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Quantum’s latest offering in the disk-based backup space is the DXi8500 virtual tape library (VTL), which will compete directly with the EMC Data Domain DD880. Quantum (NYSE: QTM) claims the performance of the DXi8500 is better than the DD880, but the real advantage may be found in the price tag. According to sister site InfoStor, Quantum is pricing a DXi8500 VTL with 90TB of usable capacity at $731,000, including all software. In contrast, EMC (NYSE: EMC) has feature-based pricing on the DD880.
“Quantum claims performance of 6.4TB per hour for the DXi8500 in VTL mode. That’s 3X faster than Quantum’s previous high-end VTL, the DXi7500, and 20% faster than the EMC DD880’s 5.4TB per hour in VTL mode. However, EMC specifies performance of 8TB per hour on the DD880 when used in conjunction with EMC’s DD Boost software.
“Steve Whitner, product marketing manager for DXi systems at Quantum, attributes the performance improvements in the DXi8500 to a number of factors, including the use of six-core Nehalem processors, an improved RAID-6 layout, high-bandwidth internal connections and multi-threading, and 8Gbps Fibre Channel and 10GbE external connectivity. (The DXi8500 is also available with Gigabit Ethernet connections.)
“In addition, Quantum added 15,000rpm, 6Gbps SAS drives in the DXi8500. The high-speed SAS drives are used for indexes and metadata, while the rest of the DXi8500’s capacity is on SATA drives. Whitner says that the SAS drives typically account for 2.5TB to 5TB of the DXi8500’s maximum capacity of 200TB (which compares to a maximum capacity of 140TB on the EMC DD880).
Whitner also claims that the DXi8500 VTL can read data out at about 85% of the write speed, or about 5.44TB per hour, and that the system’s data deduplication can cut capacity and bandwidth usage by 90% or more.”
For more, read “Quantum Challenges EMC with High-End VTL” at InfoStor.
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