You have likely already heard about EMC’s latest announcement that is rocking the data protection airwaves by redefining data protection for a software-defined world. Here on the Protection Continuum, I am going to dig a little deeper into the Data Domain piece of this announcement by sharing with you some of my favorite features included in the release. Now let’s review the biggest hits of DD OS 5.5!
Secure Multi-Tenancy
Kicking things off, we are introducing an exciting new feature: secure multi-tenancy, making Data Domain systems a truly cloud-ready protection storage platform! Secure multi-tenancy enables large enterprises and service providers to offer data protection as a service with Data Domain systems in a private or public cloud. With this new feature (built into the DD OS), a Data Domain system can logically isolate data and restrict each tenant’s visibility and read/write access to only his or her data. In addition, secure multi-tenancy provides management and monitoring by tenant for the provider to enable chargeback, trending, and other reporting. So, Data Domain systems can now address all cloud use cases across large enterprises and service provider environments, including local backup, replicated backup, and remote backup.
Archive Storage Enhancements
Next up are some updates to Data Domain system’s archive storage capabilities including increased scalability, litigation hold, and an expanded ecosystem.
Data Domain systems now support (cue the Dr. Evil impersonation) 1 BILLION small files! Making Data Domain systems highly scalable to support large archiving environments. This is made possible through various file system enhancements, including more efficient cleaning and replication.
In this release we are also introducing litigation hold, which enables users to protect their compliance archive data during legal discovery by lengthening data retention policies. With litigation hold, the administrator can set the new retention period through the archiving application and DD Retention Lock enforces the new retention period on the Data Domain system, preventing deletions or modifications to the archive data so you are assured it is protected and compliant during the course of legal action.
Finally, we have expanded our archive ecosystem with new application integrations and a completely new archive use case. Data Domain systems have been certified as a VMware NFS Datastore opening up the opportunity for VM Archive, which can reduce VM sprawl by archiving VMs directly to a Data Domain system via NFS. Two other integrations have been added with new support of Hyland OnBase software for enterprise content management archiving and Index Engines for archive storage migrations.
Boosting DD Boost
Rounding out my greatest hits list, DD Boost continues to rock on with some excellent enhancements in this release such as multi-user support, deeper integration with the EMC Data Protection Suite and an expanded ecosystem.
DD Boost multi-user support is a feature ideal for multi-user and multi-tenant environments such as large enterprises or service providers offering data protection as a service. Now, Data Domain systems can support multiple DD Boost users for secure data access by assigning users individual usernames and passwords for access to their own MTree (or storage unit) on a Data Domain system.
In addition, DD Boost is now supported over the WAN enabling faster, more efficient backups over the WAN for both EMC Avamar and EMC NetWorker. This new feature is ideal for remote office and desktop/laptop environments that send their data over the WAN to an offsite data center or service provider for backup and recovery.
New announcements for the Data Protection Suite include updates to DD Boost for Avamar and DD Boost for NetWorker. The simultaneous release of Avamar 7.1 and the introduction of DD Boost support over WAN completes Data Domain and Avamar integration by enabling new support for Remote Offices and Desktop/Laptop backup, meaning that you can use Avamar software with Data Domain systems for all use cases! Another new feature of DD Boost for Avamar is in-flight encryption from the client, which establishes a secure connection between the Avamar agent and Data Domain system over LAN or WAN. This adds to existing support for in-flight encryption between systems via DD Replicator software and data at rest encryption via DD Encryption software. So data can be encrypted from the client all the way to the DR site, which is ideal for security conscious environments.
Also just announced, NetWorker 8.1 includes support for “VM Instant Access,” which enables VM images that are backed up with NetWorker to Data Domain to be accessed instantly and run from the Data Domain system just like the existing VMware feature with Avamar. Additionally with NetWorker 8.1, DD Boost for NetWorker now supports SAP HANA so these environments can gain the benefits of DD Boost such as 50% faster backups and reduced bandwidth. MEDITECH support has been enhanced with DD Boost for NetWorker by adding the ability to backup directly from the application client to a Data Domain system.
The last track in the DD Boost playlist is new support for HP Data Protector. DD Boost distributes parts of the deduplication process to the backup server or application client so only unique data is sent across the network to the Data Domain system speeding backups by 50% and reducing bandwidth up to 99%. Integration with HP Data Protector further expands the DD Boost ecosystem bringing the ecosystem to a total of 14 different application integrations making it the broadest in the industry.
As you can see, there are A LOT of awesome enhancements packed into DD OS 5.5 that continue to drive Data Domain systems’ leadership in data protection. That’s a wrap for today, but tune in over the next couple weeks to catch further details on new features of EMC Data Domain systems!
