George Crump posed an interesting question when he asked if primary storage deduplication will kill archive and backup.  It is a great question, and one we should explore.  If you don’t want to read my ramblings, my short answer is no. 

There is a lot more to archive and backup than simply storing a lot of data, something deduplication has proven it can do well.  Backed up and archived data needs to be cataloged, indexes and managed through its life or retention.  That’s one of the reasons we don’t use tar and dump commands much these days.  Snapshots can remove much of the recovery burden from alternate storage devices.  I have seen customers recover almost all single file restores from snapshots.  But they never served as a replacement for backups.   As George said, we sleep better at night when copies of our data are on different systems.  There are lots of reasons for that.  We all worry about a bad firmware load.  If you have all your data on one array (or replicated to an identical one) a bad firmware release could wipe you out.  And of course there are physical failures. No matter how well designed a system is, something external can happen.  In the years I was in the field, I heard some unbelievable external failure stories where an non-IT event started the failure.   (Maybe I should start collecting them).

This leads me to conclude that proper architecture of a data storage environment includes dissimilar storage devices.  Your backup and DR copies need to be independent from production data, to prevent a cascading failure getting every copy.  For archive, the first copy could be on the primary storage platform, but the redundant copies (and all good archive systems maintain a minimum of 2 copies of the data) need the same.  It could be as easy as Spectra nTier disk and Spectra T-Series tape, or it could be more complex.  What it won't be is a single disk array for primary storage, archive and data protection.

On the eleventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

The big day is getting closer, and I am really busy.  I even multitask lunch, doing a little gift shopping around noon.  It is amazing how many other people had the same idea.  Today I went out and got my parents an external hard drive.  (If you know my parents, please don’t tell them.)  Like everyone else, digital pictures and other media are becoming important to them, and I want to make sure they have a backup they can take out of the house.  (In this case to some one else’s home)  While it might not be the most fun gift, it should be very practical, and if their 5 year old computer crashes, they will be able to get the important stuff back.  (you can guess what I will be setting up over the weekend).

We all know how important it is to protect our data, both at home and at work.  Of course a USB hard drive won’t do it at work, there is too much data, we want multiple copies and it isn't very automated.  That is why so many of the conversations we have these days with customers about deduplication include replication.  Quickly getting remote site backups back to a central location automatically is a great stress reliever.  Your company may not need to protect pictures of my nephews, but your data may be almost as important. 

nTier Deduplication supports multi-site replication doing the hard work of getting the data off site for you.  Now you can spend more time looking for the perfect gift.  (I like car parts my self.)

On the ninth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me;

9 Site replication

8 Spectra Archive Files

7 /24 Support

6 T680’s

5 Tapes without Pain!

4 Global Spare Drives,

3 Encryption Keys,

2 Spectra Certified Tapes,

and a large frosty beer.

Day seven brings us closer to the big day.  I can feel the excitement build.  And build is the right word, because in addition to roasting chestnuts, eating cookies and singing carols, we have the presents to deal with. I am sure you are in better shape than I am, and already have everything bought.  How many toys did you get with the dreaded "some assembly required?"  Wouldn't it be great if there was 7/24 support to assemble these little nuggets of fun and excitement?  (Here's a tip, many toy companies have opened support centers for just such an emergency.  Though I doubt the are open on Christmas Eve.)  This car looks especially fun!

Fortunately, if you are giving the give of Spectra this holiday season, we have you covered.  Help is always just a phone call away, even on Christmas Eve.  In fact, often times you won't even have to call, as our call home feature will do it for you!  If only that Transformer toy could do that.

On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

7 / 24 Support

6 T680’s 

5 Tapes without Pain! 

4 Global Spare Drives,

3 Encryption Keys,

2 Spectra Certified Tapes,

and a large frosty beer.

Tape houses nearly 70% of the world’s data. That being the case, what could be more useful to a storage admin than receiving media for Christmas? Certified Media from Spectra Logic, no less! Coupled with Spectra’s Media Lifecycle Management in every Spectra library, Spectra Certified Media helps ensure your backups complete successfully and your archived data is safe and healthy.

On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me;

2 Spectra Certified Tapes

and a large frosty beer.

As we approach the holidays, it seemed like a fun idea to do the 12 Days of Christmas - Spectra Style. Look for an update everyday from the blog team. 

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me a large frosty beer.

If you find yourself in the area, I have some Boulder Beer in the fridge.

Dedupe, Dedupe, Dedupe....  In the last few weeks, every time I look online, someone is talking about dedupe.   New models, customer testimonials or new places to use dedupe.   Everyone sees the value in dedupe when looking at backup to disk, but where else can we use it?  Some talk about dedupe on primary disk storage, I would love to dedupe hills when riding my bike, I am sure Captain Kirk would like to dedupe the Tribbles and I think we would all love to find a way to dedupe our bills.  At the same time, I don't want to dedupe everything - I already don't go on as many dates as I would like.  What about deduping backups to tape? 

There has been some fun and exciting conversation about dedupe to tape in the last few days.  I started reading this latest flourish of conversation at Storage Soup.  As someone that's evening plans got deduped, I had plenty of time to poke around online.  It all seems to have started with W. Curtis Preston's comments that dedupe to tape has its place.  Of course, others jumped in, disagreeing.  I have been paying attention to the CommVault feature, and learning what I can about it for a while now.   CommVault was my first gig out of the Air Force, so I have a soft spot for them.  I also think the make good software, so while I never really thought the idea of dedupe to tape was a good one, I kept an open mind about their implementation.