What exactly is Avamar?

Avamar from EMC has a refreshing new twist on the backup world. This solution utilizes backup to disk hardware and client software installs to create a client-server network backup/restore solution while using a unique de-dupe technology.

Traditional Backup solutions have some significantly inherent problems. A high-percentage of data that is retained on backup solutions is redundant data. Typical strategies consist of daily incremental backups and weekly full backups. These backups can be very time consuming, especially when getting the full backups, and yield multiple copies of identical or slowly changing data on backup media. This media then has to be organized and kept off-site for disaster recovery purposes, which often leads to high protection service costs, and high recovery time objectives. In addition, the data itself that is often duplicated across several servers in the case of system files, and many users keep identical or slightly different versions of the same documents. Traditional backups will backup all copies and variations as if they were brand new documents. Backing up redundant data increases the amount of backup storage needed and can negatively impact network bandwidth. The backup window for most organizations gets smaller and smaller the more they grow.

Avamar differs from traditional backup and restore solutions by identifying and storing only unique data objects. Redundant data is identified at the source, which reduces the amount of data that actually needs to travel to the backup server node. Avamar utilizes a chunk and hash methodology to break down all files into smaller chunks of data to send to the backup node. Unique hashes are generated from this data that gets stored on the backup node. If a client tries to send the same data, the backup node will respond that it already has that data and does not need another copy. Only new, modified, or changed chunks from the original files will be sent to the backup node.

Some of the key features:

• Global data de-duplication ensures that data objects are only backed up once across the backup environment.
• Systematic fault tolerance, using RAID, RAIN, checkpoints, and replication provides data integrity and disaster recovery protection.
• Highly reliable inexpensive disk storage for primary backup storage.
• Standard IP network technologies. Optimizes use of network for backup, does not require a separate backup network.
• Centralized management. The Avamar Administrator and Enterprise consoles give users full-featured remote management of Avamar servers with robust reporting capabilities.
• Support for Windows, Unix, Linux, NDMP, SQL, Exchange, DB2, and Oracle.

So now that you have some of the basics, check back soon to get a more in depth look to how the different solutions are deployed. There are 3 basic versions:

• Avamar Data Store Non-RAIN (single or multiple nodes with replication)
• Avamar Data Store RAIN (multiple data nodes for fault tolerance)
• Avamar Virtual Edition (virtual appliances versions in .5 and 1 TB)