Data Domain with DDBoost - Source Disk I/O Reduction?

Hello All,

I'm currently in the market for a disk based backup target and being an EMC Networker customer and an EMC Storage customer it is obvious to at a look at Data Domain. There are a number of viable enterprise class vendors in this space but some of the features that particularly set Data Domain apart from competitors for us - were specifically the integrations within Networker from a workflow perspective and DD-Boost.

My question here is specific to anyone who has had experience with the recent iterations of DataDomain appliances with DD-Boost in a client-direct model (ClientServer --> DD appliance).

The way DD-Boost was explained by Sales and Engineering was that in this scenario that DD-Boost would run on the client server and "with just a bit of CPU overhead" reduce data-over-wire and reduce time-windows even further.

There is no doubt that less data to send to the target is certainly a time-savings but I'm curious to know if DD-Boost is purely a network I/O saver or if there are benefits to the amount of IOPS hitting the source disk.

We're not necessarily network-IO constrained but certain data-sets are certainly disk-IO constrained.

• Does anyone know if DD-Boost aides / has a real benefit to disk-IO reduction on the data source during backups?
• If so - what sort of % or rather, are you able to explain a bit as to how it may accomplish this (trying to step it out in my head)
• Looking for any thoughts / experiences the community may have using DataDomain in general with Networker -- should I look at other vendors why/why not?

Thanks in advance

also if this is in the wrong spot or against the normal format please let me know