VMworld: Quantum Rolls Out Q-Cloud Storage

Quantum on Monday at VMworld 2012 announced Q-Cloud, a new cloud-based backup and disaster recovery service that works with the company's deduplication appliances and disk-based storage arrays.

Designed for small and mid-sized businesses, Q-Cloud is capable of deduplicating and backing up data to both on-premises equipment and to the cloud. It can back up capacities of 1TB to 1PB of data and achieve a deduplication ratio of 15:1.

Q-Cloud uses Quantum's DXI-Series deduplication appliances on-premises as targets for the backup and Quantum vmPRO virtual backup for backing up virtual machines. The DXi-Series appliances now include a cloud storage gateway that enables cloud-based backup. The DXi-Series appliances can also work with traditional backup software such as Veeam, Quest Software's vRanger, Symantec NetBackup, Symantec Backup Exec, Tivoli Storage Manager, HP Data Protector, and CommVault Simpana.

[ For more news from VMworld, see Maginatics Debuts Storage Platform At VMWorld. ]

vmPRO allows the snapshotting of virtual machines and the replication of their images into the cloud. It serves as Quantum's means of retrieving data from the cloud for disaster recovery.

Q-Cloud provides role-based access control for provisioning cloud services and works with VMware vSphere 4.x. Backup is asynchronous, automated replication of data that includes encryption of data in transit, and data reduction through compression and deduplication. The combination of inactive data filtering and deduplication achieved for replication reduces typical disk capacity needs by 95% or more, according to customers.

Q-Cloud initially uses the Xerox Cloud. The service is available on a pay-as-you-grow approach, allowing customers to buy more storage capacity as they need it. Q-Cloud is available today starting at $0.15/GB per month and ranging up to $0.75/GB per month for less data stored.

In other news, VMware announced that it has integrated EMC's Avamar deduplication and backup technology into vSphere 5.1. With this integration, VMware customers will be able to back up and deduplicate as much as 2TB of data. The Virtual Edition of Avamar, which runs as a virtual appliance in a VMware virtual machine, will be included in vSphere.

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

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