Key Features to Keep in Mind When Evaluating Backup and Restore Solutions
Besides knowing that they’ll need more than they have on hand now, most IT organizations are not all that sure how much backup space they’re going to need in the future. As part of an effort to make it easier for IT organizations to add backup capacity as required, Quantum today unveiled a disk-based system that enables customers to add 17TB modules as needed.
Aimed at midrange IT organizations, Casey Burns, head of DXi product marketing for Quantum, says the DXi6900 scales up to 510TB in a way that allows IT organizations to deploy backup capacity on demand by simply turning a licensing key. The actual drives the customers need to support that additional backup requirement are already pre-installed in the system.
Burns says that while there is no shortage of options when it comes to backup and recovery, only a handful of vendors have developed purpose-built appliances that come loaded with software that automates the workflow surrounding the backup and recovery process.
To that end, Burns says Quantum developed iLayer Intelligence software to help manage the workflows associated with backing data up across on-premise and the Q-cloud service that Quantum first rolled out in 2012, and optimize where metadata resides on the system in order to speed recovery in the event of a disaster.
Backup and recovery is as much about process as it is the technology. But what’s not often appreciated is the degree to which the technology nudges customers toward employing the right set of processes. Of course, most customers are not going to appreciate any of that technology until the time comes to actually recover something. But the one thing that is for certain is that more often than not, it’s the culmination of a whole lot of little things that wind up making the biggest difference when disaster eventually strikes.
