Data Deduplication: A Quick Fix or the Way Forward for Storage?
Dear Reader,
Data deduplication has quickly risen to the top of IT agendas as a method to help reduce storage and power costs through streamlining the amount of information needing to be backed up. However, deduplication really only tackles the initial symptoms of the data growth and cannot match the growing average size of files as video and media files become increasingly used. Data reduction is the next generation of deduplication.
Having engulfed the IT team, the data avalanche is set to hit the wider business. Deduplication is one option to explore, but is ineffective if compression is already used when storing video and media files. Many organizations are today imposing restrictions on email inboxes and local storage facilities because of the amount of data being produced by users across the network.
However, a key way to reduce data backup requirements is to examine how much information is simply replicated by multiple users. With standardized operating systems and applications come thousands of identical files on legions of computers. Add to that identical attachments stored in multiple recipients’ inboxes and it’s easy to see how much duplicate documents add to an organization’s storage requirements.
Data Reduction – The Next Generation
Data reduction takes deduplication one step further, moving it from a reactive to a proactive approach to data management. The technique automates data movement and deletion from the desktop, reducing the physical volume of data moving around the organization.
Policy driven, the technique ‘tags’ files that are deemed no longer required – through a rules-based system that can be set up by administrators or IT managers. These files can then be extracted from their current position and either moved to the data archive or deleted securely.
Data reduction should technically reduce the requirement to educate users about how to manage their own data storage effectively. Moving data management to an automated, policy-driven solution removes the need for workers to worry about where and when their data is backed up.
One thing in storage remains constant – the amount of data we produce on a daily basis will continue to grow. IT managers who do not bury their heads in the sand and hope for the best are on the right track – data reduction policies need to be conceived and executed now to ensure businesses aren’t brought to a halt by a data avalanche.
Many of the better online data backup and recovery services include policy-driven data reduction and archiving techniques.
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