Guest Column: Data De-Duplication And Disk-To-Disk Backup Systems

By Tony Asaro and Heidi Biggar, Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc.

Disk-to-disk (D2D) backup, combined with data de-duplication, is an emerging category within the data protection ecosystem that ESG believes has the potential to change the entire landscape. D2D backup with data de-duplication solutions minimizes the disk and/or the bandwidth capacities required to store and move data used for protection purposes.

Data de-duplication solutions optimize physical storage and bandwidth by using less of each to protect your data. Why use less? Perhaps the first and most obvious answer is to reduce cost. By reducing capacity requirements, fewer disks are needed to store the same amount of effective data. This translates to less bandwidth being required to move and copy that data across the WAN. Beyond these cost reductions, there is perhaps an even more important reason to employ data de-duplication. By reducing the amount of storage and bandwidth required to protect data locally and remotely, organizations can significantly improve their levels of data protection and their ability to recover data quickly, reliably and cost effectively.

Reducing the cost of the storage required for backup data in turn enables greater data protection and recoverability. For years, there has been a considerable disparity between the prices of tape and disk-based storage systems. As such, it was an economic "no-brainer" to store backups on tape. In fact, the cost delta between tape and disk was so dramatic that despite the inherent weaknesses of tape—which include complexity, unreliability and slow performance—it is still the preferred media for storing backup data today.