Quantum data protection for virtual machines

Virtualized environments, that is environments using some form of virtualization technology, often have grown organically without an overall plan or architecture. A conversation with Quantum reminded me how often companies create virtual servers and don't think much about how both they and the data they create are to be protected. Backing up data from each of the virtual servers manually would be a time consuming and error prone task.

The folks at Quantum saw that as an opportunity to address this issue using a combination of their storage devices and software from Pancetera Software. Quantum liked what Pancetera did so much that they went out and bought the firm in June 2011 for approximately $12 million. Pancetera's key capabilities Quantum wanted are the abilities to managing redundant data, intelligently managing backup timing to minimize impact on production systems and deal with both local and remote data.

The point of our conversation, however, was to introduce me to a new data protection appliance, the vmPRO 4000. The new device combines backup software from Pancetera with Quantum's storage server hardware. Two models were introduced. The vmPRO4510 contains 2 Terabytes of storage capacity and the VMPRO 4601 offers up to 12 Terabytes of capacity. In both cases, the goal is protecting active data and filtering out inactive data to reduce overall back up time.

Quantum's products make it easy to back up virtual servers and the data they manage easily. What might be considered even more important, these products make it easy to find that data and restore entire bootable virtual machine images, data directories or individual files. All of the data the vmPRO 4000 systems manage appear to be a single file system rather than a confusing combination of files from separate virtual systems. I thought that the products could be of great assistance to small to medium businesses who have embarked on the journey to a virtualized environment.