Guest Column: Leveraging Single-Platform Backup For Mainframe De-Duplication

Traditionally, enterprise mainframe shops have maintained two distinctly separate processes for daily backup and restore operations. While the mainframe continues to handle certain business processing tasks, most companies have implemented newer open systems servers alongside the aging mainframes to handle additional tasks.

While this backup technique is still widely used today, it is largely an inefficient and complex process. Fortunately, alternatives exist that leverage new technologies such as virtualization and deduplication to reduce the cost and complexity of requisite data backups in a heterogeneous storage environment.

As technology marches forward and new capabilities are brought to market, none has had as significant an impact on the storage industry as data deduplication. Deduplication is a reduction technique that eliminates redundant information from daily backups for more efficient transmission to, and storage at, remote recovery sites. Many of these sites are required by federal law to reside a minimum of 200 miles from the primary base of operations.