Backup is Deduplication's First Stop

During 2007 the terms "deduplication" and "backup" became almost inextricably linked with products like NEC's HYDRAstor helping to contribute to this association. However for companies looking to introduce HYDRAstor into their backup environment, they should take into account that data deduplication is a destination and backup only the first stop in that journey.

Though HYDRAstor is intended as a possible replacement for tape, it does not need to replace all tape immediately... or ever. While replacing tape with disk is probably the objective for most companies - and one that may occur over time - this will not occur overnight. In the meantime, companies need to keep data offsite as part of their comprehensive data protection plan, which for most companies means that they will still need to copy data from disk to tape.

This configuration plays to HYDRAstor's strength. It uses NAS to present a large disk target to the backup software which gives it a distinct advantage over using Virtual Tape Libraries (VTLs). In order for the backup software to appropriately track the data when copying data from a virtual tape cartridge to a physical tape cartridge, the amount of data on a physical tape cartridge needs to match the amount of data on a virtual tape cartridge. However if the virtual tape cartridge is not filled to capacity then the physical tape cartridge is not filled either.

Using HYDRAstor as a large disk pool or cache changes this dynamic. When data is copied from disk to tape, the backup software copies data from the HYDRAstor and fills up each physical tape cartridge. Even though HYDRAstor stores the data in a deduplicated state, because HYDRAstor decouples Accelerator nodes from Storage nodes in its grid architecture, companies can increase performance if needed.

Backup is not the only way that companies can use HYDRAstor. While using it as a backup target is certainly the most popular option right now, using it to store archived data or as a network file server are other ways that companies can also look to use HYDRAstor.

Data deduplication is changing the backup game but it has the potential longer term to change how companies store much of their data. It's when companies start to view deduplication from this larger viewpoint that they can begin to understand the significance of HYDRAstor's underlying grid architecture. It can adapt to meet the different ways companies need to use it in the backup process but gives companies the option to use it to meet multiple, different requirements.