Tony's blog

Federal Forum with Data Domain Customers

Data Domain — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:35:36 -0700

Last week I went down to Washington DC to present to a number of Federal customers on various industry topics. I asked them a bunch of questions and here are the highlights:

- There was one deployment of FCoE and everyone else was highly interested in FCoE going forward. I mentioned the political challenges of FCoE between the LAN networking guys and the SAN networking guys -- and the guy who actually deployed it said that he found no issue. The lines are still there and remain - the SAN guys still manage FCoE. The others in the room were still unsure how this was going to all play out. Again, no one in this group deployed iSCSI. I am a big proponent of iSCSI but FC still rules the SAN world in larger organizations.

- Everyone was using VMWare and no one had deployed or was overly interested in Hyper-V. This is consistent with other forums I have been involved in recently.

- There was some interest in SSD or EFD for Enterprise storage, but only one person has deployed. His take was that it was a waste of time and money. It did not give him the performance he was looking for. This is an important point. Storage performance is complicated and depending on the I/O profile, SSD/EFD may not be the answer you are looking for - it is not a panacea by any means. It would be great to remove a mechanical device from the data center - after all disk drives do three things: they read, write and break. But for the most part disk drives still provide the best price/performance and even with the advances in SSD/EFD, it still is only right for certain corner cases.

- There was no implementation of active archive storage with this group. There was a level of interest but they agreed that the challenges were identifying what to move, how to move it transparently, what to move it to and ensuring response times if that data is ever needed again. One person piped in saying that there was no single solution that allowed them to do database, email and file archiving without putting agents on their hosts. I suggested to go after the biggest problem first - which is unstructured data. That could save them a ton of money. There were nods in the room but you could tell that they weren't running out the door to make it happen.

- There were no plans for any of these folks to use a public cloud service within the next twelve months. And by the looks of it there wasn't any real interest beyond that timeframe at this point. There was only one company that was building their own private cloud. I wanted to pick their brains more about what they specifically were doing but they had to leave before the meet and greet session (I hope it wasn't my presentation that made them leave).

- Finally, it was good to see that close to half of the IT professionals had Green IT initiatives. Naturally IT folks have been focused on power, cooling and floor space for years and now a number of them were going green. While this is related it is different - having a green mandate goes beyond these three things (although it is a good place to start).

D2D Backup + Active Archive

Data Domain — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:21:17 -0700

In my travels I have discussed the value of storage tiering and it is amazing how few companies have actually implemented this. Part of the challenge is identifying what to move and when. One way to easily address this is to just consider dormant data. Over the last few years I have presented to hundreds of IT professionals and the vast majority believe that more than 70% of their data is dormant 90 days after its creation. If this is the case, then focusing on dormant data after a 90 day period seems like a good place to start - move this data from your primary storage systems to a lower tier.

The next challenge with storage tiering is identifying what solution you are going to use to move the dormant data from primary to archival storage. This process needs to be transparent to the users and applications. And it would be nice if it was easy for IT professionals to implement and there was a high level of performance. In the NAS world you can use file data movers or virtualization solutions. Data Domain partners with F5 and its Acopia solution.

The third and final macro issue is what platform should be used for the active archival storage. Data Domain is typically seen as a disk-to-disk backup solution but it should also be considered as an active archive as well. Remember that the Data Domain solution is a NAS system and therefore a mount point can be easily created and it can be used to store files via NFS and CIFS protocols. One of the main reasons to do this is to take advantage of its dedupe capabilities. Since this is not a backup data - the dedupe rates will not be as high but you should easily get a 2-to-1 and maybe as high as a 5-to-1 ratio. What makes this even more compelling and valuable is using Data Domain for both D2D backup and as an active archive. It is this combination that presents a powerful value proposition. Consolidating these functions into a single Data Domain appliance further reduces cost and complexity. In addition to the direct CAPEX savings there is also the reduction of power, cooling and floor space.

There are companies that have saved significant capital costs by implemented tiered storage environments - even without dedupe. Imagine adding dedupe to the equation. Further, leveraging the same applicance that is being used for D2D backup and giving you 20-to-1 data dedupe. Not many people talk about providing a consolidated D2D backup and active archive solution, but it really does make a ton of sense if that single solution can support both with dedupe.

