10 Things You Need to Know Now About Data Deduplication

Avoid managing multiple deduplication repositories by deploying a deduplication solution that will scale a single repository as needed.

Make sure your deduplicated data is available: look for disk mirroring and appliance clustering to guarantee immediate availability for fast recovery from a failure.

Deduplication should be tightly integrated with backup/archiving processes; ideally you should be able to install the deduplication system on the same appliance as your backup application.

The deduplication system should be open and able to run on the server/appliance of your choice; deduplication can be deployed as a storage appliance, gateway appliance or even a software appliance. Choose what fits into your environment and answers your needs.

The solution should be easy to implement and non-disruptive to your existing infrastructure.

A good deduplication system will not degrade the restore time required for restructuring data.

Remember that the cost of a deduplication system is both material (hardware and software) and management cost; factor in both when evaluating your ROI.

Don’t forget that deduplication can be deployed on a virtual appliance, saving you hardware cost and allowing you to take full advantage of your virtual infrastructure.

Don’t focus on the theoretical dedupe ratio that vendors publish; the ratio is contingent on many factors unique to each deployment.

Choose the solution that gives you the best performance to support your backup window.