EMC Avamar agents are usually not found running directly on storage arrays, until now. At EMC world Iomega gave a sneak preview into its ix12 array with a built in Avamar agent. The Avamar agent will allow for SMB remote offices to utilize Avamar’s deduplication features without requiring additional hardware. Normally the Avamr agent would reside on a server that meets minimum requirements for backups, but in the ix12’s case it has a built in Intel Core 2 Duo processor running on Samba Linux which gives it enough juice for onboard deduplication. EMC does not currently support this configuration but should have official support later this year.
From Iomega’s press release:
The new StorCenter ix12-300r utilizes the acclaimed EMC LifeLine™ software, a fully-developed Linux operating environment and suite of applications that protects data and performs valuable business tasks above and beyond simple storage. EMC LifeLine software is designed for cross-platform support of Windows-, Mac-, Linux- and UNIX-based computers and is HCL certified for the leading virtualized environments, including VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer.
For customers without Avamar, the ix12 will make a great Backup to Disk (B2D) target for backup applications including Symantec Backup Exec, EMC Retrospect and Acronis TrueImage and Backup and Recovery 10.
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