The company claims to be the first major storage provider to offer users the ability to "store more with less" across backup, archival, compliance, and primary data stores.Network Appliance on May 15 launched a new, improved version of its data deduplication software, which can be used across a variety of environments, including backup, archival, compliance storage, and primary data sets as diverse as home directories and genomic data.
Most deduplication software is currently dedicated to backup and archival storage.
NetApps A-SIS (Advanced Single Instance Storage) software is now available in its NearStore R200 and FAS storage systems for the first time.
Deduplication—which replicates only the unique segments of data that need to be stored—can cut the amount of data by 50 to 90 percent, not only saving storage space but also increasing bandwidth, lowering power and cooling requirements due to "resting" or inactive servers, and saving companies money on the bottom line.
Click here to read more about Quantum adding deduplication to disk backup.
NetApps A-SIS deduplication reduces the amount of storage enterprises need to purchase and manage, and the reduction in quantity of physical storage translates into savings in power and cooling costs and data center real estate costs.
"Deduplication, at its core, is another form of data virtualization, in which one physical copy represents many logical copies," said Tony Asaro, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group in Milford, Mass.
"Deduplication creates a domino effect of efficiency, reducing capital, administrative and facility costs. We believe that data deduplication is one of the most important and valuable technologies in storage."
NetApp A-SIS deduplication technology has been in customer use for approximately two years, exclusively in conjunction with Symantec NetBackup. As of today, the same deduplication software can be deployed with a wide range of data types.
A-SIS deduplication can be enabled on NetApp FAS and NearStore R200 storage systems with one command, the spokesperson said. It runs seamlessly in the background, with virtually no read/write performance overhead, and is entirely application transparent, a spokesperson for Sunnyvale, Calif.-based NetApp said.
CommVault, a leading provider of Unified Data Management solutions, has completed testing of A-SIS deduplication with CommVault backup software. Based on the results, users can achieve up to a 20:1 space savings over traditional models, with the possibility of experiencing even greater compression ratios over time, a company spokesperson said.
"The space savings numbers that A-SIS deduplication offers users speak for themselves," said David West, vice president of Marketing and Business Development at CommVault.
"With A-SIS deduplication, users will be able to increase the number of data protection and archive copies they can store on NetApp FAS or NearStore storage systems, and gain even greater storage efficiencies."
Intuitive Surgical, a global leader in the rapidly emerging field of robotic-assisted minimally invasive surgery, is a customer that uses NetApp deduplication.
"NetApp has decreased our day-to-day storage management needs for home directories and databases, significantly helping to reduce the TCO," said Steve Lucchesi, vice president, Information Systems at Intuitive Surgical.
"NetApp deduplication provides us with yet another method for conserving space on our storage systems while retaining high performance."
For more information on NetApp deduplication, visit this Web site, or visit the NetApp Tech Talk podcast on deduplication here.
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