The StoreOnce backup appliance aims to provide a one-stop shop for all your data deduplication needs -- wherever the data resides in the system.
Hewlett-Packard
made a significant leap ahead in the storage systems market Nov. 29 when it
launched a fast-processing, enterprise-scale, disk-based backup system with an
advanced data deduplication feature.
HP,
which calls the new dedupe scheme "Deduplication 2.0," claims that
its B6200 StoreOnce Backup System can process and restore data at the breakneck
speed of 28TB per hour, which the company contends is at least three times the
rate of competing systems that it chose not to name.
However,
eWEEK can name them. Comparable
backup systems are provided by companies such as EMC (with its Data Domain
line), CommVault (with Simpana), Fujitsu, Dell (with Compellent), IBM (with XIV) and Oracle (with Pillar
Data Systems).
In
HP's mind, Deduplication 2.0 is a unified process designed to break down silos
of data caused by the use of multiple products and platforms, Sean Kinney,
director of product marketing for HP Storage, told
eWEEK.
One Dedupe for All Workloads
"The
[conventional] storage world is mostly about point products to solve point
problems within the customer's environment," Kinney said. "In the
deduplication 2.0 world, it should be about one common deduplication algorithm
across the enterprise, really for deployment independence."
Thus,
StoreOnce aims to provide a one-stop shop for all your data deduplication
needs-wherever the data resides in the system, Kinney said. The efficiencies
are found in simpler operation, fewer specialists required to do the job and
centralized control.
The
B6200 can scale to a massive 768TB (512TB usable) of raw capacity, Kinney said.
There is a lot of overhead required for RAID-based systems in order to handle
all that processing. Users can start out with as little as 48TB, then add
capacity as needed, because it's all modular.
StoreOnce
also features an automated restart that provides failover between nodes; this
automatically restarts failed backup jobs using other disks, Kinney said. To
further its high availability, HP supports replication from 384 devices in a
fan-in configuration. To lessen costs, HP bundles source licenses for
replication with remote devices.
Adaptive Micro-Chunking
Finally,
the B6200 has something called "adaptive micro-chunking." HP has
chosen a variable 4KB chunk size for its data blocks that uses a sliding
windows-type algorithm that adjusts for the type of data format being
deduplicated. This can result in deduplication performance as high as 35-to-1,
Kinney said.
Kinney
said the StoreOnce Backup System starts at $250,000 for a 48TB deployment. The
system is available now.
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Chris Preimesberger was named Editor-in-Chief of Features & Analysis at eWEEK in November 2011. Previously he served eWEEK as Senior Writer, covering a range of IT sectors that include data center systems, cloud computing, storage, virtualization, green IT, e-discovery and IT governance. His blog, Storage Station, is considered a go-to information source. Chris won a national Folio Award for magazine writing in November 2011 for a cover story on Salesforce.com and CEO-founder Marc Benioff, and he has served as a judge for the SIIA Codie Awards since 2005. In previous IT journalism, Chris was a founding editor of both IT Manager's Journal and DevX.com and was managing editor of Software Development magazine. His diverse resume also includes: sportswriter for the Los Angeles Daily News, covering NCAA and NBA basketball, television critic for the Palo Alto Times Tribune, and Sports Information Director at Stanford University. He has served as a correspondent for The Associated Press, covering Stanford and NCAA tournament basketball, since 1983. He has covered a number of major events, including the 1984 Democratic National Convention, a Presidential press conference at the White House in 1993, the Emmy Awards (three times), two Rose Bowls, the Fiesta Bowl, several NCAA men's and women's basketball tournaments, a Formula One Grand Prix auto race, a heavyweight boxing championship bout (Ali vs. Spinks, 1978), and the 1985 Super Bowl. A 1975 graduate of Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif., Chris has won more than a dozen regional and national awards for his work. He and his wife, Rebecca, have four children and reside in Redwood City, Calif.Follow on Twitter: editingwhiz
