Data Domain setup consideration

[chad_small]

I am looking to deploy some Data Domain DD800's and wondering how most people set them up. Data Domain recommends NFS but others tell me they use them as VTL's. I figured I'd get some feedback from those of you that have used them and make an educated decision after hearing both sides.

[GregE]

Not sure why DataDomain would "recommend" NFS. You can do both NFS and VTL (and OpenStorage (a NetBackup protocol), and "IBM System i" as of February) all in one box. I had discussions with DD techs late last year and discussed it all. They didn't recommend VTL or NFS as an exclusive setup and in my research I never saw it mentioned.

If you're doing LANfree backups, VTL would be the way to go for those, same as you do now for big DBs LANfree to physical tape. For your LAN-based things, NFS.

[DanGiles]

I second that

[chad_small]

They do recommend NFS in their whitepaper IBM TSM Backup with EMC Data Domain Deduplication Storage: Best Practices Planning

[dms19]

We're doing NFS with ours. The VTL requires a different head and additional cost all to mimic older technology. There's less overhead and I'd assume the "best practice" for NFS is so anything can use the DD as disk, rather than having to have some type of software or util in between the OS and the VTL.

[DanGiles]

You'd only want to consider a VTL head if you want LAN-free to 1) take the load off the netword, and 2) take I/O load off the TSM server.