Avoiding the Disk Bottleneck in the Data Domain Deduplication File System

Disk-based deduplication storage has emerged as the new-generation storage system for enterprise data protection to replace tape libraries. Deduplication removes redundant data segments to compress data into a highly compact form and makes it economical to store backups on disk instead of tape. A crucial requirement for enterprise data protection is high throughput, typically over 100 MB/sec, which enables backups to complete quickly. A significant challenge is to identify and eliminate duplicate data segments at this rate on a low-cost system that cannot afford enough RAM to store an index of the stored segments and may be forced to access an on-disk index for every input segment. This paper describes three techniques employed in the production Data Domain deduplication file system to relieve the disk bottleneck. These techniques include: (1) the Summary Vector, a compact in-memory data structure for identifying new segments; (2) Stream-Informed Segment Layout, a data layout method t...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: FAST
• Authors: Benjamin Zhu, Kai Li, R. Hugo Patterson
• Keywords: Data Segments, Enterprise Data Protection, FAST 2008, Operating System, Redundant Data Segments