Permabit Corporation

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Where does Symantec get its marketing messages?

From us!

Symantec has been peppering our web site to learn more about our leading OEM deduplication product – Albireo. More than 20 times this week and nearly 40 times this month! Yesterday for over two hours alone!

Yes we have the best performing, most scalable and most flexible deduplication available in the industry that really does deploy “everywhere”. Not just for backup but across backup, archive, primary, grid, SSD, applications, databases and OS’s. That’s “Dedupe Everywhere”!

For more specifics about dedupe everywhere see my blog from a few weeks ago, Dedupe Everywhere isn’t always “everywhere”

FYI here is the website log summary for Symantec:

Moving to the Cloud Seems Like a Good Idea, Taking Everything You Have Does Not

Moving to the cloud is cool. Cloud storage is a hot technology for good reason – it can save you money! It seems fairly simple, consume and pay for only what you need. Cloud storage saves you the cost of pre-purchasing storage in anticipation of your needs and the associated operating costs for space, staffing and operating that storage. Most organizations are trying to reduce total storage costs while facing 50% annual data growth rates and there is an increased demand to store data long term. As cloud storage increasingly becomes a part of IT storage strategies, customers expect a highly cost-effective, secure, and scalable solution that provides seamless access to their data. (more…)

Not All Dedupe is Created Equal! Is there “A Better Dedupe”?

It’s sometimes difficult to remember that a name or phrase that becomes generic doesn’t always represent the same level of quality.  For example, Coke became the generic phrase for cola soft drinks even though there were many brands cola soft drinks, often not nearly as well known or liked.  Similarly Kleenex became a generic phrase for facial tissue even though there are literally dozens of other brands of varying quality on the market.

The generic phrase “Xerox” referred to a copy of a document.  In its early stages, there were very blurry copies that you could hardly read. However, it served the purpose and provided a copy of an original that you could share and distribute.  As the technology progressed, the resolution improved and the blurry copy disappeared. In fact today, I can barely tell the difference between a copy and an original! And for the most part I usually just print more than one rather than make a copy!

Deduplication, or dedupe, is also becoming a generic phrase in the storage industry. When someone is asked about dedupe most people will say “I have that!” At a basic level, they probably do have a form of deduplication. But, like the varieties of cola or the multiple brands of facial tissue or even the many different brands of copy machines,  not all dedupe is the same and between different solution offerings quality and capabilities can vary greatly.

In the following series of blogs, I will define ” a better dedupe” addressing the differences between dedupe offerings.  There are so many choices that can be made in a dedupe solution it may be helpful if the better approach or best implementation is defined. This will aid you as you explore your options in implementing dedupe technology into your business and provide the background and knowledge to make the right decisions and ensure the most efficient, scalable and effective dedupe.

My next post will address dedupe implementation approaches……

Dedupe isn’t always “dedupe” And Dedupe Everywhere isn’t always “everywhere”

In my last two posts, I explored why deduplication approaches vary widely and dedupe everywhere sometimes isn’t really “everywhere”.  I hope I was successful in describing that the names may be the same in dedupe and dedupe everywhere, but what is delivered may be very different.  Although the approaches in deduplication vary, they are based on the ability to effectively address the key performance issues that have been, until now, inhibiting deduplication from being more broadly deployed outside of the backup use case.

The two key issues are indexing and memory efficiency.  Let’s take a look at them both: (more…)

“Dedupe Everywhere” isn’t always dedupe “everywhere”

Dedupe is a hot topic and the differences between dedupe implementations was the topic of my previous post Now there continues to be differences in vendor offerings and marketing plays a role in defining who does what and how they describe it.  “Dedupe Everywhere” has been a phrase a few are beginning to use so I wanted to provide some clarity on the use case of dedupe everywhere and what it means. (more…)

Dedupe isn’t always dedupe

Data optimization has come under much scrutiny lately because it is a hot topic. As we are now beginning to think “outside of the box” on uses of data optimization, it might be useful to understand that dedupe isn’t always the same! For example, some of the early uses of dedupe were in single instance approaches that were at the file level. So, if an entire file was not exactly the same as another file, they were not considered a duplicate. (more…)

Why Dedupe Everywhere? Ask Willy Sutton…

In my previous post, I positioned deduplication as evolving to an “out of the box” approach that will deliver broader and more effective savings in dollars as well as space and resources. Now you may be asking yourself, with dedupe firmly entrenched in the backup realm, why do we need to dedupe anywhere else? Good question, let’s explore some of these answers. (more…)

Dedupe “Comes Out of the Box”

Dedupe as we have known it is rapidly evolving and we need to think about it differently! Until recently a dedupe box or appliance was the status quo. It was a specialized device that was used, for the most part, in a data backup operation. It was an appliance that had its own separate storage, operating system, specialized software and in some cases, special hardware. As with many new technologies, the dedupe appliance was a step in the process to bring new technology into the mainstream. As a result of recent technical advances in indexing and processing performance, today that step is no longer needed. The latest versions of dedupe are being taken “out of the box” and delivered as software. (more…)

SHOW ME THE MONEY!

In the movie “Jerry Maguire,” there is a scene where Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding Jr.) a career limits aware football star, is driving his agent, Jerry Maguire (Tom Cruise) to get him the best financial deal he possibly can on his contract renewal because he inherently understands that it may be his last contract! In that scene, Tidwell is pushing Maguire to get the team to “Show me the money” so he can secure the financial future of his family. In today’s business environment “the money” is as important as it was to Rod Tidwell because money drives behavior. (more…)