Selection Criteria For Mission-Critical Environments

Deduplication offers significant benefits by greatly reducing the amount of disk capacity required. This can lower the cost of backing up to disk and increase the likelihood of data being restored from disk, rather than from slower mediums. The reduction in disk has secondary effects, such as reducing the amount of power and cooling required for storage capacity. There is no reason why deduplication will only be used for secondary or backup copies of data.

Network Appliance (and IBM through an OEM relationship) and Storewiz offer data reduction solutions for primary data as well. Although deduplication is compelling, consider the risks and rewards of the different products and vendors in the market to ensure that the appropriate balance of cost, service levels and risk is achieved.