Quantum Upgrades Backup Hardware, Software

Quantum today increased the capacity of its DXi7500 backup system and added a host of software enhancements. The company moved to 1-TB drives, so the smallest system goes from 9 TB to 11 TB and the largest goes 180 TB to 220 TB with no increase in price. The company also expanded replication options, added support for Symantec's Open Storage initiative known as OST, and included support for RMAN to improve Oracle database backups. The company added the ability to replicate at the virtual cartridge, file, and directory level.

"Most enterprises -- 90 percent -- of those who do disk backup also then send data to tape, and we've added the ability to write data from the disk system directly to tape without going back through the backup software," says Steve Whitner, product marketing manager for Quantum. "We have a back door that goes go directly from disk to tape via Fiber Channel so we don't clog up the network."

Lauren Whitehouse, an analyst with the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) , says Quantum offers the ability to replicate at a very granular level, a feature that isn't offered by other vendors. "You can just send a file or a directory, which creates some real efficiency about the amount of bandwidth required and the time it takes. Some competitors can only backup whole disk images, which isn't as flexible."

Another nice feature, says Eric Burgener, a senior analyst with Taneja Group , is the different options Quantum offers for data de-duplication, standard, post-processing, and pass-through. "It can identify data sets that don't optimize very well and doesn't waste processing cycles on them and just passes them through. This is good for mixed enterprise workloads," he says.