HP automates dedupe with StoreOnce

HP has unveiled StoreOnce, software to automate data deduplication across converged infrastructures.

Announced on Monday at the HP Tech Forum in Las Vegas, StoreOnce will be rolled out in all new HP storage products. The first to feature the software is the HP StorageWorks D2D4312 backup system, which is aimed at remote offices and mid-sized datacentres.

According to HP StorageWorks marketing chief Tom Joyce, StoreOnce will be deployed "in new ways" after next year.

The software — developed in conjunction with the company's research arm, HP Labs — can be used across backup clients, virtual appliances, inline appliances and scale-out storage systems. HP says that this makes it the only deduplication software to address the whole converged infrastructure with a single codebase, making it possible to move data around the datacentre without having to expand it back to full size.

HP's dedupe software allows offloading to tape but not deduplication from tape, according to Alistair Veitch, the head of storage and information management platforms at HP Labs.

At the Monday event, Veitch described one of the key technologies underlying StoreOnce, an HP Labs invention called sparse indexing. During deduplication, the data index that is created is generally kept either in memory, which is fast but memory-hungry, or on disk, which is economic but slows down performance. Sparse indexing keeps most of the data on the disk, with only the piece being deduplicated at the time being kept in memory.

The D2D4312 backup system starts at 12TB and goes up to 48TB in capacity, and is available now at a European starting price of €77,870 (£64,776). StoreOnce can also been downloaded to existing D2D clients that have an HP maintenance contract.