Permabit offers deduplication to Linux masses – almost

Permabit has moved beyond OEMs, making the latest release of its dedupe technology available as a Linux software package so that ISVs, professional services folks and systems integrators in its Hybrid Cloud Professional Services partners programme can use it.

Previously it was available to OEMs in Albireo (dedupe) and Virtual Data Optimizer or Virtual Data Optimizer, VDO (dedupe+compression+thin provisioning) form.

VDO v6 is designed for the cloud service provider market, Permabit says, and the VDO for Hybrid Cloud package simplifies VDO installation and configuration in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) data centres.

Permabit says VDO is a ready-to-run kernel module for Linux, and is the only modular data reduction product available for the Linux block storage stack “that works with the broad range of open source and commercial software solutions”.

It has a block-level approach and can leverage existing file systems, volume management and data protection to deliver 4K inline, highly scalable data reduction in Linux storage environments. VDO supports block, file and object storage on RHEL and is compatible with Red Hat OpenStack, Ceph and Gluster.

A new VDO Optimizer file system is claimed to provide an up to 20x improvement in data reduction rates for existing archive and backup applications.

Howard Marks, chief scientist at DeepStorage, provided a canned quote: “Permabit’s VDO will not only optimise data on local storage but also in a hybrid cloud, significantly reducing the cost of cloud storage as well as the network load and storage ingest charges, since data is reduced before it’s transferred.”

We’re told that this new software is being evaluated by some of the world’s largest financial and communications companies as well as large government agencies.

This is a way for RHEL customers to get data reduction if their current storage hardware and software doesn’t supply it.

The latest version of VDO is available now to Permabit’s storage OEMs and members of its Hybrid Cloud Professional Services partners program. They will be announced in the near future. ®