Case Study: NHS gets a 91 percent de-dupe ratio
Lucky Quantum gets brilliant de-dupe customer ref
By Chris Mellor | Techworld | Published: 09:00, 31 May 2007
A data production and management division of the UK's NHS has deployed a Quantum DXi3500 (disk-based data storage and de-duplication product) to supplement its tape library. It was installed on the 18th of April and is reported to be delivering a de-duplication compression ratio of 91 per cent, which goes well beyond the stated performance of the device. Well, yes, it does.
Quantum is saying that de-dupe can achieve 50:1 compression ratios. The NHS has easily bettered that. Presumably there was a huge amount of redundant data in its backups. It is obviously greener in principle to only store data once rather than hundreds of times and de-dsuplication will play its part in reducing the number of disk spindles needed to hold data. In turn this will lead to lower electricity costs for power and cooling as much less data is being stored on spinning media.
The Quantum VAR which installed the product has a delighted sales director, Damon Robertson. He said: "The NHS was initially reluctant to consider non-tape solutions for data storage due to cost but, having installed the DXi3500 and seen its benefits over a matter of weeks, it’s delighted with the results.”
Quantum's UK sales director, Steve Mackey (an incomer with the ADIC Acquisition) said: “The deployment of the DXi3500 in the NHS demonstrates the incredible potential of data de-duplication to change the dynamics of the storage market. While tape still has it place, disk is now a plausible data backup medium, bringing the best of all worlds: performance and affordability.”
The NHS is now relegating tape to disaster recovery and archive and moving to the LTO4 format for that.
