Albireo Technologies

Permabit Albireo is the industry’s first and only embedded data optimization software for OEMs. The core of Albireo is an advanced duplicate advisory service that enables storage vendors to deliver high speed data deduplication for primary, archive or backup storage tiers that utilize either traditional Hard Disk (HDD) or Flash based (SSD) storage.  OEMs that deliver Albireo are able to deliver tremendous cost savings to their customers in both the data center and the cloud. Flexible deployment options are designed into Albireo technology, enabling a wide range of source and/or target deployment scenarios with  broad applicability across various workloads and content types. Albireo is based on over a decade of research and development which has resulted in Permabit’s rich patent portfolio in deduplication and storage technology.

Permabit offers two different Albireo products:

• The Albireo Software Development Kit (SDK) – a software library for developing deduplication solutions that is delivered as a binary software library with accompanying documentation and source code examples for Linux and Windows
• Albireo Virtual Data Optimizer (VDO) a dynamic thin provisioning and deduplication solution that integrates directly into the Linux data management stack and is delivered as a block device driver

Source code distributions for the Albireo SDK can be licensed separately for Linux and Windows data storage environments. Albireo VDO source is available for Linux.

Platform Support

Albireo SDK

• Linux (x86)
• Windows 7 Professional (x64)
• Windows Server 2008 R2 (x64)

Albireo VDO

• CentOS
• Debian
• RedHat Enterprise Linux
• SuSE Enterprise Linux Server
• Ubuntu
• Windows

The Albireo SDK makes use of an abstraction layer to simplify porting to a broad range of additional platforms and operating environments. A source code Albireo license is required to port Albireo to custom platform data storage or embedded devices. Source code licenses are available separately for both the Albireo SDK and VDO and Permabit offers a wide range of developer support services to assist OEMs in porting to custom environments. Additional information on licensing the Albireo source code is available here.

In addition to space savings, Albireo is designed to provide bandwidth optimization for systems and applications that transfer data across private networks or the Internet. Albireo’s source-based data deduplication reduces the amount of redundant data transmitted between a Source and Target by over 99% (when using 4 KB chunks, for example, redundant chunks are transmitted in 32 bytes instead of 4096 bytes). Potential applications include data backup and replication across a WAN or other low-bandwidth communication channel.

Albireo also leverages a series of unique technologies that enable performance, scalbility and resource efficiency such as;

High Performance Index Engine

Albireo uses a hash function to identify duplicate segments of data. Searching the resulting content fingerprints, which can quickly number in the billions (or trillions), is the bottleneck for all data deduplication solutions.

Grid (Scale Out) Index

Albireo grid technology enables OEMs to increase performance and scalability far beyond what is possible with traditional data optimization solutions. Albireo combines patented indexing and memory resource utilization software with a scale-out design to provide performance that expands linearly, even when dealing with multi-petabyte capacities, without the performance drop-off common with the other data deduplication solutions on the market today.

Solid State Optimized Deduplication

Albireo software is specifically optimized for use with flash-based storage solutions. When deployed in solid state environments, Albireo takes advantage of SSD’s low-latency reads while minimizing writes through the use of a log-structured index design.

Hard Disk Optimized Deduplication

Albireo software is specifically optimized for use with mechanical storage solutions, taking advantage of HDD’s fast sequential access. The Albireo index consumes fewer than 1,000 IOPS per million new chunks of data.

Content-Aware Segmentation

The Albireo architecture supports both fixed and variable block data deduplication. Data can be intelligently segmented into chunks of variable length based on analysis of its content.

Virtual Block Mapping

Albireo Virtual Data Optimizer (VDO) provides block-level virtualization as part of a complete deduplication stack for Linux. Virtualized blocks support deduplication by allowing multiple identical ‘virtual’ blocks to point to a single physical data location.

Thin Provisioning

Albireo Virtual Data Optimizer (VDO) provides thin provisioning services as part of a complete deduplication stack for Linux. Albireo thin provisioning allocates physical volume or file system capacity as applications write data, rather than pre-allocating all physical capacity at the time of provisioning.