Nexsan adds high-availability to dedupe
FalconStor software also supports OST
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Nexsan has souped up its deduplication product, adding a high-availability configuration, and support for Symantec's OST and 10GbitE. There is a new high-end box as well.
The Dedupe SG product combo was announced last August and combines FalconStor's FDS dedupe with Nexsan's AutoMAID drive arrays. These spin down disk drives provide more power-saving as the drives slow in graduated steps, ultimately stopping.
The FDS deduplication engine has file-level access to a central block-level backup repository using policy-based concurrent and post-process deduplication methods. Nexsan and FalconStor say that the Dedupe SG 2.0 product is the first deduplication system with a high-availability configuration; two dedupe engine controllers form an active-passive pair with automatic failover.
FDS 2.0, the software base of the Dedupe SG 2.0 product, gets added Symantec OST (Open Storage Technology) support, eliminating the need for a media server.
FalconStor's product marketing VP, Fadi Albatal, reckons this doubles performance when the 10GbitE interface is used as well, with up to 1500MB/sec hitting the FDS landing zone. The product also gets improved support for remote sites, with up to 150 of them pumping deduped data to a central Dedupe SG. A real-time animated dashboard is said to show what's happening as these remote replication fan-in sites send their data across the links.
The central site can then replicate data to a disaster recovery site, replicating a specific backup job, a particular folder, or everything.
Albatal said that the dedupe index is global and the remote sites only send in unique data.
CIFS security has been improved with Active Directory authentication and NT Access Control List support (ACL).
The new top-end box is the DDSG-72, offering 72TB usable capacity, twenty more than the DDSG-52. Nexsan suggests it can hold up to 1.44PB of raw data at a 20:1 dedupe ratio. The high-availability configuration and 10GbitE options are available for the DDSG-12 and larger products, not the smaller DDSG-4 and -7.
What about positioning compared to Data Domain and Quantum's DXi products? Albatal said the Nexsan/FalconStor edge is the high-availability: "DXi and Data Domain don't offer it. They are single points of failure." Also, "the SG product line is the only deduplication repository that offers MAID technology".
The SG 2.0 will be available through Nexsan's channel at the end of February. There is no information available yet about DDSG-72 pricing, nor for the 10GbitE and high-availability options. ®
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