Faster Backups with Quantum & Veeam – Last week was fun and exciting here at Quantum with news breaking out about our latest feature rich software release for DXi backup appliances. You may have already seen the announcement that the new DXi 4.1 software is improving backup and restore system performance, but I want to mention a few features in greater detail. Our new DXi 4.1 software with advanced features for our DXi backup appliance enables fast clone synthetic full backups with Veeam 10, cloud-based analytics support, and improved overall performance, helping customers backup faster, manage resources efficiently, and, deliver a stronger TCO than competing offerings. We know you have many choices, but if you want performance, scalability, and efficiency then look no further; Let’s dig into some of these features:
Improved Backup Performance in Veeam Backup & Replication v10 Environments
I am most excited about the significant improvements we have achieved with the new release of DXi software and Veeam. Think about your backup window going from hours to minutes. The fast clone backup feature uses an incremental backup strategy that is commonly used but creating a traditional synthetic full backup on a backup appliance is taxing on the system’s performance and on the network. To ensure we did not tax the system unnecessarily, Quantum DXi 4.1 software leverages Veeam Backup & Replication v10 Fast Clone technology to impressively accelerate synthetic full backup performance. This by the way, is the preferred backup method with Veeam 10.
The fast clone feature enables data accessibility without the need to rehydrate first. Rehydrating data requires additional disk space and consumes performance resources; rehydrating as a task could take up to 5 hours. The new release, combined with Veeam V10, no longer needs to re-hydrate data to create a new clone. The feature looks at existing data blocks on volumes instead of copying data blocks between files and copying those blocks only when files are modified. This enables the software to read off the metadata and the result is a dramatic increase in performance shrinking the backup window to 15 minutes (compared to 5 hours) – that is 15x improvement. Therefore, Fast Clone increases the speed of synthetic backup creation and transformation, reduces disk space requirements, and decreases the load on storage devices delivering an improvement that will deliver performance in line with your desired RPO; We encourage you to see for yourselves. Our earliest customers have seen amazing results backing up and restoring large virtual machines.
Remotely Monitor DXi System Health with Quantum Cloud-Based Analytics
Quantum DXi systems are now able to connect to Quantum’s Cloud-Based Analytics (CBA) software, a cloud-based services tool that enables end-to-end integrated communication between Quantum systems and Quantum product and service experts. CBA software allows administrators to monitor system health remotely via a secure cloud-based portal. This means that telemetry and log data, which is sent to the Quantum CBA software, provides administrators with a central portal they can use to monitor and track system and environment health and statistics, giving you the ability to be proactive with your backup environment.
There are more enhancements in this software release than I can write about in this blog, though I would love to. If there is one thing you could remember is that the combination of these software features, particularly fast clone with Veeam V10 can greatly improve the ability to protect your hybrid environment. Here are additional ones that you may find valuable, the rest of the software enhancement you can find here.
Support for NetBackup OpenStorage (OST) customers, Targeted Automatic Image Replication (AIR). This feature is supported with a new OST plug-in and simplifies air/image replication.
Improved replication fan-in capabilities – up to 50:1 fan in for DXi9000 systems, and up to 30:1 fan-in for DXi4800 systems compared to 10:1 before this release. This is an important feature for larger customers with many remote sites because you can now send more concurrent backups/schedule jobs.
DXi Accent path optimization to reduce network loads. New Quantum technology to route data from an NBU server to a single DXi over multiple interfaces. Allows for better use of DXi’s network interfaces.
More flexible system memory configurations. This flexibility empowers our customers to use RAM to run Veeam Data Mover Service (VDMS), Dynamic Application Environment (DAE) or enable Increased Stream Counts (ISC) directly from the DXi. The latter also supports the maximum allowed tape drives if you use VTL.
This release is designed to enhance your experience with a Quantum DXi and to help you make the most of your datacenter resources, so you can focus on your customer facing applications that drive your business. Your backups should be fast, simple, and efficient and we want to remove all the complexity around it. As you start looking through the lens of value and cost optimization, then you’ll want to shift your sights to a DXi backup appliance. Your infrastructure needs to be efficient – essentially lowest-cost, scalable durable storage, that meets your service level agreements (SLA) and security requirements for data protection.