Technology + Product + Business Excellence

Data Domain — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:10:47 -0700

There is some discussion around the notion of data dedupe as a feature or a technology and that it will some day be pervasive. People having been saying this for more than five years and it is still not a reality. There are actually only a few vendors that actually have successful solutions in the market supporting this valuable but complex technology. The fact of the matter is that dedupe is complicated - creating dedupe algorithms are only a part of the challenge. Data integrity, performance and scalability are key considerations. If dedupe was easy then it would be pervasive and it is not.

It is then critical to manifest dedupe in a product that has been designed from the ground up to support the specific requirements for its use. In the case of Data Domain special attention was paid to the fact that dedupe is CPU-intensive. Additionally, they chose to support NAS for ease of use and transparency. They also focused on the file system and adding technology that ensured data integrity. There are dozens and perhaps hundreds of big and small considerations to be found in this process. There are other things to consider as well that live outside of the appliance. In speaking with a number of Data Domain customers I've heard more than once how good their documentation is. I have rarely heard this type of praise for any IT vendor.

Business execution is critical to the process that includes a number of things. It involves putting together a strong team, a powerful and consumable message, an effective and scalable go-to-market strategy, a strong sales and support organization, etc, etc. It is also important that there be strong business fundamentals - meaning that having a product that makes a really good profit for those who sell it while at the same time saves money for those who buy it. And customers should care about this as well because they want healthy vendors to work with that will continue to support, innovate and execute for the long term.

It is the combination of Technology + Product + Business execution that results in leadership. The people that discuss dedupe as just a "feature" or a "technology" I believe miss the point - as evidenced by the success of Data Domain.

Voice of the Customer: Collection Replication, Disaster Recovery and Tape Elimination

Tony Asaro — Tue, 12 May 2009 18:29:48 -0700

The following is a discussion I had with a Data Domain customer - Rob Carlisi, Systems Engineer for Orange County Public Schools (OCPS).

You can also listen to the podcast - Download Interview Orange County Public Schools

A couple of things to point out:

OCPS has eliminated using tapes completely.

They are using Data Domain Collection Replication for their off-site disaster recovery.

Tony Asaro: Rob, welcome and I appreciate you participating this discussion. Please give us a background on your company.

Rob Carlisi: I work at Orange County Public Schools in Orlando, Florida. We’re the 11^thlargest school district in the country. The amount of online storage that we have is a little over 100 terabytes and the amount of backup data we have on Data Domain is about 450 terabytes.

Tony Asaro: And what is your role with the company, Rob?

Rob Carlisi: I’m a systems engineer and I’ve been here for a little over 6 years. Our group is primarily responsible for anything that happens inside the data center that’s not network related. I’m responsible for the backup/restore environment, SAN and fibre infrastructure as well as installing and maintaining the servers themselves.

Tony Asaro: Start out by giving us some examples of how Data Domain has provided real value to your company.

Rob Carlisi: Yeah, I’ve quite a few examples. Recoveries with Data Domain are much faster than our previous environment. The restores start as soon as you click a button instead of waiting for tapes to mount or waiting for tape drives to become available. The footprint of our solution went from around 6 to 8 feet of floor space down to a single rack with Data Domain. Data Domain gave us the ability also to replicate all of our backups to our DR site so we have another set of Data Domain boxes sitting at our offsite location that we replicate to every day. We also use RMAN with Oracle to backup all of our databases directly to Data Domain. Since we’ve been using that method, we’ve seen up to a 60x compression rates on those backups. And also over the next few months we’re going to implement VRanger which will backup all of our VM’s over to Data Domain.

Tony Asaro: Rob, tell us how Data Domain has improved the overall economic effectiveness within your IT operations?

Rob Carlisi: Data Domain has enabled us to save exponentially actually on the amount of tape we would have had to purchase if it wasn’t Data Domain and de-duplication. We also went from a 10 to 15 day retention policy on all of our backups to a 30 to 40 day retention.

Tony Asaro: How has implementing Data Domain changed your usage of tape now and in the future?

Rob Carlisi: Well, tape no longer exists in our environment and we’re confident that it’s going to stay that way.

Tony Asaro: Rob, tell us about how you’ve leveraged Data Domain for offsite Disaster Recovery.

Rob Carlisi: Before we had implemented Data Domain, we weren’t replicating any of our data off site. When we decided to start replicating with Data Domain, we did it on a collection basis so anything that touches the primary box, gets replicated to the destination box on our off site location. We set it up the first day to replicate and it’s pretty much been hands off since then. We’ve had the remote site down. When we bring it back up, it just makes that connection automatically and starts replicating again. We’ve never had any lag and we’ve never had a problem talking to the remote site.

