Deduplication and Retention
Unitrends' adaptive deduplication is the process by which duplicate data blocks are removed from backups and vaults. With deduplication, backup sizes decrease as duplicate blocks are removed, thereby increasing the number of backups that can be stored on the system, also referred to as on-system retention. Unitrends systems are designed to use all available storage for protecting data (see Storage allocation and distribution). As scheduled or immediate backups are performed, the oldest backups are deleted to ingest new backups.
Checking "enable native deduplication" will configure the system to use the native data space for deduplication
Checking "using deduplication device" will configure the system to use an alternate device for extra storage
Choose a setting to balance your retention and backup performance in order to tune your system based on your specific configuration. Some systems require larger data stores and opt for a minimized retention policy. Other systems with less storage scarcity choose to maximize their backup retention, thus preserving more of their backup data.