In the storage Game of Thrones a top contender for the modern data protection throne has forged an alliance with one of the oldest data protection technologies of all; tape.
Quantum and Veeam say Veeam’s backup software can send data to tape via a dedicated external physical server, which hosts Veeam’s tape server. This physical server has to be sized, configured, procured and set up.
(Image above: Quantum Scalar library products with Scalar i3 i front.)
What Quantum has done is stick a blade server inside its Scalar i3 tape library and run Veeam’s tape server on that. The resulting box is called a converged tape appliance and is available to Quantum distributors and resellers as a single line item (SKU.)
The i3 has from 25 to 200 tape cartridge slots, scaled in 25-slot increments, and from from 1 to 12 tape drives. It has Capacity-on-Demand (CoD) software licensing, and compressed LTO-8 tape capacity runs from from 750TB up to 6PB.
The control module is a 3U enclosure and there can be up to three expansion modules, each taking up 3U. Get a datasheet here.
Quantum plays the anti-ransomeware card, saying that tape cartridges are stored offline and therefore provide an effective barrier against ransomware and malware.
Veeam users can store backup data on Quantum’s DXi deduplicating backup-to-disk arrays, which is quicker than writing to tape but the arrays are online, unlike stored tape cartridges.
Quantum’s converged tape appliances for Veeam environments are available today, beginning at $17,000 MSRP.
