IBM is introducing the System Storage TS7680 ProtecTIER Deduplication Gateway for System z, an enterpriseclass, data protection platform for z/OS environments that quickly and safely protects business information while reducing the amount of space required for storage. For example, with the offering, up to 25 terabytes of tape application data can be stored in one terabyte of disk after deduplication, helping clients to reduce capital expenditure, power, cooling and floor space demands in the data center.
"Data deduplication can dramatically extend storage capacity," said Cindy Grossman, vice president, tape and archive storage systems, IBM. "Today's announcement will help clients manage more data with less infrastructure, simplify information protection, while helping to reduce operational cost and energy usage."
Data deduplication is of great interest to clients today because it provides significant cost benefits by eliminating multiple copies of the same data. For example, an email sent to twenty recipients only has to be saved once, instead of twenty times. The data deduplication support for System z is significant as most of the world's top banks, major governments and industry leaders rely on the IBM mainframe to process everyday business transactions.
The IBM System Storage TS7680 ProtecTIER Deduplication Gateway for System z combines a virtual tape library solution with an inline data deduplication algorithm called HyperFactor, a unique and patented technology that indexes the complete content of a repository, which can be permanently hosted in the RAM because of its small footprint. The TS7680 also features twonode clustering and up to one petabyte of physical storage capacity per system.
The combination of virtual tape and data deduplication can help improve efficiency by rapidly improving the time for backup and restore operations, as well as reduce the costs of tape processing operations by using disk storage as a repository for the deduplicated data. This allows applications to complete faster, and improve the batchprocessing window. Also, since virtual tape systems are seen by the mainframe as a standard tape library, existing processes and procedures need not be changed to accommodate the new technology and little or no operating system modification is required.
The IBM System Storage TS7680 ProtecTIER Deduplication Gateway for System z is available immediately.