On 03 19, 2010, at 9:52 AM, tbirkenbach wrote:

> Recently I received the "dog and pony" show from EMC on their Data Domain and 
> Avamar products, which they suggest is the "next step" in progressing my 
> NetWorker backup solution.  I agree with them in that dedup and/or bare metal 
> recovery (BMR) would be an enhancement to a backup solution.  It got me to 
> thinking...
> 
> What do you, as my fellow backup admins, feel is a higher priority, dedup or 
> BMR?
> 
> Personally, I feel that BMR would be the service that I, as a systems admin, 
> would want from a backup solution.  I realize that some products, such as 
> EMC's Avamar product, can do both BMR and dedup; so you CAN have your cake 
> and eat it too, but it comes with the EMC sticker shock too...
> 
> Just curious as to what others have done or are doing in progressing their 
> backup solutions.  Any shared insight is greatly appreciated. 

I do not think there is a one size fits all answer to your question. It depends 
on your employer's requirements and budget. For us, de-dup is far more 
important than BMR, although BMR would be nice. We have a DR box for each of 
our most important servers already configured to stand in if its production 
counterpart bites the dust. Of course, our DR boxes are in a DR site. As such, 
our requirements tilt toward protecting application data far more than they do 
protecting the components of BMR. Also, it really isn't a one or the other 
situation as far as de-dup and BMR are concerned. You have to protect your 
application data, and the best way to do that is site specific, but BMR will 
likely not help you there, so BMR is not a substitute for de-dup or any other 
data protection technology.

To sign off this list, send email to listserv AT listserv.temple DOT edu and 
type "signoff networker" in the body of the email. Please write to 
networker-request AT listserv.temple DOT edu if you have any problems with this 
list. You can access the archives at 
http://listserv.temple.edu/archives/networker.html or
via RSS at http://listserv.temple.edu/cgi-bin/wa?RSS&L=NETWORKER