|
‘Deduplication offers ten times RoI’
Fred Rybczynski, Senior Technical Advisor at Quantum, who has more than four decades of experience in the field of storage solutions, is often referred to as the ‘father of backup technology.’ Network Computing caught up with him to discuss, among other things, the company’s recently-launched deduplication appliances, the DXi3500 and DXi5500 .
What is the USP of the data deduplication solutions offered by Quantum?
The area of data storage has always been interesting. We have adopted the process of inline deduplication in our appliances which is 10-50 times more effective.
In this process, as the data enters a box, it is deduplicated and stored. The advantage for customers in such a solution is that they can use a virtual tape library (VTL) and networked attached storage in the same appliance at the same time.
Using an automated process, deduplication allows transfer of less data, which translates into lower bandwidth requirement. This is the advantage of using deduplication along with replication. Expenses and delays are mitigated, there is reduction in bandwidth traffic, and storage capacity is increased.
Thus, without changing their existing processes, customers can perform backup processes and manage their catalogs. It provides customers more reliability and offers more restore points. Also, the restore times are shortened.
What kind of return on investment can enterprises expect from deduplication appliances?
If the price of a VTL is N, then the price of deduplication equipment is going to be 2N. However, the capacity potential that a deduplication appliance offers when compared to a VTL is in the ratio of 20:1.
Customers can pay N and adopt the old way of adding data on tape, or they can choose deduplication by paying 2N and get a 20N return on investment.
Deduplication has emerged at the right time, and customers can address their backup requirements with this technology. They can also address their DR (Disaster Recovery) requirements if they copy offsite data with a combination of deduplication and replication.
How have you addressed the issue of migration from one duplication appliance to another? For example, if a customer decides to migrate from DXi 3500 to DXi 5500, what would be the necessary upgrades?
This is an interesting thought…I hadn’t thought about it this way. For migration to DXi 5500 customers will need to cross the maximum data capacity limit for DXi 3500, which is 4.2 Tbytes, and also upgrade their hardware.
What we have been telling customers is to take the data off and write it on tape, then bring in the replacement appliances and write data back from the tape.
But you have triggered a thought which we have missed. I can replicate data in a DXi 3500 then take it out and insert DXi 5500 or any other appliance and replicate it back. This is certainly feasible. (Laughs and promises to give me royalty for this idea.)
Would data deduplication signal a threat to the tape market?
(Removes his spectacles, cleans the glasses before wearing them again.) Anyone who says that tape is dead is wrong. When it comes to the bottom-line of physical capacity or dollar per Gbyte, tape is always going to be cost-effective.
For example, assume that an enterprise is dealing with a backup of MS Exchange data at 1 Tbyte per month. In one year it will amount to 12 Tbytes and in five years it will be 60 Tbytes. This would amount to some serious spending by the enterprise if it selects a deduplication appliance as an archive target.
The only alternative left in such a scenario would be an old friend—tape. We feel that over a period of time tape will transition from being a backup target to being an archive target. So if I am carrying out replication for DR in my company, it would be on tape.
A recent survey in the Asia-Pacific revealed that 45 percent of the CIOs in this region believed that increase in storage management costs was one area that needed immediate attention from storage vendors. How does Quantum plan to address the issue?
We are trying to build storage products where the value offsets the cost of the appliance, and I would say that deduplication fits this model.
We are taking a given size of data storage for adding intellectual property and technology. So if we are charging 2N for a product and a customer derives a value of 20N, then we are addressing the storage management cost for the CIOs.
We are doing this in multiple ways. As my deduplication ratio increases, my dollar per Gbyte reduces. In this way, CIOs get more data capacity for less dollars. The additional value we are delivering is providing customers with more restore points, which translates into making data available on demand.
How do you see for Quantum progressing in the next couple of years?
Our focus will be on data management. We are moving away from our old role of being a storage supplier and have donned a new role of being consultants for our customers and partners. We will not focus on a particular technology, but rather on problem-solving methods.
|