Matching entries matching “Quantum”

Now that this agreement between EMC and Quantum is out in the open, the real question becomes what does Quantum hope to gain from this relationship? On the surface, it appears this agreement puts EMC and Quantum at loggerheads in the rapidly growing space of deduplication. While EMC and Quantum will use different hardware, the software that drives their respective disk systems will be based on Quantum's technology. In this respect, much of the functionality found in the software will be the same, including the policy-based deduplication I detailed in an earlier blog, though Quantum is putting more emphasis on features such as direct tape creation given its continued focus on integration of disk and tape resources within the enterprise. (read more)

It is easy to understand why disk-based backup solutions such as Quantum's DXi Series are growing in popularity as a primary target for backups. Disk shortens backup times, expedites recoveries and removes the inconsistent results that tape delivers when used as a primary backup target. However the difficulties that arise with using disk as a primary backup target are less intuitive. Disk solves the immediate pain of backup but creates other less intuitive, longer term data management issues. (read more)

"We need cheaper and simpler backups and recoveries for our remote and branch offices." That statement is repeated more often by mid-size companies as they seek solutions that take the pain and management overhead associated with backup and recovery out of their remote offices without breaking the budget or requiring heroic efforts to implement. This is exactly the type of scenario that the recently announced DXi2500-D appliance and version 3.0 of Quantum Vision™ Software from Quantum is designed to address. (read more)

Quantum is aiming for the enterprise with its deduplication technology and looks to make a serious run at the enterprise datacenter with its DXi7500. Designed to anchor Quantum's deduplication strategy, companies can use the scalable DXi7500 when it is receiving replicated data from Quantum's DXi3500 or DXi5500 appliances in remote offices; replicating to disaster recovery site(s); or deduplicating terabytes of data during nightly backup jobs in the datacenter. To accomplish this, Quantum designed the DXi7500 to become the focal point for its DXi portfolio. (read more)

Bringing backup data from remote and branch offices back to a home office is a particularly thorny problem that enterprises continue to face. Directly sending nightly full, incremental or differential backup jobs over a wide area network (WAN) connection back to the home office can saturate the WAN link and cause backups to exceed backup windows and result in failed backups. However the current procedure of backing up data to disk or tape at the remote site perpetuates the problem of how to most efficiently and securely transmit backup data back to the home office or disaster recovery site. (read more)

Backup is about more than just deduplication ratios and faster backups. While these are important, companies also want assurance that the solution that they deploy in-house is continually developing, will help them manage their existing backup infrastructure and will scale as they grow. Today's announcements from Quantum indicate that it is committed to making these ongoing, continual and incremental changes to its product lines (hardware and software) in order to meet current and future customer demands. (read more)

One of the more elaborately crafted illusions that deduplication vendors have created over the last few years is that deduplication appliances are simply a "plug-n-play" proposition. In one respect, this is true. Companies can often introduce a deduplication appliance into their backup environment without substantially changing their existing backup configurations. Where the slight of hand comes in is when it comes to the vendor appropriately sizing the deduplication appliance for the client's environment. If it is too small or undersized, companies end up with a deduplication appliance that does not perform as anticipated; if it is too large, companies end up with an oversized appliance that costs them too much money. (read more)

As disk-based backup and deduplication becomes more popular in the backup process, it is a natural next step to want to move data off-site. Whether this motivation is driven by disaster recovery requirements or centralizing backup data, replicating data from one disk-based subsystem to another is growing in popularity. It is as companies look to implement replication as part of their disk-based backup solution, especially when replicating data from remote and branch offices to central offices, that concerns about bandwidth availability inevitably arise. (read more)

While storage system vendors initially promoted the importance of deduplication to reduce disk capacities, more recent product releases show that their understanding of the value of deduplication is evolving to help address a broader set of data protection concerns that face IT departments in distributed environments. Yesterday's launch of version 1.1 of the Quantum DXi7500 provides a great example of this. (read more)

It is for these types of reasons that Quantum's field marketing and sales organization has developed what it refers to as its regional solutions specialists or "Tiger" teams to help businesses determine what size DXi deduplicating appliance is the best fit for its customer environments. When dealing with Quantum customers, their mission is to ensure and verify every customer has a positive experience with Quantum's deduplicating appliances. To do this, a core tenant of their responsibilities is doing the front end analysis that includes customer interviews and site surveys. (read more)

The more pressing question is not which method should companies choose to encrypt data but, "How do companies generate and manage the encryption keys that are used to encrypt and decrypt the data?" The obstacle here is that there is no industry standard way to generate or manage encryption keys long term. (read more)

