Data Domain's new DD690 device raises the bar for in-line data deduplication, boosting the vendor's claimed data ingestion and deduplication rate to 170 Mbps for a single backup stream and to 388 Mbps aggregate for multiple streams.

This roughly ties Diligent Technology's ProtecTier software for aggregate throughput and sets a new record for single streams. As a result, organizations with less than 11 TB of nightly backups can dedupe in real time, avoiding the extra disk space and complications involved in post-processing.

The DD690 is stronger and faster than before, with two of Intel's newest quad-core processors and up to 35 TB of usable disk space after RAID 6 protection. It also adds 10-Gbps Ethernet interfaces for CIFS/NFS, NDMP, and NetBackup OST backups and can accept globally deduplicated data from 60 branch-office Data Domain appliances, up from 20.

Like earlier Data Domain models, the DD690 can be set up as a standalone appliance or as a gateway to existing Fibre Channel disk arrays. Since Data Domain uses a network-attached storage interface, its appliances can be used for archival file storage as well as backups, something that virtual tape libraries can't do.

The in-line data deduplication camp, led by Data Domain, contends that there's no good reason for post-process deduplication--which first stores backup data and then deduplicates it--if in-line is fast enough at backing up data. Therein lies the crux of the post-processing camp's argument: It says in-line devices aren't fast enough.