Quantum Launches Hybrid Data Protection

Quantum on Wednesday unveiled a new cloud-based data protection product that complements the company's approach to onsite data protection.

The company announced that its on-premises Quantum vmPRO disk-based data protection appliance will be paired with a new DXiV1000 data deduplication appliance and with the Xerox cloud-based data protection and disaster recovery service. This first offering from Quantum is expected to be the basis for upcoming Quantum cloud-based services this year. Over the next year, Quantum will work with Xerox and other cloud storage providers. The company will also provide its own cloud service and also offer channel partners the ability to sell data protection under their own brands. Quantum also plans to develop software and hardware that can be used in a cloud-based archive.

Quantum expects that its cloud-based data protection platform will fill a void for the midsize customer, who can't afford expensive array-based replication packages from vendors such as EMC or Hitachi Data Systems and don't want to recover their data from cloud-only disaster recovery products from vendors such as Amazon Web Services.

The company has adopted this hybrid approach to data protection, which will protect data from small remote offices and branch offices, as well as data in the data center. Customer will continue to use on-premises disk and tape data protection, while using the cloud for its off-site strategy. This approach allows fast recovery of data from locally backed-up virtual machine and physical machine data, while using the cloud for business continuity and disaster recovery. With deduplication added with the DXi V1000 software, which runs as a virtual machine, users can expect to see data reduction of as much as 95%.

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The DXi V1000, which is expected to be available in April, eliminates the use of agents on devices needing to be backed up and, because it is a virtual appliance, reduces the number of extra servers needed to back up an environment. It can replicate data to another DXI appliance, to a cloud service, or to tape, and protects up to 2 TB of data on physical or virtual servers. It can deduplicate about 2 TB of data in two-and-a-half hours, according to Quantum's claims.

The DXi v1000 virtual appliance can also be used in remote offices where data is backed up to it via a third-party backup application or where it replicates data to a data center equipped with a larger physical DXi appliance.

The new DXi V1000 is priced at $2,250 per terabyte.

Deni Connor is founding analyst for Storage Strategies NOW, an industry analyst firm that focuses on storage, virtualization, and servers.

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