What is deduplication in networking? Deduplication is the process of eliminating duplicate copies of data from a system. Data deduplication improves storage utilization and can be administered in both data backup and network data schemes. Often called single-instance storage or intelligent compression, data deduplication optimizes your data backup storage by ensuring that only one instance of data is copied and stored.
Deduplication software is software that analyzes data to pick up duplicated byte patterns. This type of software verifies that the single-byte pattern is correct, and then uses the stored byte pattern as a reference. You will likely discover that deduplication software companies use fuzzy and phonetic matching technology to tackle dissimilarities between data sources to identify data that has been duplicated.
The process of deduplication involves creating and comparing different “chunks” or groups of data. Deduplication software allows you to run both inline deduplication and post-processing deduplication.
No matter which option you choose, the deduplication steps operate in the same way. Every deduplication system decomposes data into chunks, after which the process of analysis can begin. An algorithm is then used to create a hash (a specific set of numbers and letters used to identify the data that acts as a unique signature) for each chunk. When a change is made to the data, large or small, it causes the hash to also change. If two different chunks have the same hash, they are considered identical, making one of them redundant. When a chunk is identified as redundant, it will then be replaced by a small reference that points to the stored chunk.
The goal of deduplication software is to delete extra copies of the same data, leaving only one copy for storage.
Deduplication is critical for businesses because it provides a way to effectively and efficiently manage backup activity, ensures cost savings, and creates load balancing benefits. Because the same byte pattern can occur up to hundreds or thousands of times, reducing the amount of data that is transmitted across networks can significantly improve backup speeds in addition to saving money on inflated storage costs. In addition, data duplication effectively decreases how much bandwidth is wasted when transferring data to or from remote storage locations.
The way deduplication is performed will depend on the task:
There are several different types of deduplication, including:
The benefits of deduplication software span beyond just improving data and maintaining a database. They include:
It may be obvious, but a deduplication tool is only capable of detecting and deleting data if it can read the data in the first place. For this reason, any deduplication process must happen before any encryption. If encryption were to occur before the deduplication process, duplicate data would not be found.
Deduplication software is software that analyzes data to pick up duplicated byte patterns. This type of software verifies that the single-byte pattern is correct, and then uses the stored byte pattern as a reference. You will likely discover that deduplication software companies use fuzzy and phonetic matching technology to tackle dissimilarities between data sources to identify data that has been duplicated.
The process of deduplication involves creating and comparing different “chunks” or groups of data. Deduplication software allows you to run both inline deduplication and post-processing deduplication.
No matter which option you choose, the deduplication steps operate in the same way. Every deduplication system decomposes data into chunks, after which the process of analysis can begin. An algorithm is then used to create a hash (a specific set of numbers and letters used to identify the data that acts as a unique signature) for each chunk. When a change is made to the data, large or small, it causes the hash to also change. If two different chunks have the same hash, they are considered identical, making one of them redundant. When a chunk is identified as redundant, it will then be replaced by a small reference that points to the stored chunk.
The goal of deduplication software is to delete extra copies of the same data, leaving only one copy for storage.
Deduplication is critical for businesses because it provides a way to effectively and efficiently manage backup activity, ensures cost savings, and creates load balancing benefits. Because the same byte pattern can occur up to hundreds or thousands of times, reducing the amount of data that is transmitted across networks can significantly improve backup speeds in addition to saving money on inflated storage costs. In addition, data duplication effectively decreases how much bandwidth is wasted when transferring data to or from remote storage locations.
The way deduplication is performed will depend on the task:
There are several different types of deduplication, including:
The benefits of deduplication software span beyond just improving data and maintaining a database. They include:
It may be obvious, but a deduplication tool is only capable of detecting and deleting data if it can read the data in the first place. For this reason, any deduplication process must happen before any encryption. If encryption were to occur before the deduplication process, duplicate data would not be found.