Index Engines Validated for Data Domain

Information management company Index Engines, Inc. announced that its Catalyst information management engine has been validated through EMC Technology Connect to support access to backup images on an Data Domain deduplication storage system.

This allows direct access to unstructured user data within backup images so it can be searched and extracted for business relevance eliminating the need to use backup tapes as an archive and supporting tapeless disk-based backups.

This new strategy turns the traditional long-term retention of backup tapes or D2D2T (disk-to-disk-to-tape) to the more streamlined retention on disk as backups. This move helps support truly tapeless environments and leverages the backup process to support long-term data retention policies.

“Index Engines enables organizations to eliminate tape as long-term retention and control the long term liability of data stored on offline tapes,” said David Tillman, senior director of technology alliances, EMC data protection and availability division. “This workflow ability is designed to give organizations smarter, more efficient data centers.“

Catalyst works with Data Domain systems and leverages the existing backup process to identify and extract specific files and email for regulatory, compliance and legal applications according to pre-defined policies.

In the past, once D2D backups leave the restoration window, they were likely stored on tape long-term and therefore become less accessible in offsite storage vaults. With this new approach important business data on the Data Domain system required for legal and compliance purposes can be extracted and preserved based on retention policies.

For most organizations, only a small subset of the data captured in the backup process is of value for long-term retention. To filter down the volume of data that is archived, detailed knowledge of the backup images is required.

Catalyst automatically indexes backup images, identifies the useful content, collects what is relevant and preserves it making it available for compliance and litigation purposes.

“Index Engines extracts records from backup, collecting and making available valuable and sensitive user content, which expands the value of organization’s investment in Data Domain systems and eliminates tape as long-term retention,” Index Engines VP Jim McGann said.

Catalyst’s D2D software indexes the content of backup images including EMC NetWorker, NetBackup and Backup Exec so that they can be searched and analyzed for business relevance. These searches can be high-level metadata, or detailed queries based on file or email content, location and date ranges.

Searches are saved as stored queries that run automatically once a new backup is executed. The relevant set of data that is identified within the backup image is extracted and preserved.

This allows a small subset, typically less than 5% of the backup data, to be retained for long-term access and management. Specific user files or email can be extracted, keeping all metadata intact, for compliance with legal and regulatory requirements.