This week, Dell EMC announced a new suite of products in the Data Domain product family: the PowerProtect DD systems. These aren’t just a bump in maximum usable capacity — they represent a significant enhancement to how the platform works, and will drive greater data efficiencies in your environment.
The systems introduced this week are the DD6900, the DD9400 and the DD9900, and the key specs across the line now are as follows:
| DDVE at 96TB | DD3300 | DD6900 | DD9400 | DD9900 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Max Throughput | Up to 4TB/hour | Up to 4.2TB/hour | Up to 15TB/hour | Up to 26TB/hour | Up to 41TB/hour |
| Max Throughput (DD Boost) | Up to 11.2TB/hour | Up to 7TB/hour | Up to 33TB/hour | Up to 57TB/hour | Up to 94TB/hour |
| Logical Capacity | Up to 4.8PB | Up to 1.6PB | Up to 18.7PB | Up to 49.9PB | Up to 81.3PB |
| Logical Capacity with Cloud Tier | Up to 14.8PB | Up to 4.8PB | Up to 56.1PB | Up to 149.8PB | Up to 211PB |
| Usable Capacity | Up to 96TB | 4TB-32TB | 48TB-288TB | 192TB-768TB | 576TB-1.25PB |
| Usable Capacity with Cloud Tier | Up to 288TB | Up to 96TB | Up to 864TB | Up to 2.3PB | Up to 3.25PB |
The new models support 8TB drives — which means the 9900 can give you 1.25PB of usable storage in a single rack. When you think of the amount of logical storage you get by layering deduplication on top of that, it’s practically unparalleled in rack space efficiency. 80+PB in a single rack is not to be sneezed at.
Here’s where it gets interesting though: it’s not just about extra usable capacity that’s available, it’s about extra compression. The new PowerProtect DD series systems use a hardware accelerated compression, allowing them to squeeze an extra 30% compression out of data.
What does that mean? “Do more with less”: that’s the war-cry of business to IT, and it’s been baked into the PowerProtect DD series from the ground up.
30% additional compression means that the list of specs above has the new models (6900, 9400, 9900) assuming logical capacity via a 65:1 deduplication ratio. And that’s achievable. Sure, everyone’s data sets are different – but I look at PowerProtect DD and see customers of mine who are happy with getting 40:1 deduplication ratios at the moment (and who wouldn’t be? That’s 9.5PB of backups stored in around 228TB of used storage – literally years of retention), and think: “this would get you to 50:1 compression, maybe more”. And my customers who are already getting 80:1 or higher deduplication? Well let’s just say they could very well end up with triple-figure deduplication ratios using these new systems.
These are beast systems when it comes to performance, too. The 9900 can hit 94TB/hour and all in a single deduplication pool. There’s also support for 25Gbit and 100Gbit networking. The way distributed deduplication works even large environments often sail through their backups with 10Gbit networking, but this means even the biggest of throughput requirements can be met.
The new systems still support the full, rich Boost ecosystem that Data Domain has traditionally supported, and that also means full support for NetWorker, Avamar, Database Direct, and of course, PowerProtect.
There’s plenty of great information about the new systems available, check out, as a starting point: