Storage Networking Times

Issue 8, May 2008

Education: Making Sense of Data Deduplication at the SNIA Academies

Over 200 local end users and resellers attended the recent SNIA Europe Academy educational events in Copenhagen and Stockholm, which saw the majority of the sessions provide an unbiased update on the latest developments in data deduplication and data protection technologies . The speaker line-up included executives from SNIA Europe, sponsors representatives and guest presenter Carla Arend, Senior Research Analyst European Storage Software at analyst house IDC. During her 40-minute talk Arend discussed some of the firm’s latest findings. According to research carried out by IDC, the Nordic region has shown an average increase in storage spending of 21% over the last 12 months, with a similar level of growth expected over the next year. The number one driver for this spending has been identified as the explosion of unstructured file-based data. This session was very well received by both end users and resellers who - throughout the day - had the opportunity to discuss various points made during the presentation, with Ms Arend.

Another session that enjoyed very positive feedback by the attendees was that on data deduplication, which is also one of the most recent tutorials to be released by the Data Management Forum (DMF). This presentation puts forward the association’s latest thinking on data deduplication, a highly effective technology for addressing unstructured file-based data. By attending this session delegates were able to see through some of the hype surrounding this new technology. Deduplication has become a very popular topic in the industry because of the potentially large reduction in cost and significant increase in efficiency it offers.  Deduplication technologies can be applied at various levels within the storage network e.g. source deduplication, deduplication of data in transit, and deduplication at the storage destination.  They are also being promoted across all tiers (backup, archiving, and primary storage) and the new SNIA tutorial clearly explains how they can address different challenges and meet scalability, performance, and functionality requirements.  This new SNIA DMF tutorial has proved it can help delegates understand the differences between various deduplication technologies: it examines where, when, and how to utilise deduplication to boost storage efficiency in real-world environments, and it looks at the beneficial effects of implementing it in backup and archiving.

An overview of the areas that data deduplication can address is shown below:

Deduplication sessions will feature in the forthcoming SNIA Europe Academy events in Paris (15 th May), London (20 th May) and Moscow (4 th June). Registrations are now open online at www.storage-academy.com. Academy events are free to attend for end users, consultants and IT resellers/distributors.

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