NetBackup 7 Deduplication Should Be Everywhere

NetBackup offers a variety of ways to reduce storage capacity using deduplication.  In fact, we believe our users should deduplicate everywhere.  Backup is the killer app for deduplication. Why?  Well a backup is essentially a copy of your information to be used for a recovery in the event of a corruption, or if something goes wrong.  So it’s basically an insurance policy.  So if you’re doing backups over the weekend and incrementals during the week and your data change rate isn’t that high, why backup the same thing over and over again?  Just think of how many instances of a particular file or application that you have across your entire company.  Say I send out a 3MB PowerPoint presentation for a review and a co-worker changes the title slide, another tweaks a bullet or two. Now there are 3 copies totaling 9 MB with only a few minor changes! Because of examples like that, it’s probably no surprise that data is growing at an alarming rate.  The problem is that network, server, and storage systems are trying to keep up with this growth.  Many organizations are still relying heavily on tape, yet still implementing next generation technologies like virtualization.  That makes the outdated practice of keeping data forever impossible, especially while trying to meet today’s more aggressive service levels.  Symantec believes deduplication should be natively integrated into any backup application, and in fact with NetBackup 7 it is.  Deduplication should live in every part of the information architecture, at the source and the destination. Faster backups means deduplication makes backups better.  The less data you have to backup, the faster your backups will be.  And because only unique data is protected, it provides great storage savings.  Remember the 3MB PowerPoint presentation?  Well why not only backup the changes versus backing up that same file three times.  As for recovery, that’s a no brainer.  Because you have less data it allows you to keep data on site longer, making recoveries faster.  And because your using disk, it improves reliability and can also potentially reduce operational cost. SATA disks come pretty cheap now.  If you’re looking for better remote office protection, deduplication aids in the protection of remote offices.  Many organizations have remote offices that are typically protected with tape, and that tape is handled by not so technical people.  This approach adds complexity and can be prone to error. Data should be deduplicated as close to the source as possible.  With NetBackup, data is deduplicated at the remote office location before being sent over the network to the corporate data center.  This centralized and automated protection increases reliability.  And because only unique data is sent across the network it optimizes network bandwidth and decreases the storage size. So do yourself a favor and DEDUP EVERYWHERE!!