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canadait
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Anyone using Data Domain backup appliances?

Hi,

Is anyone using Data Domain backup disk appliances for their enterprise? They look like a great product but I am looking for some real life reviews of them.

Thanks!!

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Justin_King
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I use two datadomain units in this office; so if you've started investigating I already got a few ointers to be aware of:

First Do NOT base your capacity purchase on the estimated compression rate. Do your best to match the the raw cpacity of the DataDomain to the amount of data being backed up. For example: The DD430 holds roughly 3Tb raw storage and should only beused to manage 3TB of of total backup data.

The thing to be aware of with a DD series unit is 90% of it's backup compression comes from the removal of duplicate data. AKA: the more full backups you do the more duplicate data you get and the higher your compression ratio.

In the same vien, the #2 thing you'll want to do if you get one of these units is to remove multiplexing fomr the backup stream. AKA: dont allow multiple data streams to occupy the same backup block. It's usually just a little checkbox but doing it will minimiize unique data and maximize compression.

All said and done you get really good compression out of these units as long as you remember what it was designed to do and not rtry to use it as some kind of archival destination or hope to get 5:1 compression off your initial backup and thus buy the smaller unit. 20:1, 50:1, this isn't uncommon from \_subsequent backups_ ... but your inital backup will be 3:1 or less so you should plan for 1:1.

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pengo
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we have recently installed four DD460, and replaced our old BIG storagetek robot with a smaller one. So far we had no issues, and backup/restore working flawlessly.

//Daniel

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tapesucks
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Hi canadait

If you like to get information about many happy customers, who are using Data Domain Restorer over a year and more, please let us know. We'd be happy to connect you with our references in Switzerland and Germany. We have several branches and systems of all flavours (DD410 till DD560) which shows up perfectly the paradigm shift in a new backup-to-disk generaration. We think for primary backup, tape sucks. So, don't hesitate, just ask. Hope to hear from you soon.

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roudybob
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We are currently using DD460's between our 2 offices as part of a Data center consolidation. Works well compression really good, no problems, easy to setup.

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canadait
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Hi,

Thanks for the replies. I have two more questions:

What type of backup speeds are you receiving?

How much compression/deduplicating are you getting?

Thanks so much!!

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Yps
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I am testing one DD460 now with Networker, after 24 days, I got around 11x compression. I have run full-backup on weekends, and incremental on weekdays.

I have an old 1x2,4Cpu in our Networker server, and I got speeds around 40mb/s for writing. I have seen faster speeds for reading.

roudybob
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We use TSM on a Gb network so throughput is pretty good there is a fair size cache on the DD box so doesn't really slow it down much. We do monthly backups with the rest incremental and on data that doesn't change much or is repetitive we are seeing close to 18x compression. We are really pleased with it.

canadait
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So what MB/S are you geting?

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IVOXY
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We use them all of the time integrated with Consolidated backup and Data Domains Replication Software for DR Strategies.

Do you have any specific Questions?

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Justin_King
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I use two datadomain units in this office; so if you've started investigating I already got a few ointers to be aware of:

First Do NOT base your capacity purchase on the estimated compression rate. Do your best to match the the raw cpacity of the DataDomain to the amount of data being backed up. For example: The DD430 holds roughly 3Tb raw storage and should only beused to manage 3TB of of total backup data.

The thing to be aware of with a DD series unit is 90% of it's backup compression comes from the removal of duplicate data. AKA: the more full backups you do the more duplicate data you get and the higher your compression ratio.

In the same vien, the #2 thing you'll want to do if you get one of these units is to remove multiplexing fomr the backup stream. AKA: dont allow multiple data streams to occupy the same backup block. It's usually just a little checkbox but doing it will minimiize unique data and maximize compression.

All said and done you get really good compression out of these units as long as you remember what it was designed to do and not rtry to use it as some kind of archival destination or hope to get 5:1 compression off your initial backup and thus buy the smaller unit. 20:1, 50:1, this isn't uncommon from \_subsequent backups_ ... but your inital backup will be 3:1 or less so you should plan for 1:1.

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canadait
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Well we have been live with our DD560 for about 2 months. 19+TB on just over 1 TB of physical space!! Very impressed and very fast!

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kapplah
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In our company we are using a dd560 as nfs storage on a ESX to put backup data on it and getting a compression level of about 1:30

This is very amazing, seeing that a 3TB backup store is shringed to 100GB.

The only negative thing is that our average backup rate is decreased from about 20MB/s to 12MB/s to I have to pimp my backup script to let 2 or more backups run simultan.

cu,

Alex

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