End-to-End: The Future of Data Optimization

Data Reduction: A Table Stakes Feature Storage efficiency and data reduction, including dedupe, are amongst the most important topics in storage today. Some form of data reduction will be included as a base feature in almost every major storage product by 2012. Almost all of these implementations will be incompatible point solutions, rushed together to satisfy customers’ demand to have dedupe in every product.

It's more than just Dedupe
Both users and vendors are already seeing the benefits of data reduction at higher and higher levels in the storage stack. In backup applications where data is massively redundant, the deployment of naive deduplication-only solutions is an acceptable approach. However, for primary storage applications, more intelligent algorithms are required to maximize storage efficiency. In many cases, compression can be deployed side-by-side with deduplication, which raises a new requirement for solid policy-based logic for runtime selection of different algorithms for different data-sets and workflows.

Point Solutions Undercut the Potential Benefits of Dedupe Neither customers nor storage vendors are best served by this approach. Firstly, customers miss the opportunity to deploy the best-of-breed solution in most of their storage purchases. Furthermore, because these point solutions will be incompatible in many aspects, data will constantly have to be expanded back to its full size every time it is moved, replicated, or backed up. In short, point solutions may deliver local cost-saving benefits, but fall short of delivering the full potential of data-reduction; when dedupe'd data is moved, replicated, backed up, and restored more efficiently.

Ocarina is the Thought Leader in End-to-End Dedupe
Ocarina is currently under development on a series of products that enable an end-to-end data reduction strategy across different applications and different tiers of storage. Ocarina is also working with major OEMs to integrate these technologies directly into a variety of storage platforms.