Analysis

posted on 22 February 2008 16:06

The DXi7500 is an upcoming high-end disk-based de-duplicating and replicating backup system. Quantum said it has had over 200 requests from customers about it. It was first announced in June last year but is still not ready.

The product will provide a top-end to the existing DXi family which includes the DXi3500 and DXi5500. It can have up to 240TB raw capacity, courtesy of an LSI drive array back-end, and Quantum claims an 8TB/hour throughput rate. The functionality will include policy-based de-duplication and direct tape creation. It should have support for replication to it from multiple nodes and both inline and post-processing deduplication, selectable by policy.

The ability to take de-duplicated data from remote or branch offices running either DXi3500 or 5500s gives it the opportunity to de-dupe the data again and eliminate across-the business duplicated data. The remote offices will only be able to de-dupe data that they 'know about'.
Other features include an active-active architecture to eliminate any single points of failure. Presentations include both VTL (Fibre Channel and iSCSI) and NAS (CIFS and NFS). Integrated tape creation writes physical media directly over dedicated Fibre Channel connections, and supports ISV direct tape creation, including NetBackup’s Direct-to-Tape.

In other words it is a multi-function data protection product capable of backing up raw data to tape or to disk or backing up de-duplicated data to disk. It can write data to connected tape drives or remote disk targets without having to have a separate backup or media server involved. The DXi7500 can also replicate its data to a remote DXi machine for disaster recovery purposes.

The throughput rate is not actually that fast when seen through the lens of a 240TB raw capacity. It would take 30 hours to process 240TB of raw data. Thus Quantum envisage that users could partition the machine and not use it all for de-duped data or dump massive backup sets ready for de-dupe on it.

The plus side of a 240TB capacity is that the DXi7500 should be able to hold weeks of backup data and offer file restoration at disk speeds for it when smaller systems would have to give up and send their users to much slower tape archive restoration.

The original ship date was several months ago but it has been delayed by additional testing of the functionality in what is said to be a complex system. Apparently the launch was also pushed back to suit an OEM partner of Quantum.

Quantum says its OEM partners are  HP, IBM, Sun and Dell, but it doesn't say which of these takes its DXi series of products.

In January, discussing its Q3,08 results to the end of December, 2007, Quantum said: "The company increased its combined DXi3500 and DXi5500 revenues by 31 percent sequentially and now has an installed base of approximately 200 customers across a range of industries and geographies. One-third of Quantum's DXi-Series revenues in the quarter came from repeat purchases, and about 50 percent of customers bought a replication license, which indicates the continued growth opportunity for the company in this market. "

It is now planned for launch in the first half of 2008.

Competition in the enterprise deduplication space is increasing with Diligent and unit ship leader Data Domain both having a strong presence. The delay to the DXi7500's arrival is not doing Quantum any favours.