The move makes Symantec the first tier-one supplier to bring to market a technology that has been pioneered by smaller suppliers such as Avamar Technology Inc and Data Domain Inc.
Other major suppliers such as IBM Corp and EMC-Legato are very likely to follow Symantec’s lead, and soon.
Symantec’s software is called NetBackup PureDisk. It automates the disk-to-disk backup of data at branch and remote offices, sending backups back to data centers where it can be handled by centralized, consolidated backup systems.
In order to reduce the consumption of expensive bandwidth, and fit into backup time windows, the data is de-duplicated or effectively compressed, by a factor which is typically around 10 or 20, and up to 50 in some cases, Symantec said.
This is aimed at relieving the overheads and problems of backing up data stored at remote or branch offices, where they may not even by any IT staff to take on such duties. It is the same issue that is being addressed by WAFS providers.
Echoing those WAFS players exactly, Symantec quoted analysts estimates that 75% of corporate data is scattered across remote sites, where backups may have to be entrusted to non-IT staff.
It remains to be seen which approach WAFS, or de-duped and automated disk-to-disk backup will gain more sales.
Symantec’s Linux-based PureDisk software uses hashing or digital fingerprinting technology first developed by the Belgian developer DataCenter Technologies NV, a company which Veritas bought last year, before itself being bought by Symantec. This compresses data by a factor of 10 to 20, and up to 50 in some cases, Symantec said.
It will be another year before the application is integrated with Symantec’s NetBackup software. Until then there will only be a limited facility for exporting the data that PureDisk has sent back to data centers from disk onto tape.
You have to back up the entire environment, Symantec said. That may mean that customers use more disk at data centers than perhaps they would like, but Symantec stressed that the data de-duplication will cut down on that consumption.
Currently the software only supports Windows and Linux clients. Over the next two releases scheduled for this year, Symantec said it will add support for Unix clients, and support for Exchange and SQL applications. PureDisk is priced on a usage basis, at $16,000 for every TB of de-duplicated data.
