By Caitlin Moore, Product Marketing Manager, Data Domain
In Heidi’s recent post PBBA — A New Twist on a Popular Backup Approach, she highlights IDC’s observation that integration is one of three key factors fueling the backup appliance market. A great example of this type of end-to-end integration is EMC Data Domain Boost software, which is tightly integrated with Avamar, NetWorker and third-party applications.
Integrated approaches have many pluses, but one of the key benefits is it gives you more flexibility in your environment. Specifically, it breaks free of the mold of more conventional approaches to deduplication. Let me explain from a Data Domain Boost perspective.
A traditional backup infrastructure without DD Boost has an application server, a backup server and the Data Domain system. Without DD Boost, all the data is sent from the application client to the backup server and from the backup server to the Data Domain system where the deduplication processing occurs. With DD Boost, parts of the deduplication process are distributed to the backup server.
This flexibility translates into important customer benefits, specifically:
- Performance increases up to 50%
- Reduced LAN bandwidth requirements
- Reduced backup server/application client resources
- Simplified management be enabling backup application managed replication
However, this is just the beginning. Over the past year, we have further integrated DD Boost with EMC backup applications. Starting with EMC NetWorker, in addition to the capabilities we just discussed, we’ve announced advanced integration between DD Boost and the NetWorker Module for Microsoft Applications. This enables DD Boost to distribute parts of the deduplication process to an application client for Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, and SQL Server backups. This is driving new efficiency for NetWorker customers who use Data Domain.
We also recently announced Avamar integration with Data Domain. The integration takes advantage of the combined intellectual properties of both Avamar and Data Domain. In particular, Data Domain Boost is exploited to distribute the deduplication process and minimize blocks moved.
This approach is ideal for environments made up of fewer, larger files with a great deal of change. Now you can direct backups to optimal systems based on workload attributes, not technology. This means faster, more-efficient backup of Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, Exchange, SharePoint and VMware images. The integration of Avamar with Data Domain provides the scale and performance for the workloads where it’s needed the most, and it results in the industry’s best integration of deduplication technologies. This extends the reach of Avamar and accelerates the backup of larger, high-change-rate environments.
We understand the benefits of deduplication alone are no longer enough to meet increasingly complex backup requirements and that a flexible backup environment is multi-faceted. With DD Boost, we’re giving organizations the tools they need to adapt to their changing environments.
