Quantum has announced that industry analyst firm Evaluator Group has validated the capabilities of Quantum's DXi6000 line of disk-based appliances. EGI's extensive testing showed that, in addition to meeting Quantum's published performance specifications, the DXi6700 VTL-optimized and DXi6500 NAS-optimized appliances excel in ease of use and provide best-in-class reporting tools.

"With a unique combination of features, price and performance, the Quantum DXi6000 models are among the top products in a very strong field," said Russell Fellows, senior analyst, Evaluator Group. "In speaking with end users, we have found that disk-to-disk technology like the Quantum DXi can greatly enhance backup and restore performance. However, what really makes the DXi6000 models stand out is the ease of use, combined with best-in-class reporting and unique tape integration capabilities. Many organizations still rely on tape for some data protection functions, and the DXi6000 is the only product in its category with tape integration capabilities to deliver efficient disk-to-tape movement when needed."

"In the last year, Quantum has refreshed the entire line of DXi products and recently announced our DXi 2.0 software platform, which will deliver the highest deduplication speeds available for any open protocol inline appliance in their respective classes, beginning with the DXi6500," said Rob Clark, senior vice president, Disk and Tape Backup Products, Quantum. "Evaluator Group not only validated the superior performance of the entire DXi6000 line, but subjected these products to the real world rigors end users are familiar with to test their full functionality and usability. I'm pleased to say the systems passed with flying colors."

High Throughput Backup and Restore for the DXi6000
Evaluator Group analyzed systems running both Quantum's earlier 1.x deduplication software, as well as the recently announced DXi 2.0 software. Evaluator Group tested Quantum's DXi6500 family and DXi6700 to validate Quantum's performance claims and made functional comparisons to other leading disk-to-disk and VTL systems. Emulating real-world conditions in its testing, Evaluator Group confirmed that Quantum's systems are capable of protecting over 1 PB of backup data using high-performance deduplication methods to achieve fast throughput for both backup and restore operations. The report notes that coupled with deduplicated replication and direct tape creation, these high-performance capabilities provide an overall data protection architecture that can store large amounts of backup data quickly, replicate a copy off-site, and create copies for long-term retention, all in a minimal amount of time.

Evaluator Group also found that DXi-Series appliances deliver balanced read/write performance and outpace many competing systems with their combination of high performance and value pricing.

Management and Reporting Tools Among the Best for Any Storage Product
Evaluator Group found Quantum's DXi6000 overall suite of management tools -- including new enhancements found in DXi 2.0 -- to be among the best interfaces for storage products. Compared to competing disk-to-disk and VTL data protection systems, the DXi interfaces were found to be more intuitive and easier to use.

In addition, the report calls Quantum's DXi Advanced Reporting tool the best bundled real-time performance analysis tool available for any storage product. With unparalleled drill-down into specific views, the Advanced Reporting tool -- a standard feature on all DXi appliances -- provides detailed usage and trend reports for up to six years of data.