Storage vendor Data Domain has just released the latest upgrade to its midrange systems, - the DD660. With a single socket motherboard supporting quad-core processors it has double the compute capability of previous version of the hardware and ships with 16GB of RAM. It also comes with the latest version of the Data Domain DD OS4.6 software.

One of a small number of specialist storage vendors using multi-core processors, Data Domain uses the cores and onboard memory to carry out a range of tasks from deduplication to replication. With the new quad-core DD660, Data Domain is claiming a 50% price/performance improvement over the previous version and a 50% larger base system capacity.

The increase in support for base capacity is achieved partly through the additional cores and the extra processing that they can handle and support for 1TB drives. The same drives can be deployed in both the base unit and in the extra storage shelves.

Perhaps the most impressive claim for the DD660 is that is can provide up to 2 TB/hour of aggregate inline deduplication throughput, and up to 700 GB/hour for a single stream.  This is where the power of the quad-core processors gives Data Domain an advantages over other storage vendors. Instead of writing to disk or using a separate subsystem for deduplication, Data Domain use the processors and memory to do this inline giving them higher performance.

The base system comes in a 2U chassis with support for 12 x 1TB drives. The maximum native storage capacity using extension shelves is now 36TB of raw disk. However, Data Domain claims a deduplication rate of between 20x-50x for most systems allowing them to increase the data stored to a maximum of 1.3PB.

<"There is a clear pattern emerging here," said Brian Babineau, senior analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group.  "After a new processor comes to market, Data Domain upgrades its product line so customers, ranging from small businesses to large enterprises, can store more data in a smaller footprint, and do it faster than they could be before.   The DD660 news, which comes just a few weeks after Data Domain announced a software-based performance boost, proves that Data Domain is committed to cost effectively scaling its solutions in many dimensions including more performance and more capacity.   With the company’s CPU centric architecture, there is no doubt that the pattern of bigger, faster, denser systems, and more importantly, satisfied customers, will continue."