This solution actually got all of our backups from our entire environment off site. We’re able to restore at a DR site back to full throttle.

Tony Asaro: Data Domain’s data dedupe actually enabled your disaster recovery strategy because it reduces the bandwidth costs.

Rob Carlisi: Actually that’s true. After it does its de-duplication and compression and clean up, you’re not actually transferring that much data across the line compared to what it actually backs up every night. It saves on money as well as time to replicate because when you’re not moving that much data across the LAN or the WAN it doesn’t take that long to do you’re not too far behind your production environment.

Tony Asaro: Why didn’t you use primary storage replication versus Data Domain to do this?

Rob Carlisi: Well, one was the cost and we also liked an appliance environment. We found that it was a lot easier to expand a Data Domain environment rather that a primary storage environment and we just like the flexibility that Data Domain gave us. Also, the primary reason was the de-duplication technology that they had was far superior than anything else.

The Changing Landscape of Disaster Recovery

Tony Asaro — Tue, 05 May 2009 09:34:10 -0700

Disaster recovery (DR) means different things to different people. For many IT professionals DR is associated with tape recovery and/or remote replication. Recovery data from tape is fraught with challenges including rapid recovery and reliability. Remote replication within primary storage is often complicated, expensive and inefficient requiring volumes to be restored versus specific files or data sets.

The combination of disk-to-disk (D2D) backup, data dedupe and replication offers a valuable approach to DR combining the granularity of recovering from a backup repository and the ability to leverage remote replication to store copies of data at an offsite location in the event of of site disasters and for offsite vaulting for long term retention. For the vast majority of data this is a smart approach that serves the widest range of requirements for customers. There will always be the need for primary remote replication but only for the corner cases in terms of who uses it and what it is used for. However, I contend that D2D backup + data dedupe + remote replication has a much broader audience.

Data Domain just announced an update to it's Replicator software. I remember when Data Domain first came out with Replicator and speaking with customers that literally felt liberated by leveraging dedupe over wide area networks. Dedupe enabled them to implement a DR strategy above and beyond what they had prior and still fit within their budgets. Five years later the solution is more mature, advanced and field proven. Additionally, the use cases and value proposition have advanced and are proven. Data Domain providing a combination of D2D backup + data dedupe + remote replication has impacted the data center in a number of important ways:

Offers a cost effective and efficient DR solution that is otherwise impractical for many customers.
Results in cost reductions include bandwidth, primary storage investment, power, cooling and floor space.
This approach is "easy" versus perceived complications with using other DR methods (e.g. primary storage replication).
Offers a more granular and rapid method of data recovery improving SLAs.
Makes it possible for customers to actually eliminate or greatly diminish the use of tape and tape libraries. This is an important point and we are seeing momentum for tape obsolescence with a growing number of customers.
Multi-site replication provides a powerful and valuable solution for Enterprises with a large number of remote sites - this is enabling a new constituency to reap the rewards of this solution. Data Domain's recent expansion of 90 remote sites to a single DD690 is significant and makes it even more useful to large Enterprises. I will add, regardless of whether you have two or 90 remote sites fan into a single DD appliance at the central site is powerful especially when coupled with global dedupe.

I have spoken to companies that did not implement remote replication because of cost - even though it was considered every year for five, eight and ten years. And there are other companies that only replicate 10% to 20% of their data and use backup to protect the rest - they just could not rationalize the expense. However, D2D backup + dedupe vastly changes the economics of remote replication and DR. The landscape of DR is changing - enabled by D2D backup with dedupe - making it practical and valuable for the mainstream market. Remote replication will drive the adoption of D2D backup with dedupe and D2D backup with dedupe will drive the adoption or remote replication. This is a killer app on top of a killer app.

Voice of the Customer: Utah State University

Tony Asaro — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:04:32 -0700

This is a discussion that I had with Eric Hawley, associate vice president and Orrin Anderson, system administrator for Utah State University. The discussion was much longer and will be available in a full report but I wanted to give you some highlights of that discussion:

Tony Asaro: Why did you decide to implement a disk-to-disk back-up solution that supports data de-duplication?

Eric Hawley: To answer that question, I'd like to share with you the experience that we encountered that let us know how urgently we needed deduplication technology. How we typically do it is we back up directly to disk - our ERP systems. We use SCT banner and our enterprise directory and email and file systems. And we use Microsoft products for those - Microsoft Exchange for email - Microsoft Active Directory for our file sharing. We use CommVault for our back-up solution. We moved things to a 35 terabyte Dell EMC storage area network (SAN). And we move it primarily to disk because we have such large amounts of data that sending it to tape just takes too long.

