Intro to AVAMAR

Important Terms and Concepts

Avamar System. An Avamar system is a client/server network backup and

restore solution consisting of one or more Avamar servers and the network

servers or desktop clients that back up data to those servers. The Avamar system

also provides centralized management through the Avamar Administrator

graphical management console software application.

Avamar Server. An Avamar server is a logical grouping of one or more nodes

that is used to store and manage client backups.

NOTE: Hardware manufacturers typically call their equipment

servers (for instance, the Dell PowerEdge 2950

server). In the context of an Avamar system, this equipment

is called a "node."

Node.

Node. An Avamar node is a self-contained rack-mountable network-addressable

computer that runs Avamar server software on the Linux operating system.

Hard Disk Storage. Avamar is a hard-disk based IP network backup and

restore solution. Avamar servers manufactured by EMC use internal hard disk

storage.

Stripes. A stripe is a unit of disk drive space managed by Avamar to ensure fault

tolerance.

Object. In the Avamar system, an object is a single instance of deduplicated

data. Each Avamar object inherently has a unique ID. Objects are stored and

managed within stripes on the Avamar server.

Data Deduplication. Data deduplication is a key feature of the Avamar system.

Data deduplication ensures that each unique sub-file, variable length object is

stored only once across sites and servers.

During backups, Avamar client software examines the client filesystem and applies

a data deduplication algorithm that identifies redundant data sequences and

breaks the client filesystem into sub-file, variable length data segments. Each data

segment is assigned a unique ID. The client software then determines whether or

not this unique ID has already been stored on the Avamar server. If this object

resides on the Avamar server, a link to the stored object is referenced in this

backup. Once an object has been stored on the server, it never has to be re-sent

over the network, no matter how many times it is encountered on any number of

clients. This feature greatly reduces network traffic and provides for greatly

enhanced storage efficiency on the server.

Replication. Replication is a feature that enables efficient, encrypted and

asynchronous replication of data stored in an Avamar server to another Avamar

server deployed in remote locations without the need to ship tapes. Replication is

a scheduled process between two independent Avamar servers, providing a higher

level of reliability for stored backups. Replication can be scheduled to run at offpeak

hours to minimize bandwidth impact.