The DXi4510 and DXi4520 are part
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of Quantum's new DXi4500 series of 2U disk backup appliances with network-attached storage (NAS) interfaces. The 4510 has 2 TB of usable disk and costs $12,500 and the 4520 has 4 TB usable capacity for $22,500. The hardware is powered by Nehalem quadcore CPUs and has four Gigabit Ethernet ports. DXi6500 midrange series that Quantum launched late last year. The 4500 series also supports Symantec's OpenStorage API (OST), data encryption and Quantum's esXpress software for VMware backup.
"We want to make it as easy as possible for organizations to take that first step into deduplication," Sparkes said.
The DXi4500 series will replace the DXi3500, although Sparkes says Quantum will still make the 3500 available for customers who prefer a Fibre Channel virtual tape library interface to NAS. Most smaller companies and departments will likely choose a NAS interface, however, and Sparkes says the 4500 is designed to compete with NAS devices from EMC Data Domain and ExaGrid.
Sparkes says the 4500 appliances support fan in from up to 20 remote sites, and can be replicated to any DXi system. However, the boxes cannot be upgraded to DXi6500 or Quantum's DXi7500 enterprise devices.
"Replacing the disk would be very disruptive to a user who has months of backup on there," Sparkes said. "Two terabytes should last for about eight months, and by time they get to that capacity we'll be one or two hardware generations ahead."
Like Quantum's DXi6500 and DXi7500 enterprise disk systems, the 4500 can perform inline or post-processing deduplication but Sparkes says he expects SMBs and remote offices will only be interested in inline dedupe. The advantage of post-process is that systems don't have to wait until the dedupe process is finished before the backup begins, but that is less of a factor with smaller data sets.
Quantum also has a DXi2500-D that scales to 1.8 usable TB and has less performance than the 4500. Quantum markets the 2500-D for "cost sensitive" customers.
StorageIO analyst Greg Schulz says the DXi4500 fits a market where Quantum is strong in tape but has lagged behind Data Domain and ExaGrid for dedupe disk backup.
"For other deduplication vendors, the sweet spot of the market has been the SMBs and lower end of SMEs," he said. "The other players have been extending themselves up to reach larger environments. Quantum has an installed legacy base that's traditionally tape, but now it has a growing disk business. Quantum's the only one of those vendors that can play in a mixed environment as opposed to all disk or all tape. It doesn't have to be all-or-nothing for them."