The entire technology industry evolves at an incredible pace. What was once state of the art quickly becomes yesterday’s news at an almost shocking rate. If your business backs up all of their data to an off-site location or has engaged in any type of strategic planning around data storage, you may have heard of data de-duplication. This process, which changes the way that data is stored has been getting a lot of attention lately and it is fast becoming the industry norm. Before you jump on the data de-duplication bandwagon, however, it is important that you understand how the process works and how it impacts all data management processes, especially backup and recovery.

Simply put, data de-duplication decreases the total amount of data by examining the building blocks that make up individual files and comparing them to an index of previously stored data – if the data is recognized, then a marker or pointer is inserted to the original block of data rather the actual data. The result can be a significant decrease in total data storage and a cascade of ancillary benefits such as decreased backup and recovery windows and better overall storage utilization. Let’s look at some benefits you can take from data de-duplication.

Cost
Because you are now able to store all of your data within significantly less space than before, you flat-out need less space – less hardware is a good thing, right?

Efficiency
Because you are moving less data back and forth from backups to restores and back again, the process is significantly more efficient. You aren’t wasting time backing up the same data over and over again, so your servers spend less time being down and inaccessible and you can get more work done, either remotely or in your office. As they say, time truly is money and with more efficient backup systems in place, your business can do more business.

Speed
Less data means less time to complete familiar tasks, which means that the total backup and restore times are significantly reduced. And productivity is significantly increased.

Bandwidth
Less data means less bandwidth to complete the same process in the same amount of time. Less pressure on the network means you can meaningfully plan network capacity requirements and right-size the infrastructure. Before, you were required to managed to the highest denominator – often backup and restore processes.

Time
While all of these benefits are clearly interrelated, time is often the driving reason to consider de-duplication. Assuming you keep the same infrastructure, same bandwidth and same number of tasks, benefits manifest themselves in decreased time for data processing. More aggressive restore time objectives, smaller backup windows – more time to do more productive things.