Quantum offers a cheap massage to hot cloud data

Virtual dedupe route to backup

Quantum says it has created the first virtual deduplication appliance, and Xerox is punting a cloud backup service through 45,000 resellers that uses it bundled with Quantum's virtual machine backup.

The DXi V1000 appliance is bargain-basement DXi deduplication technology delivered as software in a virtual machine. It can be used as a target by standard backup software such as CommVault's Simpana and Symantec's Backup Exec, etc., and it can send its deduplicated output to local disk storage or to the cloud. Its size is limited to a 2TB blockpool, meaning it can protect up to 40TB of data assuming average deduplication rates. VMware's licensing costs jump up at the 2TB memory level.

The DXi V1000 can replicate to another DXi appliance or to a cloud protection service, giving you a disaster recovery (DR) backup in the cloud and local restore speed.

How fast does the DXi V1000 work? Quantum says it can ingest as a NAS target running inline deduplication at up to 1TB/hour. Quantum's entry-level DXi4500 hardware product dedupes at up to 1.4TB/hour for NAS and 1.7TB/hour for Symantec Open Storage (OST). It's mid-range 6702 runs at up to 5TB/hour in NAS mode. View the DXi V1000 then as a cheap and cheerful virtual dedupe appliance for remote and branch offices (ROBO) or smaller businesses.

Quantum's cloud data protection concept

Quantum is coupling its DXi V1000 with its vmPRO virtual machine backup product as a cloud-based data protection technology platform. It bought Pancetera in June last year and that company's software is the vmPRO product which backs up VMs, shrinking their size up to 75 per cent by ignoring useless data, producing bootable VMs.

Couple vmPRO with DXi V1000 and we have a software platform that can backup VMs effectively and backup up ROBO/small biz sites to a central data centre or to the cloud, and minimise network bandwidth and central/cloud storage capacity needs. Quantum reckons its ability to offer lower-cost disaster recovery to these sites and fast restore with bootable VMs is a winning proposition.

It reckons it's less expensive than hardware-based dedupe and replication products, and better than cloud-only arrangements because there is always a local copy of the data if the cloud link breaks.

Pushing on the cloud front it's done a deal with Xerox, with that company offering cloud backup and DR services using the Quantum vmPro + DXI V1000 combo, and doing so through 45,000 resellers.

Looking ahead Quantum will look to provide its vmPRO/DXi V1000 bundle to other public cloud service providers and also sell a Quantum-branded cloud-based backup and DR service, on a monthly subscription basis, hosted by Xerox. In other words Quantum becomes a Xerox reseller and punts this service offering through its own resellers.

There will also be a "white box" offering for Quantum channel partners.

Quantum aims to extend its technology so as to provide archive services in the cloud, potentially with integrated tape storage at the back-end and using the LTFS tape file system. It will also develop some form of blueprint to enable private cloud and hybrid cloud customers to use its technologies.

This is an aggressive strategy, based on pushing out its vmPRO and DXI technologies in a mutually supportive bundle through its channel and through the Xerox reseller base as well. If it works Quantum and its channel should make a bundle, from the vmPRO/DXi V1000 bundle, and it could start displacing competitive ROBO dedupe boxes. That would please Quantum, especially if it were Data Domain boxes that were getting forklifted out on their ear, Quantum having a bit of a score to settle with EMC. ®