EMC Corp. took a slight detourfrom overtly hyping the private cloud on Tuesday to unveil new software aimedat increasing deduplication speed on Data Domain storage systems.
The software, called EMC DataDomain Boost, will move the work traditionally done on the DD deduplicationstorage itself and shift the process to the backup server. EMC said DD Boost isbased on an open storage protocol from Symantec Corp.
“We’re turbo charging thethroughput of our systems,” said Frank Slootman, the former CEO of Data Domainwho currently heads EMC’s backup and recovery systems division. He added that customers would be ableto boost backup and deduplication speeds by up to 50 per cent.
The company also promised lessoverall I/O impact to backup servers due to fewer copy requests, as well asless backup LAN bandwidth strain because systems are only forwarding over unique,compressed segments. The concept is that cutting out data copy overhead willreduce the load on backup LANs and servers.
Slootman said the announcement isanother step in changing traditional storage protocols — such as network-attachedstorage and virtual tape libraries — from a principal storage vehicle to afallback plan.
But EMC did note that while DDBoost optimizes the backup process, it does not provide any help to the restoreprocess.
The news came on day two of itsEMC World 2010 conference — a show that has been incredibly focusedon helping sell private clouds to customers. The theme of the show was echoedby CEO Joe Tucci, who told audiences during his opening keynote that tomorrow’senterprise IT landscape will feature “thousands of private clouds” workingtogether with a smattering of public cloud providers.
Guy Chapman, senior engineer forstorage and virtual infrastructure at SunGard Financial Systems LLC, wasimpressed with the announcement and it’s potential ability to cut down onbackup complexity.
“I like that the plug-in isaddressing operations concerns like bandwidth usage,”he said.
Andrew Fuss, manager oftechnology and engineering for Providence, R.I.-based CharterCARE HealthPartners, said he had gotten used to a “26 hour” work day while working withtape. He added that utilizing DD Boost with EMC’s NetWorker should solve anumber of issues related to management and backup speed.
DD Boost software is immediatelyavailable to use with Symantec Corp.’s NetBackup or Backup Exec products. EMCalso plans to release the software for use on EMC NetWorker in the second halfof 2010.
Rounding out EMC’s day twostorage announcements, the company announced a slew of new midrange storageupdates set to hit the market in July and also aimed at helping move midrangecustomers into the private cloud.
EMC’s Clariion and Celerrastorage systems will see the addition of EMC’s Fully Automated Tiering (FAST)technology — software that automates the movement and placement of dataacross storage resources as needed. The storage systems will gain caching and data compression featuresthrough EMC FAST Cache and will now have the ability to automatically move databetween various storage tiers during application workload spikes.
In addition to enabling automatedpolicies, the changes will also help storage admins make better use ofEnterprise Flash Drives (EFDs).
“This is all about the softwarethat controls these tiers and makes them seamless,” said Rich Napolitano,president of EMC’s unified storage group.
The EMC storage systems will alsoinclude support for VMWare vStorage APIs, which is a move aimed at virtualmachine storage support.
