All Quantum’s Midrange De-Dupe Family Now Available

Quantum Corp. announced general availability of the largest three models in its DXi6500 family of midrange NAS backup and deduplication appliances.

In addition, the DXi6500 family now offers up to 25 percent higher throughput, boosting its maximum adaptive ingest rate to 2.5 TB per hour. This provides customers with a unique level of price-performance in a midrange system. The three newly available models – the DXi6530, DXi6540 and DXi6550 – scale from 24 to 56 TB usable capacity and come with software for a complete backup solution included. The DXi6540 and DXi6550 also provide integrated tape creation, and the DXi6550 offers high speed 10 GbE connectivity. Like the rest of the DXi6500 family, the newly available models are customer and channel installable.

The DXi6500 family uses advanced technology that offers simplicity and value in addressing the backup challenges facing midrange environments. Each model of the DXi6500 family includes a simple NAS interface, built-in deduplication and replication, support for Symantec’s OpenStorage (OST) API, and backup software for VMware environments bundled in the base price. Users grappling with shrinking backup and recovery windows can benefit from the DXi6500 family’s performance, reliability and cost-effectiveness, driven by deduplication technology that reduces typical disk needs by 90 percent or more. Customers struggling to protect remote offices can also leverage replication to reduce typical bandwidth needs by a factor of 20 or more. In addition, users challenged to protect and retain data under a tight budget can benefit from the integration of disk and tape, as well as the ability to use leading backup management software for unified management across sites and tiers.

Support for Symantec’s OpenStorage API
The DXi6500 family includes support for Symantec’s OpenStorage (OST) API with both NetBackup and Backup Exec 2010, enabling centralized management of backup, restore, replication, and tape creation. Direct tape creation that bypasses the media server for higher performance is supported on NetBackup 6.5.4 and higher with the DXi6540 and DXi6550.

Optimized for Backing Up Virtual Servers
Like the entire DXi-Series, the DXi6500 family now includes the latest release of the Quantum esXpress backup module optimized for VMware software. Virtualized environments such as VMware often contain multiple copies of similar data between guest systems. As such, they can benefit greatly from the powerful deduplication and replication capabilities of the DXi-Series. The new release of Quantum esXpress in the DXi-Series supports both ESX 3.5 and vSphere 4 servers from VMware and now offers global configuration policies to manage all configuration and deployment functions from a single point.

Customer and Reseller Reaction
Last quarter Quantum began shipping two models in the DXi6500 family – the DXi6510 and DXi6520 – and users and resellers give the new products high marks for performance, value and ease of use.

"I’ve been impressed with the backup and restore performance of our DXi6510," said Anthony Prochaska, network administrator at American Association of Neurological Surgeons. "Set up was simple and easy. The DXi6510 has exceeded our expectations and proved to be a big time saver."

"The DXi6520 is a great device right out of the box, and it’s backed by world-class support," noted Rob Slaughter, information technology director, J.R. Filanc Construction Company, Inc. "It has reduced disk-to-disk complexity for our corporate environment and has reduced our backup window. I’m getting a 42:1 deduplication ratio using it for disk-to-disk backup."

Channel-friendly pricing makes it easy for partners to address their customers’ needs with the right member of the DXi6500 family, and each model includes all the necessary software licenses for easy installation and configuration, with minimal part numbers and a simple ordering process.

"We’re excited to add the DXi6500 family to our backup and recovery product line," said Jim Mimlitsch, practice manager at Trace3, a regional systems integrator. "The direct tape creation feature in Quantum’s DXi-Series provides a unique and important capability for our customers."

Pricing and Availability
The DXi6500 family starts at $64,000 MSRP, with pricing for the three newly available models starting at $147,000 MSRP. The entire family provides industry-leading value by bundling all licensed software features in one appliance – including deduplication, replication and Symantec OpenStorage support.