Tips for Choosing a Deduplication Solution

Data deduplication can lower the cost of your data storage by reducing the amount of disk space needed to store your data, but you don't want to evaluate deduplication as an isolated product or feature. As noted in this Computer Technology Review 'best practice' article, you need to consider the broader implications of deduplication within the context of your entire data management and storage strategy.

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"Third, the length of time that data is retained affects data deduplication ratios in two ways: If more data is examined when deduplicating new data, you’re more likely to find duplicate data and increase space savings.

"While you should closely examine this number when you’re comparing multiple products, try not to overanalyze this number once your system is up and running. Rather than performing more frequent full backups just to get a better data deduplication ratio, consider increasing your backup retention period for on-disk deduped backup data stores since the additional backup sets will not significantly add to your overall backup target capacity. Additionally, once you have your first backup sets on disk, adding additional backups to the backup repository will take up considerably less space than if you sent them to tape."

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