What we were finding is that those 35 terabytes would allow us to back up only two or three days' worth of our back-up sets on that disk. We found that that was not enough time to get things transferred over to tape in a timely manner.

We knew immediately we had a couple of choices. One, we could go buy more disks. Not cheap, especially when you're dealing with storage area networks and enterprise storage. Even though we're using lower tier storage back-up doesn’t require super fast tier one, but that was going to cost money. Around about this time J.D. Parody from Data Domain was in contact with us. We'd had a great relationship with him through his previous employer as well, and he talked to us a little bit about Data Domain and data deduplication, and showed us conservatively that we could expect a minimum of a 10 times data deduplication, which is just perfect for back-up.

We started figuring if we had 10 times our 35-terabyte array - would suddenly start looking like 350 terabytes of space looking at a minimum 10 times deduplication rate, which to us, was very appealing.

Tony Asaro: What was the process you used to make your final decision to go with Data Domain?

Eric Hawley: As we were looking at what we wanted, and we were looking at cost, we were looking at outcome, meaning we've got to have more space for less cost, and we were looking at performance. When you look at data de-duplication, we needed something that would be able to do it in real time, and not all the vendors out there who were looking at, who were doing data deduplication, were able to do it in real time. We looked at three factors. We looked at the price.

The ability of the Data Domain solution to keep up in real time was necessary. We wanted to make sure that the solution was transparent meaning we don't want to have to change our CommVault back-up solution. We don't want to have to change our [backup] windows or our methods that we used to back up. We just want to stick this thing in between that storage area network and our back-up services and have the back-up set where really never have a clue that everything was being de-duplicated.

Tony Asaro: Can you give us any examples of how Data Domain provided real value to your company?

Orrin Anderson: What we had before we bought the Data Domain box - we did our disk-to-disk back-up straight to a about a 30-terabyte SAN - we ran out of space on a lot sooner than we thought we would. We ended up buying the Data Domain 690G, the gateway, and put it in front of that existing SAN and so far, we've tripled the amount of data - over tripled from 30 terabytes - to a little over 100 terabytes of data that we have on there - and it's still not full yet. Just in that, it has expanded the capability of our current SAN above and beyond what it was meant to do.

Tony Asaro: Can you tell us how Data Domain has improved the overall economic effectiveness within your IT operations?

Eric Hawley: It cost us less than buying more hard drives. That was the economic gain. But the economic gain was not our primary reason. Our primary reason was the functional gain. Our back-ups were failing. If anything goes wrong - and things go wrong in technology - those back-ups still have to occur. Data Domain solved that functional problem for us at less cost than doing it the traditional way.

Orrin Anderson: Like I said our SAN was fully populated. If we wanted to expand the amount of data that we could copy disk-to-disk, we'd either have to buy a larger, more expensive SAN - or a couple more of these smaller SANs. Either of which would have cost up in the hundreds of thousands. Buying the Data Domain gateway, we continue using the SAN that we had already purchased and paid for, where it wouldn't go to waste, but also expand its capability so that we wouldn't have to buy an additional SAN.

We don't have to manage the Data Domain box very much. Once we got it set up, it was pretty much just a set it up and let it do its thing. Every once in awhile I check on it, but it does save me time in having to monitor an extra box.

Tony Asaro: Did you look at any other disk-based back-up or VTL solutions?

Orrin Anderson: We used the CommVault back-up system, and I was at CommVault training in California and asked the other IT professionals what they were doing. About 75% of them were using Data Domain boxes, whether it be a gateway or a full box. Just seeing that 75% of them were using and were happy with the box, really made us look at Data Domain. After we did that, we didn't really consider much of anything else.

Tony Asaro: Did you look at software-based solutions provided by the back-up vendors?

Orrin Anderson: No, we didn't. Mainly because we wanted something that wasn't going to bog down our servers - that wasn't going to cause any additional overhead. We wanted something that would handle the deduplication on its end. We do have some servers that wouldn't be able to handle too much extra processing on their part.

Tony Asaro: Would you recommend using Data Domain to other IT professionals? And tell us why.

Orrin Anderson: I definitely would recommend it. When I was at the training for my back-up system, about 75% of the people there were also using it in part of their back-up system. And we weren't disappointed as we implemented it in ours. Once we got it set up, it's easy to manage. You hardly have to touch it. If you want to make some changes, they're quite easy, whether it be through the command line or the web interface. And just that ease of use and not having to worry about - is it up today, or did something take it down - is a load off my mind and gives me time to worry about other things - not have to worry about one more box to manage.

