HP Data Protector software interaction with deduplication enabled replication

Executive summary

Data deduplication has emerged as a technology available with virtual tape libraries. It represents

one of the most significant storage enhancements in recent years, promising to reshape future

data protection and disaster recovery solutions.

Deduplication technology references blocks of data that have been previously stored, and only

stores new backup data that is unique. Data that is not unique is replaced with a pointer to the

location of the original data. Because there is often a great deal of duplicate data present from

one backup session to the next, disk space is consumed by similar or identical iterations of data.

Deduplication greatly improves storage efficiency by only storing an instance of data once, while

still allowing backup streams to be restored as if they had been retained in their entirety.

Deduplication is the key technology enabler for low bandwidth replication on HP VLS and D2D

systems (VLS systems use HP Accelerated deduplication, and D2D systems use Dynamic

deduplication). The same technology that allows duplicate data to be detected and stored only

once on the HP VLS or D2D system, also allows only unique data to replicate between sites. This

technology is called deduplication-enabled replication. Because the volume of data being

replicated between sites is much less than if the full data set was replicated, you can use lower

bandwidth links at correspondingly lower price points. In addition, backup at remote offices can

be automated to a local virtual tape library and then replicated back to a regional data center or

primary data center allowing end-to-end management from the data center of all data in the

remote offices.

Scope of white paper

This white paper describes the necessary steps and processes to import replicated cartridges into

the media management database of an HP Data Protector Cell Manager for further tape/backup

data handling such as restore operations or object copy operations.

The scripts support importing from the following storage types:

• HP VLS

• HP D2D VTL

• HP D2D NAS

This version (January 2011) includes information with regard to HP D2D NAS storage types.