Dell, CommVault release bundled de-duplication appliance

Dell and CommVault Systems announced their first integrated data management appliance with embedded block-level deduplication – the Dell PowerVault DL2000.

The DL2000 server, which comes bundled with CommVault Simpana 8 software, has up to 144TB of usable disk capacity and is targeted at small- to medium-sized businesses. The appliance is designed as an all-in-one disk-based backup appliance with de-duplication and improved management of virtualized environments.

The new version of the PowerVault offers a deduplication ratio of up to 20:1, allowing users to reduce the costs and complexity of storing, protecting and managing data across disk and tape tiers of storage through one user interface. The Singular Information Management interface integrates disk-to-disk backup and tape archive deduplication with a data replication tool to provide disaster recovery capabilities by vaulting backups offsite.

The appliance has a data ingestion rate of 1.5TB/hour, which is faster than the 1TB/hour ingestion rate of Data Domain's backup appliance, a CommVault spokeswoman said.

The DL2000's iSCSI target support integrates with VMware Consolidated Backup to keep Dell EqualLogic iSCSI virtual server backup traffic off the LAN.

“The latest CommVault-Dell offering provides customers with benefits to help cut data management capital and operating expenses, facilitate consolidation of distributed backup operations, and slash server virtualization-related storage costs,” Lauren Whitehouse, an analyst with the Enterprise Strategy Group in Milford, Mass., said in a statement.

The DL2000 First-Time Boot Utility, an auto-detection and configuration of disk storage, can be set up in 30 minutes, according to CommVault.

Unlike competing products, CommVault's Simpana software modules are created with a single unifying code base and common platform to reduce back-end infrastructure and administrative overhead.

“The ability to manage interoperable features, instead of disparate point products, from a consolidated console also translates into significant savings for budget-and resource-constrained SMBs,” said Darren Thomas, vice president and GM, Dell Storage Business, said in a statement.