Anyone who has followed my blogs knows that solid state drives (SSDs) have been at the top of my mind ever since this fall's SNW. However conversations that I have had with storage providers since SNW regarding the current and planned deployments of SSDs reinforce that a major shift in how storage systems are architected is coming. Already these changes are starting to show up in a number of small ways in current products that foretell a coming wave of innovation in storage technologies. (read more)

Deduplication is rapidly becoming the new battleground in corporate backup and no technology vendor can afford not to enter this fray. Yet until recently, Dell, the world's third largest supplier of servers--and a leading supplier of data storage solutions - lacked any native disk-based backup appliance that was capable of deduplication. That changed earlier this month with its announcement that it will develop its own line of disk-based backup appliances that will use Quantum's software, of which deduplication and replication are primary features. (read more)

Backup to disk is now seen as "The" solution for any company looking to solve its backup problems. Factor in deduplication as part of the disk-based backup solution and it is easy for companies to believe that they are well on their way to solving their backup problems. To a certain degree, that's true. Introducing disk almost always solves the immediate corporate pain of failed backups while shortening their backup windows. In fact, I am only aware of a few, isolated instances where that is not the case. (read more)

A majority of organizations still rely on tape as their primary means of data protection. However, with the increasing popularity of disk-based backup, companies are repurposing tape for their offsite data storage and longer term data retention needs. As they do so, new requirements for tape encryption and encryption key management are emerging. I recently had conversations with two individuals at Quantum Corporation to discuss these trends in data protection and how Quantum is responding to them. (read more)

Changes in buying behavior among companies are probably a big motivation behind Quantum's recent announcement to include esXpress backup software with its disk-based DXi-Series backup systems. While most mid-size companies and larger are looking to deploy disk-based backup that incorporates deduplication into their backup infrastructures (which the DXi-Series certainly addresses) it is not always that simple. (read more)

The folks at Quantum recently announced that they had cracked the code for Oracle RMAN, allowing their DXi deduplication appliances to screen out the metadata in RMAN files and greatly increase their dedupe results (read more)

One of the more agonizing choices that some companies face when looking to implement the same deduplication scheme across the enterprise is quantifying which version of deduplication to use: inline or post-processing. From a purist's viewpoint, inline (deduplicating data as it is ingested) is sometimes viewed as the best approach since data is deduplicated immediately as it is ingested. (read more)

Deduplication contributes to expedited backups and recoveries, high backup and recovery success rates and frees up IT staff time associated with managing these tasks. Yet in the face of these benefits that deduplication offers, many midsize organizations still continue to use other technology as their backup target, citing cost and complexity as their primary reasons for not adopting deduplication. It is these specific obstacles that the new DXi6500 family from Quantum seeks to overcome. (read more)

Back in March I received a call from a records management provider in the upstate New York area who was inquiring, "How do I get started in providing disk-based backup for my current clients?" This records management provider currently only stores paper and tape in his company's facilities but rightly recognizes that there is a growing trend towards disk-based backup and did not want to be left out in the cold. But he was wondering what options were available in the market that he could offer his prospective clients. (read more)

It is hard to believe it is approaching the end of 2009 already but what a year it has been. While 2009 has arguably been one of the toughest economic years in anyone's recent memory (and I for one am not convinced the economic slump is by any means approaching an end), from a storage technology perspective it has been one of the most innovative and exciting in recent memory. Deduplication has gone main stream, cloud storage is on every organization's radar screen and all organizations (storage end-users and providers alike) are beginning to grasp just how disruptive solid state drives (SSDs) are going to be. (read more)

"We were getting to the point where we had more and more data and less and less time to back it up", says Mike Fishell, Director of Information Technology for Hay House. "And then there were the increasing expenses of doing the backups. Between time, money and storage space, we needed a new solution." (read more)

An article that appeared back in 2009 on the Forbes website commented on the questions that executive management teams are asking about proposals that they are receiving from their IT departments. Their uncertainty is probably only heightened when their IT departments bring forward a proposal that recommends a seemingly new process that involves the deployment of lesser understood technologies like deduplication and replication. (read more)

The focus of cost controls in the data center is often centered on easily identifiable and quantifiable items such as servers, infrastructure and personnel. But for those who track the data center's steadily growing electric and gas bills, these costs have become a much larger cause of concern. Granted, energy costs have abated somewhat in recent weeks but companies cannot assume that trend will continue. Besides, some parts of the country already report that the availability of power to meet their current data center demands is restrained and that is without even beginning to address their future power requirements. (read more)

Normally I refrain from immediately jumping in the fray when major announcements occur in the storage industry. This is in part because much of the initial news is often speculation with insufficient facts to support any meaningful conclusions. However the announcement yesterday that EMC and not NetApp may be the likely acquirer of Data Domain is of a little bit different nature since the future of Data Domain has now been up in the air for a few weeks. (read more)