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Quantum has launched a new backup appliance for remote offices combining data deduplication, replication and system-wide monitoring software for centralised backup control.

The Quantum DXi2500-D is an extension to the company's DXi line of storage arrays, but instead of being based on proprietary hardware, it uses a Dell server with 1.8TB of hard drive backup capacity.

Along with the new backup appliance, Quantum also announced its Vision 3.0 software, which gives storage administrators a view into enterprise-wide disk and tape backups as well as remote site data replication from a single dashboard.

Vision 3.0 adds tape library performance monitoring, disk space management status charts and enhanced data replication reporting that includes distributed environments. "It builds a database out of all this monitoring data so that an administrator can get weekly reports for backup trends," said Steve Whitner, Quantum's disk product marketing manager. "For example, you can drill down to see the performance of a particular drive."

Quantum's new entry-level DXi2500-D appliance can also be monitored with the Vision 3.0 software. The appliance is suited for branch offices with backups of anywhere from 100GB to 1.5TB in size. Whitner said the appliance acts as network-attached storage (NAS) and has a 300GB/hour ingest rate for backups or roughly 85MB a second.

The appliance is configured with a RAID 6 disk parity, allowing up to two disks to fail without loss of data. Once a full backup of the remote site is completed, the appliance backup only changes at the block level, so that even if a file is updated, only the changes are replicated back to a main data center or disaster recovery site, Whitner said.

The DXi2500-D also supports Symantec's OST (open storage) API, which allows NetBackup software to track copies of data, both at remote sites and in data centres an disaster recovery sites.

Pricing for the DXi2500-D starts at $12,500(£7,700) and includes deduplication, replication and OST support. Pricing for Vision 3.0 software starts at $3,500(£2,200) for each appliance on which its installed and drops to $2,500(£1,540) for multiple instances.