1. Invest in an enterprise-class deduplication solution
An enterprise-class solution is built to backup, deduplicate, and restore terabytes or even petabytes of backup data in a single system. They deduplicate across all of the backed up data—for superior capacity savings. They also save significant administrative cost.
There are smaller VTLs that may help slow data growth at the department level, but they do not scale performance or capacity enough to handle an enterprise data center.
Although these systems claim that you can "cluster them", they still need to be managed individually and they do not deduplicate across the various systems. They will cost you significantly more in administrative labor than they save in deduplication.
2. Consider the cost of performance
Avoid VTL or disk systems that require you to over-purchase performance to stay within your backup window while completing deduplication.
Choose a system that can load balance the backup, deduplication, and capacity reclamation tasks across multiple nodes to handle large-volume backups. In fact, some VTL systems can backup and restore data fast enough to be used in place of costly primary storage for some data. Save on capital expense by choosing a solution that lets you add the performance you need, when you need it.
3. Lengthen online retention times
A VTL that delivers both high performance and highly efficient capacity reduction through deduplication can drive the cost per terabyte stored lower than tape. In this case, the added ease-of-use, faster restore times, and near perfect reliability make long online retention times more cost-effective than tape.
Author: Miklos Sandorfi, Chief Technology Officer, SEPATON, Inc. Miki can be reached at msandorfi@sepaton.com
Have you read these related articles?
Newsletter:
