Quantum DXi4510 review

To carry out the test backups, we used CA's ARCserve r12.5 running on a Windows Server 2008 R2 system. To get it to work with the appliance, we created an ARCserve disk backup location that pointed at the appliance's share.

After the first full backup was completed, we modified 2% of the data in 40% of the files prior to each subsequent backup. Quantum's reporting facilities were used to determine the amount of data sent to the appliance, and how much was actually being stored on it.

After a two-week simulation we saw Quantum report a deduplication ratio of 4.25:1, showing good savings on storage. The amount of data sent to the appliance was recorded at 26.8GB, but the actual data stored on the share was 6.3GB.

We then continued the test for a further two weeks, and at the end of a simulated one-month backup period the appliance reported a data deduplication ratio of 7.22:1. Naturally, the ratios that can be achieved will depend on the type of data being secured, its compressibility, the rate of change and the retention period.

To test general throughput performance, we created a new share on the appliance and asked ARCserve to run a full backup of a folder on our test server containing 13,000 files totalling 28GB. With the backup running over Gigabit, the job was completed at a rate of 43MB/sec, which equates to a very tidy 152GB/hour.

Before using the esXpress software, we recommend sitting down and reading all seven manuals since configuration is a lengthy and unintuitive process. The product consists of an OVF file that's used to create a VM running the optional Quorum web GUI. If you don't use this, you must manually install the supplied RPM files on each host to be backed up.

We opted to use the GUI and created a VM for it on our ESX Server 4 system. The browser console provides a wizard where you declare your VMware host, create backup targets that point to the appliance, and decide on the backup frequency and window - and whether they should be full, delta or file level.

You can opt for scheduled daily and monthly backups, and use filters to determine which VMs are to be secured. The VMware service console can also be used to load the esXpress main menu from where you can run on-demand backups of all or selected VMs and check the esXpress logs.

The esXpress software is complex and needs to be more user friendly, but for general network backup operations the DXi4510 is easy to configure and use. Quantum's deduplication technology can significantly reduce storage requirements, and its choice of hardware platform is beyond reproach.

Author: Dave Mitchell