EMC has unveiled Data Domain Global Deduplication Array (GDA),  which presents a single inline deduplication storage pool to the backup application across two EMC Data Domain DD880 controllers.

The company said that the new inline deduplication storage system for enterprise backup applications, based on a new multi-controller extension of the Data Domain architecture, offers inline global deduplication and a global namespace for all data stored in the dual controller system.

With throughput up to 12.8TB/hour, the GDA provides up to 14.2 petabytes (PB) of logical backup capacity, providing simplicity for data centre backup consolidation across workloads as diverse as very large databases, VMware images and unstructured data, the company said.

EMC said that the new offering is tightly coupled with backup software and distributes parts of the deduplication process to the backup servers to reduce network load and increase throughput performance of the GDA controllers. Large datacentre backup jobs are load balanced across the controllers, simplifying capacity management, performance management and backup administration.

The company claims that the GDA offers 3x faster backup throughput per controller than competitive deduplication configurations. The distributed deduplication processing throughput is anchored by the native speed advantages of the Intel Xeon multi-core CPUs in the GDA controllers and the Data Domain SISL (Stream-Informed Segment Layout) scaling architecture that minimises the number of disk accesses required in the deduplication process.

According to EMC, the GDA can automate wide area network (WAN) vaulting for use in disaster recovery (DR), remote office backup, or multi-site tape consolidation with the Data Domain Replicator software option. A single GDA can support a replication fan-in of up to 270 remote offices using smaller deduplication storage systems such as the Data Domain DD140 or the DD600 series appliances, while cross-site deduplication minimises the required bandwidth.

At initial release, the platform supports Symantec NetBackup and Backup Exec through backup server-based OpenStorage plug-in software. Later in 2010, it is also expected to support EMC NetWorker using integrated software.

The EMC Data Domain Global Duplication Array is expected to be generally available in the second quarter of 2010.