DE-DUPLICATION SPREADS SLOWLY

By D.E.Levine

De-duplication is single-instance storage. It involves the elimination of redundant data. By marking data blocks with unique numbers provided by hash algorithms, duplicate pieces of data can be removed from storage.

Although the market is starting to expand, today primary corporate use of the technology is for e-mail archiving.

Most current tools are point products that sit on an appliance between a primary disk storage system and the background software process.

The market is beginning to expand as Sun Microsystems Inc. and Net App began shipping tools that provide de-duplication on primary storage systems.

However, due to high start up costs, IT managers remain reluctant to adopt the technology. Also adding to the uncertainty on the part of IT managers is a reluctance to step into a space that not many people have tried.