Avamar is a sourcebase global deduplication solution which enables fast, efficient backup and recovery by reducing the size of backup data at the client before it is transferred across the network and stored. Avamar’s data deduplication dramatically reduces network traffic by only sending unique blocks over LAN/WAN. Blocks that were previously stored are never backed up again.
This means huge savings in bandwidth for backup, a lot less disk storage needed on the back end, and most importantly very fast backups often as much as ten times faster.
Avamar backups can be quickly recovered in just one step eliminating the hassle of restoring full and subsequent incremental backups to reach the desired recovery point. Backup data is encrypted during transit across the network and at rest for added security.
There are three ways to define data deduplication:
File-Level
File level deduplication reduce storage needs for file servers by identifying duplicate files and providing an efficient mechanism for consolidating them. The most common implementation of single instance storage is at the file level. With this method, a single change in a file results in the entire file being identified as unique. Example: If there were 3 versions of a file in a backup environment, the 3 files in their entirety are stored.
Fixed Block
Fixed block deduplication is commonly employed in snapshot and replication technologies. This method breaks a file into fixed length sub-objects. However, even with small changes to the data, all fixed length segments in a dataset can change despite the fact that very little of the dataset has actually changed.
Variable Block
With variable block level deduplication, a change in a file results in only the variable-sized block containing the change being identified as unique. Consequently, more data is identified as common data, and in the case of backup, there is less data to store as only the unique data is backed up. This is the method used by Avamar
