Lortu Software Announces the Release of Software Components for Implementing Deduplication, Wafs and Wan Optimization Products

Bilbao, Spain, December 18, 2006 – Lortu Software S.L., a leading provider of Byte-level Delta Deduplication Technology, announced today the public release of new components based on Kondar technology for implementing Deduplication, replication, WAFS and WAN Optimization products.

Deduplication (sometimes called Single-Instance Storage, Capacity Optimization or Factoring) is a data reduction technology intended to eliminate redundant (duplicate) data on a storage system by saving only one instance of each piece of data in order to reduce disk space and network bandwidth.

The are several types of deduplication technologies:
- File deduplication. Only one copy of each identical file is stored. This technology is also known as Single File Instance technology.
- Data compression. Sometimes data compression is included as a deduplication technology, however data deduplication differs from compression in that compression looks only for repeating patterns of information and reduces them. On the other hand, data deduplication results in reducing the unique data regardless its internal format. The typical reduction ratio of compression is x2 and the reduction ratio of byte level deduplication is x50.
- Block level deduplication. Divides the information in blocks and only one copy of each identical block is stored.
- Byte level deduplication. Analyzes the content of the information to be deduplicated at byte level and only stores the really unique data. This is the only technology that guarantees full elimination of redundant data.

This means that different deduplication technologies can also provide different granular control, removing redundant portions of files, potentially down to the block level or even to the byte level.

When evaluating a deduplication product, it's important to understand the granularity offered by their platform.

Kondar deduplication technology.
Basically Kondar deduplication technology is able to compare two blocks of data and find the differences between them at byte level. The main feature of Kondar is that it’s able to do this deduplication process with very large blocks of data, at byte level and very fast.

Kondar is data-format independent and can work with any kind of data: files, memory buffers, disk images or data in streaming mode.

Here are just some examples to demonstrate the power and flexibility of Kondar deduplication technology:
- Kondar can receive a stream with new data, compare it with other previously stored data and create an output stream containing the data which is unique in the new stream. All of this is done at byte-level. This approach is also known as delta-based caching deduplication.
- Kondar can also work in a client/server architecture where it compares a new version of a file or piece of data to be deduplicated (on the client) with the initial version of that file (on the server), transferring only a minimal amount of information to create a patch file on the server with the differences. This approach is very useful for data replication products.
- Another variant of this approach is to store on the client a small file small file instantiating the initial version of a file or piece of data to be deduplicated and do the comparison without having the initial file cached locally. Then the small patch file with the differences can be sent to a remote location.
- Kondar can provide a Lortu proprietary file system API to create a data vault. Your products can send any kind of file to the Kondar component and Kondar will apply single-file instance and byte-level deduplication technology comparing all new files with all information stored so far in the vault. This approach guarantees that the vault holds only unique chunks of data.

Thanks to its byte level deduplication algorithms, Kondar can be used to achieve a data reduction ratio of between 10 and 100 times.

“Based on our philosophy of developing software components to be integrated into third party companies’ software or hardware products, Kondar is not a final product or a closed component.” said Carlos Ardanza, CEO of Lortu Software. “Instead, Kondar is a technology that can provide the API that best suits our clients' products. Even more, we can fine-tune our technology in order to get the best performance and easiest integration with your products.”

Implementing WAN optimization and WAFS controllers with Kondar technology.

WAN optimization and WAFS controllers can benefit from Kondar technology because Kondar can provide deduplication capabilities from data streams.

The process could be as follows:
1- Kondar receives a stream with new data (incoming stream) from the host application.
2- Kondar compares the incoming stream with the local cache previously stored.
3- Kondar creates an output stream with the differences, which is sent to the remote controller.
4- At the remote controller Kondar is able to restore the incoming stream from the output stream that was sent by the remote controller and the local cache.
5- Finally Kondar adds the unique data (output stream) to the local cache of the remote controller. In this way, it won’t be necessary to send this data through the WAN connection again.

All of this would be done at byte-level. This approach is also known as delta-based caching deduplication.

In those cases where the communication is one way, Kondar can deduplicate the stream without storing the local cache in the first controller. Kondar just needs to store a small file with some information about the remote controller cache in order to compare the incoming stream with the remote cache. In this way, the local cache is only required for the restoration process at the remote controller. This approach involves an important HD reduction, leading to price reductions and increased competitiveness of products using Kondar technology.

“There are many other possibilities and we will be happy to discuss the best approach for each one of our clients’ products.” explains Alejandro Arostegui, Sales Manager of Lortu Software. “For companies interested in implementing deduplication technology in hardware, Kondar algorithms have been especially designed to be implemented in FPGA, ASIC or proprietary multi-processor hardware where our clients can take advantage of their parallelism and multithreading capabilities, providing a great throughput and scalability grade.”

About Lortu Software S.L.
Lortu Software is a leading provider of byte-level delta deduplication technology, thanks to its proprietary Kondar component. Lortu is an advanced technology company dedicated to the development of technologies that can be integrated into third party products and services. Lortu Software does not develop products for sale to end-users, but instead they license their technologies to other companies for the development and enhancement of their software or hardware products. Lortu Software is headquartered in Bilbao, Spain. For more information, please visit http://www.lortu.com

For More Information Contact:
Lortu Software, S.L.
Alejandro Arostegui
Juan de Ajuriaguerra, 9 - 6ª
48009 BILBAO, SPAIN
Phone Number: +34 94 661 14 87
Fax: +34 94 424 50 30
E-mail: press@lortu.com