Implement Deduplication without Throwing Money and Caution to the Wind

Backup is about more than just deduplication ratios and faster backups. While these are important, companies also want assurance that the solution that they deploy in-house is continually developing, will help them manage their existing backup infrastructure and will scale as they grow.

Today's announcements from Quantum indicate that it is committed to making these ongoing, continual and incremental changes to its product lines (hardware and software) in order to meet current and future customer demands. Enhancements to its Vision global system management software indicate that Quantum recognizes that companies intend to support and manage both disk and tape as part of their backup storage infrastructure long term. The other announcement that the DXi7500 will now start with support for 9 TBs of capacity is indicative of Quantum's awareness that for it to compete in some customer accounts, the DXI7500 needed a smaller initial storage capacity footprint.

It is no secret that disk is fast becoming the primary target for corporate backups while tape often remains the preferred method for storing and keeping data long term. Yet what companies may lack as they transition from only tape to both disk and tape in their backup environment is the means to effectively manage backup data across these two types of media. If backup data is stored on disk, companies need to track information like total utilized capacity, deduplication ratios, throughput and data growth rates. When the backup data is stored to tape, additional information about where tape cartridges are located, how full they are and how the tape library is performing is also needed.

Quantum's Vision software has provided a single point-of-management for some time for Quantum's DXi disk-based backup systems and Scalar tape libraries but lacked insight into deduplication and replication trends within that customer environment. However as deduplication becomes more prominent in customer backup environments, customers want and need to track how well deduplication on its DXi Series is performing.

In this latest software release, Vision now captures more information about how well the DXi Series' deduplicates data by giving administrators insight into how efficiently it deduplicates the data (deduplication ratios) over time, how well it performs (i.e. how fast the DXi deduplicates data) and includes analysis and reporting tools that help administrators make more informed decisions about data they should - and should not - deduplicate.

The other half of today's announcement that the entry point for the DXi7500 now begins at 9 TB also reflects a similar sort of incremental forward step for Quantum's DXi7500 product line. Prior to today's announcement, the DXi7500 started at 18 TB usable capacity while Quantum's midrange DXi5500 topped out at about 11 TBs. This left a fairly sizeable hole in Quantum's disk-based backup system product portfolio which its competitors could potentially exploit for deals starting in the 10 - 20 TB range. By lowering the DXi7500's entry point to 9 TB, Quantum can now not only compete in accounts that need backup solutions in this range, it provide these potential clients with a more scalable architecture and more options for performing deduplication than any of its competitors currently can provide.

Full-featured disk-based backup solutions do not happen by accident or overnight - they are a series of incremental improvements in response to customer requests as customers become more educated and understand their own backup environments better. These recent enhancements to Quantum's hardware and software products reflect that Quantum's customers have every intention of using disk as backup target but are throwing neither money nor caution to the wind. By starting with a smaller disk capacity footprint on the DXi7500 and monitoring deduplication ratios using its Vision software, customers can now accomplish both of these objectives.