NetApp promises CDP and dedupe in VTLs

Storage firm NetApp announces plans for shoring up data protection and duplication tools

Storage specialist NetApp said it is working to add continuous data protection (CDP), data deduplication (dedupe) and intelligent storage management features to its network attached storage (NAS) products in a bid to aid remote backups and help enterprise customers reduce storage costs by consolidating resources and capacity.

"CDP will most likely come to market as a licensed feature on our virtual tape libraries [VTLs] that attracts a separate charge, but we have yet to decide if it is part of our VTL or Topio product lines, or how much integration there will be with NetApp’s SnapShot software," said Jay Kidd, senior vice-president and general manager of NetApp’s emerging products group.

The company is also working to introduce block-level dedupe to its storage controllers, though no product announcements have yet been made. Kidd estimates that dedupe will reduce the amount of data backed up by up to 50 percent on average within an active file system, though capacity reductions of up to 70 percent are possible.

IDC figures suggest that the networked disk systems market remains healthy, with up to $6.1bn spent in the Emea region alone in the nine months to September 2006. But Eric Sheppard, programme manager for IDC’s Western European disk storage systems market, warns that IT managers need to find more efficient ways of storing data, without simply throwing capacity at the problem.

"Email, file sharing and data protection requirements are driving constant capacity expansion within the enterprise, but that will really create problems in the long term. Suppliers are saying let’s do this more intelligently," he said.

NetApp says it is making inroads into the corporate market, having sold more than 100 high-end FAS6000 NAS arrays, which provide up to 504TB of capacity, since the product’s launch last year. Many have gone to new customers rather than those upgrading from legacy NetApp NAS devices, said chief executive Dan Warmenhoven.

"Sales have been higher than we forecast – we assumed that there would be a very slow acceptance rate because it is in a high end system category that NetApp has not been in before. We expected long evaluation schedules," he said.