Whoop de Doop for De-Dupe

Data de-duplication is spreading from backups to online storage. So when can we stop buying disks? Mario Apicella, InfoWorld De-duplication started out as a way to do backups without having to store mostly the same stuff over and over again. Companies like Data Domain, Diligent Technologies, and NetApp provided de-dupe of virtual tape libraries and direct-to-disk backup targets, providing full backups that stored only the changes since the previous backup. The result: You could reap the same space savings you get with incremental backups but without the necessity for multiple restores to re-create an entire volume. Now these same companies are advertising de-duplication of near-line storage, and even online storage in NetApp’s case, while other vendors are using de-duplication to reduce WAN traffic, shrink the size of... [read full story]