CommVault's CommFault

Tony Asaro — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 12:56:04 -0700

I read David West's blog- the VP of Marketing for CommVault - and I was surprised at his position on Data Domain. It was pretty negative and very FUD-like. Additionally, there are a large number of joint Data Domain and CommVault customers - and they are technology partners (says so on CommVault's website even).

What most vendors don't get is that attacking another vendor also means that you are indirectly attacking the IT professional that selected that solution as well. This type of behavior is pretty common but in this case many of those are already CommVault customers. In fact, I had a conversation with one CommVault customer recently, Orrin Anderson of Utah State University, and it was at a CommVault event where he got turned on to Data Domain:

"We use the CommVault back-up system, and I was at CommVault training in California and asked the other IT professionals what they were doing. About 75% of them were using Data Domain boxes, whether it be a gateway or a full box. Just seeing that 75% of them were using and were happy with the box, really made us look at Data Domain."

Based on the above, a large number of customers (75% at this event) are already using Data Domain with CommVault. Additionally, these CommVault customers are recommending Data Domain to other CommVault customers.

Let's break down some of what David said:

David's position is that Data Domain has been telling the world that tape sucks and he disagrees. In actuality think that Data Domain is preaching to the choir - no one knows better than IT folks the challenges of tape. For many people - tape does suck. That isn't a startling revelation and it is not an outrageous view point.

David's thesis is that tape will continue to play a useful role in the data center. For many this will be the case - but there are many others that are moving away from tape or minimizing its use. Here is a quote from another Data Domain customer, Michael Passe, Storage Architect for Beth Israel Hospital on tape:

"Mainly we were having a lot of problems with the management overhead of tape. Tape is a very mechanical construct with tapes getting stuck in drives. It made sense to get something more automated and RAID protected. It was fairly easy for us to figure out that tapes needed to go."

Another Data Domain customer, Bryan Wilken, VP of IT for Bank Midwest said the following:

"We have completely stopped using tapes in all but one of our systems, and we’ll have that on the Data Domain in the next few weeks here. The bank now has a more robust and fault-tolerant back-up system. It runs automatically every night and it doesn’t require the need of employees to change tapes and take them home. We’re also seeing a 23-to-1 compression ratio, or de-duplication. And restores have been handled quickly and effectively by the IT department. We no longer have to wait to have tapes either brought back in or reloaded and reread before we can restore data."

These are two data points that are representative of a growing mindset that is based on real pain being felt and a way to solve it - in all of these cases that way is Data Domain.

David West then proceeds to make the same arguments that other backup software vendors have made unsuccessfully against Data Domain over the years - the market continues to embrace the Data Domain approach and for good reasons. Going back to Michael Passe, he looked at backup software and decided to go with Data Domain - even though both EMC and Symantec - two of his existing vendors - tried to sell him their backup software dedupe solutions. Michael states that he chose Data Domain because "...we really liked the appliance model that Data Domain presented. They understand the engineering of the box."

David also brings up some potential recovery performance problem that seems disingenuous and is really vendor FUD. Data Domain has thousands and thousands of customers that are using their solution. Additionally, Data Domain products have been in the market for years. There is no hidden major flaw in terms of recovery or data integrity - otherwise it would have been uncovered long before now by the very customers that use it.

CommVault (and David) are clearly leveraging what they consider to be a major differentiator - the ability to backup and dedupe onto tape. In so doing they are claiming advantages over Data Domain - focusing on a unique CommVault capability. This is again no surprise and common in the industry. But there also has to be value that provides a real "aha" moment to customers in regards to that capability and trying to force it rarely, if ever, succeeds.

The value of dedupe on tape is questionable - since tape is already pretty cheap without it. Questions are raised - how are data sets being backed up over lots of different tape drives impacted by dedupe? What if one of those tapes gets corrupted or lost? How do you recover? This is already an issue without dedupe - does backup-based dedupe create additional challenges? I also want to know about vendor lock-in and what happens if you want to move away from that vendor? Does it mean you always have to keep a CommVault server around? Furthermore, dedupe on tape doesn't solve the major issues created by tape in the first place - including tape management, mechanical problems and recovery reliability.

