How to Implement a Successful Data Deduplication Strategy

The IT organizations of today cannot rely on the data protection model of yesteryear, which can be characterized as tape-based, decentralized and populated primarily with physical servers. Virtualization and the large amounts of data to protect mandate a new approach to protecting and managing information.

These days, with 50 percent annual data growth, how can organizations protect all of their data within an ever-shrinking backup window? How quickly can virtual machines or complex applications such as SharePoint actually be restored? And how much data can businesses really afford to lose in the event of an outage?

Just as next-generation tools such as disk-based backup are revolutionizing data protection, data deduplication is enabling a new era of information management. Now, with the ability to deduplicate data everywhere and manage it centrally, organizations are able to not only improve data protection operations and lower costs but move towards a more systematic approach for managing information growth.

Why data deduplication?

Simply stated, data deduplication is the process of eliminating redundant data. Deduplication backs up only unique data at the sub-file level. Needless to say, in environments where storage needs continue to intensify and holding down costs remains a key issue, deduplication offers welcome relief for today's IT organizations.

Once familiar with data deduplication, it should not be a surprise that by eliminating redundant data, deduplication enables companies to reduce storage costs. What many do not know, however, is that deduplication has other useful benefits such as bandwidth savings, faster backups, backup consolidation and easier disaster recovery—depending on where and how it is used.

Next: Measurable Benefits from Data Deduplication >>

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