Data Deduplication De-Duped

Data De-duplication has become an increasingly popular buzz word among software and hardware technology manufacturers. As Data Centers experience continuous data growth, data de-duplication is one of the many possible solutions to provide relief. This article defines data de-duplication and the underlying benefits attributed to the technology. We also explore the growing differentiation among manufacturer's definitions of data de-duplication, and what data center managers need to know in order to make informative decisions.

Data de-duplication can be represented by many terms, such as capacity optimization, factoring, single instant storage or intelligent compression. These terms are all in reference to reducing storage, through means of eliminating redundant data. Data which is found to be redundant is replaced by a pointer leading to the original unique copy, thus preventing identical data to be recorded twice. The following scenario illustrates the technology as a CEO sends an email containing a 2 MB attachment to 1000 employees. Typically an email system will store 1000 copies of the 2 MB attachment; however de-duplication technology will store only 1 copy of the attachment and 999 pointers. As a result, 2000MB of storage can be contained in 2MB.

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