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I can comment directly on this as I work in the backup sector. First hand knowledge, yada yada yada. Dell EMC DataDomains do have good ingest performance, you

I can comment directly on this as I work in the backup sector. First hand knowledge, yada yada yada. Dell EMC DataDomains do have good ingest performance, you can typically throw hundreds of streams at them and they'll greedily gulp it down. And it is true that they are dog slow at restoring data. The reason? They are deduplicating appliances, you have to rehydrate the data, and this can take a very long time depending on the number of blocks needed that constitute the backup. Some blocks may be shared between hundreds if not thousands of backups. Dell isn't one to talk about their downsides much. They are best used not as _primary_ storage, but secondary (think 3-2-1 backup rule). You should have some fast nearline storage available for recent backups that require really low RTO (recovery time objective). Depending on the application used for backup, it may not have had native Postgresql WAL processing. This and may have had to be image based which slows down the process and requires some additional scripting.

dijit 4y ago
Thats pretty cool, the datadomain appliance is actually really cool and I definitely appreciate its existence. I definitely feel like we were using it wrong and I’m not entirely convinced it was my fault. In my ideal scenario I would have had a weeks worth of point in time backups on a machine in the rack, and replicated the contents to the DD after verification. Sadly I was denied that “in-rack” solution and was sold the datadomain solution (without it being named) as if it was simply a remote disk, not a fancy appliance. the main point I tried (and failed) to convey in the article is that a solution can be brilliant and expensive but that doesn't mean its what you meed for the job at hand.
- Severian 4y ago
  Oh yeah, for sure. I got the gist of your article. I thought it was pretty clear. But overall, planning a backup strategy can take some time. You need to know your goals before you go buy some vendor's hardware. But, in your circumstance, you gotta do what you gotta do.
rodgerd 4y ago
> They are best used not as _primary_ storage, but secondary (think 3-2-1 backup rule). Yeah, these are for archives, not service restoration/disaster recovery scenarios.

dijit 4y ago

Thats pretty cool, the datadomain appliance is actually really cool and I definitely appreciate its existence. I definitely feel like we were using it wrong and I’m not entirely convinced it was my fault. In my ideal scenario I would have had a weeks worth of point in time backups on a machine in the rack, and replicated the contents to the DD after verification. Sadly I was denied that “in-rack” solution and was sold the datadomain solution (without it being named) as if it was simply a remote disk, not a fancy appliance. the main point I tried (and failed) to convey in the article is that a solution can be brilliant and expensive but that doesn't mean its what you meed for the job at hand.

Severian 4y ago
Oh yeah, for sure. I got the gist of your article. I thought it was pretty clear. But overall, planning a backup strategy can take some time. You need to know your goals before you go buy some vendor's hardware. But, in your circumstance, you gotta do what you gotta do.

rodgerd 4y ago

> They are best used not as _primary_ storage, but secondary (think 3-2-1 backup rule). Yeah, these are for archives, not service restoration/disaster recovery scenarios.