Infortrend EonNAS Pro 510 Review

Data Deduplication:

Data Deduplication is probably one of the more compelling features that I believe many fail to see the real value of. I won’t go into the nitty gritty details of what Data Deduplication is, as there are many white papers on the net, but here is Infortrend’s brief explanation:

EonNAS offers inline, block-based deduplication. Duplication calculations are performed as each new data block enters deduplication-enabled volumes. When the EonNAS sees an identical block is already present in the volume, the new block will be discarded and only a pointer will be created for reference to the existing block.

I have to admit that I hadn’t had a lot of firsthand experience with Data Deduplication, so this is something I wanted to make sure I tested myself, and share my findings. In testing this feature, I wanted to simplify the equation as much as possible to make the potential value and gains as obvious as I could. So I chose to install an older SATA 150GB Velicoraptor drive I had laying around into the EonNAS Pro 510. I created a pool using the full drive, which yielded 128GB of usable/free capacity. When I created the share, I enabled data deduplication (which is off by default).

At this point, I copied a 13GB folder containing outlook PST files to the share, which left me with 115GB of free space.

I then proceeded to copy the same folder four additional times, which resulted in 5 copies of the same data for a total of 67GB written to the share.

After doing so, I found that the total capacity of the share dynamically grew to 182GB, from the original 128GB, and for those counting at home is 32GB more than the drive is physically capable of.  Also, even though I wrote 67GB of data to the share, I still had 115GB of free space available.

Here is a final screenshot from the EonNAS WebUI showing the share and deduplication ratio after this test. Note it also reports 13GB used and 115GB free.

Obviously this is an exaggerated test, as it wouldn’t be common practice for you to intentionally store duplicate data files, but unbeknownst to you…some level of data duplication does occur. The amount of duplication will be heavily dependent on an individuals or companies data patterns, but the net net take away here is data deduplication can significantly increase your storage efficiency. Additionally, it can lower your TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) by ensuring that you don’t purchase larger drives by ensuring that you’re currently using the ones you have with greater efficiency.  I know that last sentence read like a marketing blurb, but would you go out and buy a larger AC unit for your house if some of your windows were wide open? I think the answer is an obvious no, so why should you go out and spend your budget on larger drives when you might be using your current ones inefficiently?

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