basis that will keep them loyal to CommVault and coming back for more.
Data protection in whatever form it takes is becoming almost inextricably linked with data deduplication. In this respect, Simpana is no stranger to deduplication as it has provided file-based deduplication (single instance store or SIS) for some time. But the big news in Simpana 8 is the introduction of client-side, global block-based data deduplication and extension of deduplication to tape.
The benefits of client-side deduplication are already well known in that it reduces the overhead on physical servers and network infrastructure by deduplicating new blocks of data on the client before transmitting them. This helps to reduce backup windows, reduces the performance overhead on both the source server and target storage device and ultimately results in less traffic on the network.
The advantage that block-based deduplication provides over file based deduplication will vary by organization. Using the new block-based deduplication, it is now reasonable for organizations to expect to achieve a four to five fold improvement in deduplication rations assuming they can attain a 20:1 data reduction ratio using block-based deduplication versus the file-based deduplication method that delivers approximately a 4:1 ratio.
Organizations that will benefit the most from this new form of block-based deduplication are those that use Simpana to protect MS Exchange data stores and Oracle and MS SQL databases. File-based deduplication provides little or no benefit from a deduplication benefit for application databases since databases are more regularly updated and file-based deduplication techniques cannot analyze these data stores to remove empty spaces. This is a major reason organizations would still see benefits using block-based deduplicating storage appliances in conjunction with the previous release of Simpana.
Simpana 8 changes that assumption. Now that organizations can deduplicate data at a block level instead of at a file-level, the reason to deploy a block-based deduplication storage appliance to store backup data becomes moot.
In fact, the argument against using a deduplication appliance for organizations using CommVault becomes even stronger due to CommVault's decision to extend the storage of deduplicated data to tape. Normally when organizations implement deduplication, only data stored to disk is deduplicated. This does not take into account that many organizations still copy data to tape for archival and offsite data protection purposes. But to store deduplicated data on tape requires they first reconstitute the deduplicated data before copying it to tape. This adds overhead and time to the copying process as organizations must first rehydrate data plus rehydrated data consumes significantly more tape than if it were left in a deduplicated state.
Simpana 8 eliminates this need to reconstitute backup data before sending it to tape. Instead it copies deduplicated data directly from disk to tape as it can track what deduplicated data is stored on each tape and then rebuild files without adding undue latency to restore times. By overcoming this important hurdle, it speeds the time organizations can copy data from disk to tape plus it can reduce the number of tapes that organizations need to create and store data on by as much as 90%. This reduces both upfront tape cartridge and drive costs and ongoing offsite storage costs for tape since less tape is sent offsite.
Now having said all this about Simpana's new deduplication capabilities, there a couple of other new features in Simpana 8 that I also wanted to highlight and will plan to dive into further detail in forthcoming blog entries:
- New agentless backup options for VMware ESX servers. Rather than requiring the installation of agents on each virtual machine (VM) or relying upon backup administrators to monitor each ESX server, Simpana now communicates with the ESX server. Using this technique, it can discover exactly what VMs reside on an ESX server host and then use VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) to protect newly created VMs. In larger enterprise environments, Simpana can also leverages VMware vCenter's information about the virtual infrastructure to discover what VMs are on each ESX servers and then protect them.
- Extends its content indexing, data protection and search features to organizational desktops and laptops. This new feature closes the loop on CommVault's enterprise data protection strategy for these devices but as importantly gives organization new flexibility to index and search data on them as well as introduces templates that organizations can use to start to automate their compliance requirements.
Enterprises want a data protection and management platform that can gracefully age and grow. The introduction of desktop and laptop support, more compliance functions and new integration with enterprise storage systems for more recovery option and agentless support for virtual servers indicate that CommVault is delivering on these less-publicized enterprise demands. So while its new block-based deduplication and deduplicating data to tape are the ones that will likely grab the headlines and prompt organizations to rethink their deduplication strategies, it is these other evolutionary changes that also impact enterprises on a day-to-day basis that will keep them loyal to CommVault and coming back for more.
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