Quantum extends deduplication to the sticks

Quantum claims to have rendered tape obsolete in branch and remote offices with a new smaller deduplication and replication appliance.

The DXi2500-D is a branch office implementation of Quantum's DXi technology. It deduplicates backup files at remote and branch offices before replicating them, in encrypted form, to a central DXi7500 for a global deduplication process. From here they can be written to tape. This means the distributed offices no longer need to operate their own tape-based backup infrastructure, and get disaster recovery services from the central data centre.

Vision 3.0 software manages the remote and central sites. It provides disk deduplication and replication status and capacity utilisation, Scalar tape library configuration, status and health, plus proactive email notifications for Quantum disk and tape status changes.

The DXi2500-D uses Quantum software on a Dell PowerEdge server - that could be what the -D in DXi2500-D stands for. We might imagine that Quantum could implement it in other industry-standard servers, such as a DXi2500-H for HP.

Quantum, whose DXi deduplication technology is licensed by EMC and Dell, already provides a central DXi7500 model, a DXi7500 Express for mid-range sites, and a DXi3500 for small and medium businesses.

Dell has not yet announced its DXi-based product set and there must be a possibility that it will offer the DXi2500-D. EMC has its own Avamar-based remote office deduplication backup product set already.

The DXi2500-D software includes integrated backup, deduplication, replication, an NAS interface, and support for Symantec's OST (OpenStorage API). It means NetBackup customers can deploy application-aware replication and streamline the management of backup across sites.

Quantum says the appliance can protect up to 1TB of primary data, having a 1.8TB capacity, with RAID 6 double disk failure protection. Data can be ingested at up to 300GB/hour. Deduplicated data can be automatically replicated to a data centre-located DXi7500 for lights-out operation at the branch.

It says this new product set provides economical multi-tier data protection across multiple sites in a disk-to-disk-to-tape backup and DR scheme. The DXi2500-D seems ready-designed to appeal to DXi7500 customers with tape-based protection in distributed offices, providing a way to retrench tape to their central data centre.

It is available now with an MSRP of $12,500, which includes replication and OST licences. Vision 3.0 is also available now with an MSRP of $3,750 for a single device licence. ®