Saturday, February 1, 2014

Data Deduplication With A Modern Trend

The volume of information in the world is growing, and thus the necessity for formidable storage is as well.  Big data and mobility have been causing massive storage problems, and the only remedy thus far is a good system in place for data reduplication.  In short, it is a process in which only the important parts of a file or “block” are saved to limit the space a file consumes.  This is necessary to save on storage costs, disk expenditures, and maintenance.


What exactly is data reduplication?
It is a modern procedure that is a form of file compression.  Much like “zipping” a file, data reduplication allows for a large amount of facts to be stored in a very refined space.  It is used in a variety of ways.  Not only does it cut storage space, it can also decrease the size of a file being transmitted.  Basically, data reduplication breaks the file up into chunks of bytes (i.e. byte patterns), then it analyzes there importance, and stores them based on that analysis.  If the program identifies a piece of data that is a duplicate, it saves the information in a different way than if the data were original.  When a repeat occurs, and not remit the same information, the program will assign a specific number or code to the duplication for reference.  Thus the amount of data is greatly reduced, as is the space it takes up.   



Compression styles
Binary code was originally developed from Morse code, and that is what basic file compression is based off of.  Small strands of repeat data are analyzed and compressed.  A tag is then assigned to the minute data sets.Single-instance storage (SIS) is another form of basic compression.  This process, however, only looks for exact copies of files and stores them accordingly.  Despite the fact that duplicate files happen frequently, more often than not, a slight change to a file, like a revision of a paper, is what occurs.  In this instance, a data deduplication program makes much more sense.  A dedupe process looks for large blocks of data and analyzes the small changes.  It then assigns a tag to just the slight differences, rather than a string of repeat data.   
Applications for data deduplication
The process of data deduplication can be useful to anyone.  It is particularly useful for highly redundant applications.  This includes jobs like backing up a system, which requires repetitive data sets and copies.  It can also be used in conjunction with e-mail.  Rather than transmit the same attachment multiple times when responding, it will identify and transmit the attachment once only.  In some cases, 100MB can be reduced to just 1 MB.  However, some issues should be duly noted.  Media files, for one, are very difficult to deduplicate.  Hash collisions can be another common occurrence.  This is when the data deduplication process fails to recognize unique data and tags it wrong.  This is becoming a rarer issue, however, as newer technologies and software are developed.
As the world changes and develops, so do the solutions set in place to accommodate the growing numbers.  Simple file compression is no longer an acceptable solution for big data.  Information must be analyzed now in massive chunks of bytes, rather than small data sets.  It is a wise choice for any business to adopt a form of compression that will save money on storage and disk space.  Data deduplication is a useful business application that can serve any size organization.  
    
 

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