Repository; True Global Deduplication - Dell PowerVault DL4000 User Manual

• Replication
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Repository

The repository uses deduplication volume manager (DVM) to implement a volume manager that provides support for
multiple volumes, each of which could reside on different storage technologies such as Storage Area Network (SAN),
Direct Attached Storage (DAS), Network Attached Storage (NAS), or cloud storage. Each volume consists of a scalable
object store with deduplication. The scalable object store behaves as a records-based file system, where the unit of
storage allocation is a fixed-sized data block called a record. This architecture allows you to configure block-sized
support for compression and deduplication. Rollup operations are reduced to metadata operations from disk intensive
operations because the rollup no longer moves data but only moves the records.
The DVM can combine a set of object stores into a volume and they can be expanded by creating additional file systems.
The object store files are pre-allocated and can be added on demand as storage requirements change. It is possible to
create up to 255 independent repositories on a single AppAssure 5 Core and to further increase the size of a repository
by adding new file extents. An extended repository may contain up to 4,096 extents that span across different storage
technologies. The maximum size of a repository is 32 Exabytes. Multiple repositories can exist on a single core.

True Global Deduplication

True Global Deduplication is an effective method of reducing backup storage needs by eliminating redundant or
duplicate data. Deduplication is effective because only a unique instance of the data across multiple backups is stored
in the repository. The redundant data is stored, but not physically; it is simply replaced with a pointer to the a unique
data instance in the repository. Conventional backup applications have been performing repetitive full backups every
week, but AppAssure performs incremental block-level backups of the machines forever. This incremental forever
approach in tandem with data deduplication helps to drastically reduce the total quantity of data committed to the disk.
The typical disk layout of a server consists of the operating system, application, and data. In most environments, the
administrators often use a common flavor of the server and desktop operating across multiple systems for effective
deployment and management. When backup is performed at the block level across multiple machines at the same time,
it provides a more granular view of what is in the backup and what is not, irrespective of the source. This data includes
the operating system, the applications, and the application data across the environment.
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