Quantum aims to boost dedupe speed

Quantum's latest deduplication package, unveiled on Monday, has less capacity than its predecessor but a higher storage throughput.

The DXi8500 dedupe appliance can store between 20 and 200 terabytes of data, and is capable of taking in data at a maximum rate of 6.4TB an hour, according to Quantum. By comparison, the previous generation DXi7500 could store up to 220TB, but could take in a maximum of 4TB an hour.

Deduplication devices are useful to heavily virtualised organisations where many computers share the same software, because they make sure that only a single instance of each important piece of data is stored. Everything else that would typically store the data instead contains a pointer to the original data, which is then replicated out on an as-needed basis.

Quantum believes that its transfer rate offers "the highest single unit [Virtual Tape Library] performance in its class" with its 6.4TB an hour transfer rate, it said in a statement. This compares to rival systems such as the HP StorageWorks D2D4312 system, which can handle 2.4TB an hour, and the EMC-owned Data Domain DD880, which can handle up to 5.4TB an hour.

The DXi8500 uses six-core Intel Nehalem processors and it provides up to six ports of 8Gbps of FibreChannel connectivity, Raid 6 storage technology, and support for 1Gb and 10Gb Ethernet.

The DXi8500 starts at $430,000 (£271,221) for 20TB of storage and includes software for deduplication and replication, a virtual tape library, Symantec OpenStorage Technology (OST) and platform-specific reporting tools.