De-Dupe Aids in Managing Data Growth for Federal Agencies

CTOlabs.com, provider of research, evaluations and technology concepts, announced the results of its study on the impact of data growth and government best practices to protect, manage and replicate mission critical data.

Survey results showed that data is growing at a rate of 30 percent per year in 50 TB or more environments. The report concluded that if left unchecked this data growth overtime could become overwhelming since results also showed that the federal government is lagging behind private industry in switching from tape to disk back up infrastructures. While the majority of respondents indicate they do plan to eliminate tape-based systems, currently outdated federal backup strategies are being driven by needs to retain data for the mission at great expense. Many agencies have embraced virtualization as a way to control data sprawl and its associated costs, but management of virtual data has since become an issue.

"It’s no surprise that server virtualization is a high priority within the federal government, but as more agencies implement the technology they’re experiencing an increase in the time needed for backup due to virtual data growth," said Bob Gourley, founder of CTOlabs.com. "Data deduplication technologies hold great promise in addressing the storage and management needs of today’s federal enterprises."

Almost 90 percent of survey respondents ranked data deduplication as a priority and over 60 percent are planning to deploy the technology within the next 12 months. However, there are many IT professionals in the federal government who are already using data deduplication technologies to lower storage capacity needs by eliminating the storage of redundant data. In addition to achieving significant savings through reducing the amount of data stored, federal IT professionals can more efficiently manage virtual machines, optimize their infrastructure, and enhance agency disaster recovery and continuity programs.

"Federal agencies that have implemented or are thinking about implementing virtualization should also be thinking about data deduplication, since we’re already seeing the pair yield dramatic results," said Gourley. "These survey results have made it obvious to us that the technology is poised for takeoff in the very near-term."

Top ten data points coming out of the survey:

• Data Growing at 30% Annually
• Majority Still Utilizing Tape Backup Methodologies
• 67% Intend to Eliminate Tape- Based Systems
• 72% Have Deployed Virtualization
• 80% Not Meeting Backup Window Requirements in Virtual Server Environments
• Data Retention and Disaster Recovery Are Top Concerns
• 80% Are Using Data Deduplication or Plan to Implement Within 12 Months
• 87% of Organizations Rank Data Deduplication as A Priority
• 61% of Non-Users Plan to Deploy Data Deduplication Within 12 Months
• 91% of Users Are Satisfied or Very Satisfied

This survey was conducted by CTOlabs.com, in conjunction with Carahsoft Technology Corp., of U.S. federal government enterprise technologists, architects and systems integrators. The purpose of the survey was to seek actionable insights to provide the federal IT community with information regarding backup and recovery with data deduplication best practices.

To read the full report (you need to register)