Thankfully for the marketplace there is always more than one approach and customers will evaluate and determine what method works for them. At this point in storage game the target side is clearly winning. Some customers may want to go the backup software route. Many, many others choose Data Domain because they don't want to rip and replace their existing backup software, they often have multiple backup software solutions so using a single target is just easier and more effective, they don't like the idea of using the backup or host servers to be running the dedupe process, support is easy and straightforward with Data Domain, they can use Data Domain to perform remote replication to DR sites, they case use RMAN for database backup and recovery natively with Data Domain, and the list goes on. One customer told me that Data Domain supporting AS400 was icing on the cake for them. These are the things that end users tell me why they didn't go down the backup software dedupe path.

The good news is that Data Domain and CommVault are still a good combination as many IT professionals can attest to and those joint customers actually made a smart choice.

No Fooling

Tony Asaro — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 13:47:10 -0700

I decided to post a link from an industry blogger that publishes on StorageMonkeys. This blog asks some valid questions around the $100 million cash infusion that EMC recently made in Quantum - EMC and Quantum Deal Raises Question.

Read the comments on the blog as well.

One thing to point out - the blogger mentions that Data Domain is using Quantum's technology. That is very, very wrong. Data Domain doesn't use any Quantum technology. The cross licensing deal between these two companies was to remove any litigation issues that might slow down Data Domain as they were going public.

Data Domain - Built for Inline Dedupe

Tony Asaro — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 16:44:24 -0700

It is important to consider Data Domain's architectural approach optimized for inline data
dedupe.

Data dedupe uses algorithms to analyze and make changes to data with the goal of reducing the amount of capacity to store it. Addiitonally, a core tenant of data dedupe is to do no harm - all of the data should be accessible and unaltered from the user and application perspective. These characteristcs make inline data dedupe CPU intensive. And for Data Domain customers - that is a very good thing.

Traditional storage system performance is typically disk-limited with disk drives as the biggest bottleneck. Many storage systems offset this by providing caching algorithms and wide stripping across a large number of disk drives. Wide stripping is valuable but again relies on disk performance - which is the slowest aspect of any storage system. The concept behind wide stripping is "many hands makes light work". But those "hands" or disk drives don't come for free - additional disk capacity results in high costs to the customers on a number of levels.

There is brilliance in the CPU versus disk-driven approach for a data dedupe storage system. There is a wide gap between CPU and disk performance and this continues to increase over time. Additionally, the cost of CPU performance is far lower than disk drives. And since data dedupe - especially when it is being performed inline - is CPU-intensive - Data Domain has a sustainable architectural advantage.

Traditional storage systems were built to support transactional data and not to be dedupe engines. That is why you see very few inline data dedupe storage systems in the market. Most storage system vendors have a "hammer" and they want to turn everything into a "nail".

Data Domain's architecture enables their ability to provide inline data dedupe with high performance levels that will just keep getting better as CPU performance keeps getting better. This is critically important since the growth of primary data increases and all of it has to be backed up without impacting operations or backup windows.

Data Domain isn't a general purpose storage system with data dedupe algorithms added as a feature - it is a purpose-built solution that was designed and optimized for inline data dedupe that has created an entirely new and valuable category in IT.

Setting the Record Straight

Data Domain — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 14:15:16 -0700

The CEO of EMC, Joe Tucci, recently claimed that they are the number one vendor in data dedupe. Maybe the statement would be more defensible if he didn't state that EMC was beating Data Domain in the market. This is not the case.

The first issue is that much of the revenue EMC derives from data dedupe is from their Avamar backup software - which is not a competitive solution to Data Domain. If they want to do an apples-to-apples comparison they need to compare their disk-to-disk (D2D) backup appliances - the EDL with data dedupe directly to Data Domain - and that number is nowhere close. Unfortunately EMC can say whatever they want - because they don't have to prove it. On the other hand - Data Domain's success is transparent and open for the world to scrutinize.

Why not add Centera revenue into the mix as well since it does single instancing - a less efficient form of data dedupe? That would really boost their numbers against Data Domain. After all, they add Centera to their NAS numbers and claim the number one spot over NetApp - and no one takes that seriously either.

The reason that this is important is because just lke NetApp established their leadership in NAS - Data Domain is doing the same for D2D dedupe backup and their competitors will create FUD to try and slow this down. So it is important to provide anti-FUD every now and then.

Data Domain is the leader in D2D backup data dedupe appliances - with the most mature and advanced products, the greatest number of implementations, the largest number of customers, the smartest and most experienced support organization, an extensive ecosystem of partners and resellers, the highest revenue numbers and a very strong business model with great margins and real momentum in the market.