eWEEK Labs Walk-Through: Data Domain OpenStorage

Data Domain equipment can be configured to send daily reports back to the mother ship. The reports are reviewed to determine if the unit is functioning properly.

Although this is a mundane example, it illustrates the process of data deduplication. The first time we copied 1.8GB of JPEGs to the DD690, we achieved a dedupe rate of 1.1, which was only due to file compression. The second copy achieved greater storage savings (9.4x), and dedupe was clearly at work with the third copy’s 80.7x space savings.

We initially copied a virtual machine to the DD690. We then copied the same VM with no changes for a 450x space savings. We then ran the VM and created a new text file, which would normally require copying the entire VM to make a backup. However, in this case, only the changes needed to be copied, and we maintained a 51x space savings.

Data Domain Enterprise Manager is a browser-based GUI that is primarily intended for system monitoring, not system management.

Replication management using the GUI is not only pleasing to the eye and powerful, but also provides a glimpse of the direction Data Domain is headed in with the overall GUI.