The core IT challenge for managing any storage infrastructure is to make sure critical data is available when needed while their file servers and NAS devices maintain a sufficient amount of 'headroom'. Often, the first order of business is to implement a backup scheme to assure that data is saved on a regular basis; but typically, this means all data is backed up, which leads to redundancy, sluggish network performance, and storage devices that fill up faster than they really need to.

Data de-duplication has become an increasingly critical component in the data backup process. By clearing out extraneous, redundant data, it makes backups perform faster and improves overall data availability.

This whitepaper will provide an overview of the benefits of SRM (storage resource management) as a "front end" to data deduplication. We will demonstrate how an SRM tool such as Northern Storage Suite can work in concert with data de-duplication technologies to efficiently streamline data and assure optimal performance of an organization's storage infrastructure.