Top Deduplication Considerations for Today’s Hybrid Cloud Strategy
Are all data deduplication methods the same? The concept seems simple enough to eliminate duplicate copies of redundant data. However, while reducing the amount of physical storage for backups is imperative, several other factors within the deduplication process are important in considering the right strategy for today’s hybrid cloud environments. Deduplication methodologies are not all the same. They differ from vendor to vendor, so the factors outlined below should be part of the consideration process for determining the right deduplication strategy.
Backup Performance
Performance is a key consideration because the deduplication process does add time to your backups whether you are backing up on-premises or to the cloud. Some deduplication techniques may be automatic within a backup application and rudimentary in nature without considering backup performance requirements. Oftentimes, backup windows are difficult to meet due to the growing amount of data requiring protection, which can be especially true in hybrid environments. Therefore, flexible options such as providing deduplication in-line during the backup process or enabling deduplication post processing can aid in helping to ensure backup windows are met. State of the art deduplication solutions offer the flexibility for in-line or post-processing deduplication.
Storage
While the goal of deduplication is to reduce physical data storage, the truth of the matter is the pace of data growth continues to make it challenging to keep up. Therefore, a good deduplication solution should have mechanisms to accommodate growth with the ability to add nodes or storage as needed easily, including the ability to support clustered environments, global environments with a single instance repository, hybrid cloud environments and multicloud environments. Multicloud support is the ability to support more than one public cloud platform within a given environment and is a part of many hybrid cloud environments today. A multicloud repository is key for providing that support within a deduplication solution.
Recoverability
Recoverability is the key to data protection. For fast access, a robust deduplication solution should include mirroring to protect against local storage failure and replication to protect against disaster recovery. For today’s environments, including hybrid cloud, security is top of mind for keeping the deduplicated backup data recoverable. Air-gapped and immutable backups should be a part of the deduplication solution to protect against cybersecurity, ransomware, external and internal attacks.
Hybrid cloud is today’s new normal. So be sure to leverage the right deduplication strategy for your environment. Read more about FalconStor StorSafe VTL (Virtual Tape Library) for your environment today.
