L3 Point of View: Data Domain
Park Place Hardware Maintenance
Data Domain is an inline deduplication storage system, which has revolutionized disk-based backup, archiving, and disaster recovery that utilizes high-speed processing.
Data Domain Integration
Data Domain easily integrates with existing infrastructure and third-party IT storage management backup solutions.
Retention: Deduplication
Data Domain uses variable length deduplication, which takes a more intelligent approach to deduplication, varying the size of segments when looking for common data points. As data is ingested, Data Domain looks at this data and breaks it up into pieces or segments. Each piece or segment will have a hash or identifier that will be acknowledged as unique or duplicate data. By breaking up this data into pieces, the hash or identifier can be identified and referenced as previously stored data via a hash table. Incoming data is identified and deduplicated inline, leaving only unique data to be written to disk, which significantly reduces data on disk.
Recovery: Data Invulnerability Architecture (DIA)
DIA provides end-to-end verification, fault avoidance and containment, fault detection and healing, and file system recovery. Data Domain uses data footprint reduction, making this possible. Data Domain lowers the risks of data and corruption by using data container logs so that new data never puts old data at risk. The data container log never overwrites or updates existing data, and new data is always written in new containers. The old containers and references then remain in place.
Additional protections used include:
- NVRAM: Power fail-safe data buffer
- DD OS RAID 6: Double disk failure protection
- Formatted Data Blocks: Early error detection
- Replication Pairs
Replication: WAN Efficient
Inline deduplication allows replication to run, even during backups, which causes faster times for disaster recovery. This is accomplished largely in part to inline deduplication, which reduces the backup foot print, also lowering the replication foot print by only sending new segments of data to the disaster recovery site.
Replication Types
- Collection Replication: Mirrored copy
- Directory Replication: Multiple or selective directories
- Pool Replication: Replication of VTL pools (Virtual Tape Libraries)
Data Domain provides customers with an inline deduplication backup solution, allowing retention of data to be highly optimized. It also provides customers to easily recover data much faster than traditional tape backups, while allowing for efficient replication of this data to disaster recovery locations, by sending fewer data segments over the wire.
As a former OEM Support Engineer of Data Domain since 2008, I am excited to continue providing world class third party data center maintenance to Data Domain customers with Park Place Technologies. Since joining Park Place, it’s allowed me to understand the continuous needs of customers who still cherish and believe in their long term Data Domain investments. Providing third party EMC support for customers using Data Domain end of life equipment is my number one priority.
Request a quote today for inquiries about how Park Place Technologies can provide Data Domain post-warranty support!