About this episode

Curtis and Prasanna discuss the intricacies of data deduplication and its significance in backup technology.

What is data deduplication, and why does Curtis call it the single most important development in backup over the last 30 years? In this encore episode, W. Curtis Preston and Prasanna Malaiyandi break down exactly how dedupe works, why it's not the same as compression, and why the fine print of your dedupe domain determines how much storage you actually save. This episode originally aired as part of the Backup to Basics series, and it's back because listeners couldn't get enough of it — not just downloads, but people who stuck around for the whole conversation, some more than once. That says something, because this isn't a surface-level explainer. Curtis and Prasanna get into fingerprints, dedupe indexes, and the real-world tradeoffs between file-level and block-level dedupe. You'll hear why Curtis argues that file-level dedupe isn't "real" dedupe at all, just single-instance storage wearing a costume. Then the conversation shifts to the split that shapes entire product categories: source-side dedupe versus target-side dedupe. Curtis walks through why source dedupe requires you to essentially replace your backup software, while target dedupe lets you bolt an appliance onto…

People in this episode

Host: W. Curtis Preston

Guest: Prasanna Malaiyandi

Topics covered

• data deduplication
• backup technology
• storage savings
• dedupe domain
• file-level dedupe
• block-level dedupe
• source-side dedupe

Keywords

• data deduplication
• backup
• storage
• compression
• dedupe indexes
• file-level dedupe
• block-level dedupe
• source-side dedupe
• target-side dedupe
• hybrid dedupe

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Backup to Basics

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