I could be accused of dismissing Puredisk a bit, as it did seem to be the latecomer to the party.  I've known about Avamar for much longer, and it seemed that they had a broad depth of coverage and a long list of customers when EMC acquired them.  Symantec acquired Puredisk from Datacenter Technologies, and it seemed that they had a shorter list of covered OSs and applications, and a shorter list of customers.

So I sat and watched as Symantec released it, and waited to talk to any actual customers that used it.  (But I was waiting with crossed arms and a crinkled eyebrow...)

Today I got my wish.  I sat in a session where JP Morgan Chase and Qualcomm talked about how they've implemented the product.  They're both protecting several remote terabytes with the product, and they both seem very happy.  JPMC is using it in hundreds of remote sites, and they are protecting all of their sites remotely (meaning no backup servers at the remote sites).  Qualcomm has really just started with only 40 systems being backed up by it, but they're quite happy as well.

Both of them are backing the remote sites up directly to their central site, without having a local recovery server at the remote site.  They said that the RTO of these remote sites can be met by restoring the data at the central site and shipping the restored server to the remote site.  I was hoping to hear that one of them was using a local storage pool so they could do recoveries without having to ship things, but they weren't.  I've asked to talk to somebody who has done that, and I'll let you know when I do.

OK, time to hit the craps tables.