Whilst I also believe that Avamar is a paradigm shift in Backup, just be
careful of the marketing. Fortunately, I got to go on a training course just
after EMC bought Avamar, and the presenter was very truthful about what it
is good at and what it isn't.

E.g., it's "tape out" capability, at the moment, is very slow. Effectively,
this means that you can't store data for a long period. It's housekeeping
takes up a long time, so this affects the backup window. Now, these issues
are both slated to be resolved in the next major version.

It certainly does have its uses though. I have recommended it to at least
one customer.

As for where you de-dup. At the source or the target? Interesting question.
I'd say it depends on where your bottleneck is. My customer had a network
bottleneck, de-dup at source is perfect for that. Avamar also does some
great stuff where it compares a whole directory (Not each file within it) to
say "Have you changed at all?". If the answer is no, it goes on to the next
one, thus Eliminating large amounts of file walking.

Bottom line. Don't "swallow the cool aid", as the Americans say. Really make
sure it is suitable. However, don't ignore it, look at the future plans
because it may not be suitable now, but may be next year (We have a few
customers that need the major improvements they have slated)
 
Siobhan


On 16/10/07 11:35 PM, "Fazil Saiyed" <Fazil.Saiyed AT ANIXTER DOT COM> wrote:

> I believe that this is one of the most significant steps in Networker's
> history, i think Avamar product has lot to offer and seems to be very
> efficient, especially, people with VM environment should like it as well,
> it would all boil down to what price EMC would put on the integrated
> product.
> How does it compare with say Decru\VTL dedup  or other dedupe products out
> there ?
> With the announcement was also SP for 7.4 so hopefully it has important
> fixes to allow upgrade to those at 7.3.3.
> 
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Siobhán

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