Quantum De-Dupe Appliance DXi6700 for FC SAN

Quantum Corp. announced a new deduplication and replication appliance that leverages a VTL interface to offer midrange and enterprise customers a combination of performance, simplicity and value for Fibre Channel SAN environments.

The DXi6700 delivers up to 3.5 TB per hour backup performance and provides up to 56 TB of usable capacity. The turnkey appliance comes with all licensed software features bundled at purchase, including both replication and direct tape creation. This approach gives customers a low-cost, easy-to-implement deduplication solution that works effectively with all leading backup applications, providing both multi-site and multi-tier data protection. In addition, the DXi6700 incorporates Quantum’s new Advanced Reporting tools for improved resource utilization and ease of management.

"The DXi6700 adds to Quantum’s DXi6000 models of purpose-built deduplication and replication appliances, following last year’s introduction of the NAS/OST-optimized DXi6500 family for the midrange market," noted Jeff Boles, senior analyst, Taneja Group. "Combined with the launch of the DXi4500 for SMB environments in April, Quantum continues to focus on providing DXi-Series customers with a compelling combination of high performance and overall value."

High-Performance Appliance
for Fibre Channel Environments
The DXi6700 provides IT departments with faster backup performance and trouble-free restores, while typically reducing disk capacity usage by 90 percent or more. Scaling from 24 TB to 56 TB usable capacity, the DXi6700 delivers enterprise-class speeds of up to 3.5 TB per hour in a platform with the simplicity and value to match midrange applications. All DXi6000 models provide advanced technology, utilizing the latest processor cores and 8Gb FC connections.

"Quantum was first to market with open systems VTL, and today our Fibre Channel deduplication systems solve demanding challenges for some of the largest organizations in the world," said Janae Lee, senior vice president, Disk and Software Products Group, Quantum. "With the DXi6700, customers get enterprise-class performance and reliability in an easy-to-use appliance that provides far greater value than competitive offerings in terms of both cost savings and benefits."

Simple and Affordable Backup and Retention
with Integrated Tape Creation
The DXi6700’s proven VTL interface integrates directly into existing Fibre Channel SAN environments for an easy-to-deploy disk backup solution. Its remote replication and integrated direct tape creation features provide both automated near-term disaster recovery and long-term data retention. Quantum’s direct tape creation writes data from the DXi system to tape over a direct connection, bypassing the backup server. The operation is integrated with leading backup software to provide automation, a single point of management, and a fully synchronized catalog across disk and tape. All of this makes the DXi6700 an easily-shared backup and restore resource for all leading backup applications, offering multi-site, multi-tier protection that is simple to manage. Designed to be user-installable, the DXi6700 scales easily on-site without requiring a service visit, providing effective investment protection. It also integrates with Quantum Vision 4.0, which enables global management of Quantum disk and tape systems from a single console.

Practical Near-Term Disaster Recovery
and Remote Office Protection
To address the persistent IT challenge of affordably managing disaster recovery protection for distributed sites, the DXi6700 replicates backup data between sites, using deduplication to reduce typical network bandwidth requirements by a factor of 20 or more, and encrypting data prior to transmission for security. With the DXi6700, users can reduce or even eliminate the need to manage removable media.

Advanced Reporting Tools
for Onboard Intelligence
Now included standard with all DXi-Series appliances, the Advanced Reporting tools in DXi6700 present a detailed view of internal appliance operations, including backup and replication data for flexible trend analyses, enabling smarter planning and lower long-term costs. The tools also provide insights into CPU, disk I/O and network traffic activity per port and monitor capacity utilization, reclamation and replication status. DXi Advanced Reporting cuts administration time, streamlines performance tuning, improves troubleshooting, and helps users maximize the value of their DXi-Series appliances.

"Based on our customers’ experience with the DXi-Series, the DXi6700 shows great promise as a midrange deduplication appliance, with its pre-configured design and bundled software," said John Woodall, vice president of engineering, Integrated Archive Systems, Inc. "For companies seeking an easily-integrated approach to expanding a VTL backup environment, the DXi6700 will be a great fit."

Award-Winning Platform
The DXi6700 is based on the same platform as Quantum’s DXi6500 family of disk backup appliances, which in June was named ‘Deduplication Product of the Year’ at the 2010 Storage Awards: The Storries VII. The awards were based on more than 25,000 votes cast by the readers of Storage Magazine, the U.K.’s leading IT and storage publication.

Price and Availability
The DXi6700 starts at $159,000 MSRP and is available today through Quantum’s channel partners.