(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Network backup solutions provider Arkeia Software (www.arkeia.com) announced on Thursday it has acquired data deduplication technologies firm Kadena Systems (www.kadenasystems.com). The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Arkeia will integrate Kadena’s deduplication technology in Arkeia Network Backup, providing source-side data deduplication.
This will help accelerate backups, reduce network congestion and cater to virtualized environments which have heavily duplicated data.
Kadena Systems has developed block-grain, content-aware, sliding-window data deduplication technology.
Since the size of the sliding window is adjustable based on content type, Kadena can achieve both higher compression ratios and speedier deduplication. Kadena also uses progressive-matching algorithms to pinpoint known blocks, increasing the speed of the deduplication process compared to first-generation methods.
The first Kadena patent was filed in 2004 and the technology has proven fast and reliable for more than 6,000 end-user customers.
“Kadena Systems technology is next-generation data deduplication that is fast and efficient,” says Bill Evans, CEO of Arkeia Software. “For network backup applications, the primary benefit of deduplication should be faster backups that allow a shorter backup window. Arkeia will make this possible by delivering source-side deduplication that minimizes network traffic required for backups. Because deduplication is seamlessly integrated, de-duplicated backups become easier to define and manage. Since backup servers integrate deduplication, administrators enjoy lower costs.”
The Kadena deduplication technologies will be seamlessly integrated with Arkeia, which gives customers a greater level of flexibility to choose their deployment platforms as software, appliances or virtual appliances, the location of deduplication and the scope of deduplication.
Additionally, source-side deduplication can be deployed within the guest OS or use hypervisor-specific storage APIs, such as VMware’s vStorage and Microsoft Hyper-V VSS.
If the virtual environment uses SAN storage, deduplicated backups of virtual environments will not have to traverse the LAN, leading to faster backups and shortened backup windows.
For environments without SAN, system administrators can further boost performance by deploying the Arkeia Virtual Appliance and limiting traffic to the within the VLAN.
With the acquisition, Tamir Ram, the former CTO at Kadena Systems, will join Arkeia Software as chief architect.
Ram has significant technical expertise in storage including technical leadership roles at storage leaders VERITAS, which is now Symantec, NetFrame and Auspex Systems.
