Dell puts customers on fast track to storage efficiency

"Today's dedupe solutions are predominantly purpose-built appliances. This will migrate into an integrated, software-based model it's the natural progression of technology features. They start off as dedicated devices and then migrate into the broader software stack."

Darren Thomas, vice president and general manager for Dell storage.

Dell Point of View:

- Data deduplication is getting significant attention from a growing number of customers looking to manage ever-increasing storage growth by eliminating redundant data. Dell believes data deduplication is just one - not the only - option to help customers meet this challenge.

- Dell is taking a customer-specific approach in which Dell consultants will guide customers in determining how any or all of the following optimisation considerations can help them manage their storage as efficiently as possible:
- Thin provisioning
- Reclaimed storage
- Storage virtualization
- Automated load balancing
- Data tiering and classification
- Deduplication
• Dell's deduplication strategy is to foster and encourage the rapid evolution of dedupe technology into a storage environment where the functionality exists everywhere. As deduplication matures quickly, it will move beyond backup storage - where it primarily resides today -- to other data types including near-primary, archive, file and object storage solutions.
• Dell believes that incorporating deduplication functionality into ISV, application and storage software can provide significant benefits to customers including:
- More affordable, better performing solutions than purpose-built appliances.
- Simplified management through single console interfaces for data protection and management.
- Reduced network traffic across WAN and LAN infrastructures leading to improved, more cost effective disaster recovery environments.

The News:

• New Storage Consulting Services Capabilities, Options
Dell now offers a suite of end-to-end consulting services to help customers understand deduplication technology, quantify the benefits, and design a deduplication solution to best meet their needs. Dell's consulting services are different in that they provide practical, action-oriented plans to deliver specific, predictable and measured outcomes through high-impact, short duration projects.
- The Dell Storage Simplification Workshop helps customers cut through the marketing clutter surrounding deduplication and develop a clear understanding of the considerations and potential benefits. In a free, half-day session, Dell consultants work with customers to determine a potential solution or technology areas that can yield measureable results with predictable outcomes, pricing and timelines.

- The Dell Backup, Recovery, Archive Assessment helps customers avoid wasting resources on improper or overly optimistic solutions. While general ROI numbers pervade the industry, benefits can vary widely across environments, applications and methods. This assessment delivers a detailed report built upon metrics and insights from the customer's own environment showing an impact analysis with estimates of storage and/or network traffic reduction, amount of backup data, backup frequency, retention periods and frequency of data changes.

- The Backup/Restore Stabilization, Optimization and duplication Design service helps customers avoid one-size-fits all solutions that fail to understand their unique requirements. These services design a tailored solution for each customer environment with specific product recommendations, service catalog and implementation plan.

• New PowerVault DL2000
Dell announced a new version of its PowerVault™ DL2000 powered by CommVault Simpana 8.0 - providing a good example of the integrated deduplication approach. The industry's first and only integrated hardware, software, and services solution that comes with CommVault Simpana 8.0 software factory installed, the PowerVault DL2000 is a data protection solution that includes end-to-end block-based deduplication for backup, archive and replication.
- PowerVault DL2000 offers data duplications of up to 20:1. Using this capability, an organization can economically keep weeks of complete recovery copies of their data on a small disk footprint. The PowerVault DL2000 uses up to 90% less tape media for offsite archiving solutions. Dell and CommVault have created a calculator to help customers estimate the benefits of deduplication based on their weekly backup size.

- The PowerVault DL2000 is the highest performance deduplication solution in its price class with deduplication rates of almost 1.5 TB per hour when performing weekly full backup operations. Appliances with similar performance from other vendors can cost significantly more.

- To reduce primary storage use, an optional Email Archiver license lets an organisation move infrequently accessed data from production servers and archives it to lower cost DL2000 disk storage or PowerVault tape. End users and applications retain normal access to the archived items at all times. By archiving server data with PowerVault DL2000 an organisation can achieve smaller backups and faster recoveries.