By Jerome Wendt, ComputerWorld.com,
In the last few years grid computing has found its way into the deduplicating, disk-based data protection space. This is curious considering the stigmas normally associated with grid computing.
The attraction of grid computing is that companies can use inexpensive server hardware and cluster it together. Configured this way, it functions as one logical, high performance computing cluster while eliminating the expense of purchasing proprietary technology. The historical problem with using grid computing architectures is its complexity as it required knowledgeable IT staff to configure and then maintain the solution.
However, there are a couple of reasons why grid computing and data protection now find themselves a match:
First, using a grid computing architecture addresses a conundrum that exists in disk-based data protection: providing high performance and ample storage capacity at low costs.
Companies may need to backup and deduplicate hundreds of gigabytes, terabytes or even tens or hundreds of terabytes on a daily or weekly basis. Using grid computing, companies can more easily add new hardware as required without needing to replace their existing hardware in order to obtain desired performance or storage capacity gains.
Second, vendors are architecting their grid computing products to solve a specific problem that is common across multiple organizations: data backup and recovery.
Once the grid computing system is configured to address this problem, it does not require on-site specialists to constantly configure and manage it - the vendor providing the solution can function in that role.
The worlds of grid computing and data protection are beginning to merge and it stands to reason that it just might succeed in this iteration. Vendors are taking the complexity out of grid computing while still delivering on its low cost and high performance benefits all without requiring companies to add more people to their IT staff.
Jerome Wendt is the president and lead analyst at DCIG Inc. You may read his blogs at www.dciginc.com
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