Free Quantum DXi V5000 Community Edition


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If you are like me and can’t turn down something that is free, you should try out the Quantum DXi V5000 Community Edition download.  What you get is virtual backup appliance that has all of the features and capabilities that Quantum’s physical DXi dedupe appliance has.

 

What is wicked cool, a New England way of saying “awesome”,  is you can store up to 100TB of data on the DXi V5000 using only 5 TB of disk capacity.  This is assuming you see the full 20:1 deduplication of your data, so based on your data you might see less than the full 100TB.

 

Like I said, I can’t pass up a good thing that is also free.  So, I am going to download the DXi V5000 and install it in my home lab.  I will also write a future blog on how to use the DXi V5000 with Veeam.

 

Hope you take a look at the DXi V5000 and find it useful.


26 comments

Userlevel 7
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Thanks for sharing this.  I started to look at this and will pick right back up as it will be a great target in my homelab. 😎

Userlevel 7
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Interesting, and for free I will try this definitely. 😎

Nice addition for my environment at home...

Userlevel 7
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If you are like me and can’t turn down something that is free, you should try out the Quantum DXi V5000 Community Edition download.  What you get is virtual backup appliance that has all of the features and capabilities that Quantum’s physical DXi dedupe appliance has.

 

What is wicked cool, a New England way of saying “awesome”,  is you can store up to 100TB of data on the DXi V5000 using only 5 TB of disk capacity.  This is assuming you see the full 20:1 deduplication of your data, so based on your data you might see less than the full 100TB.

 

Like I said, I can’t pass up a good thing that is also free.  So, I am going to download the DXi V5000 and install it in my home lab.  I will also write a future blog on how to use the DXi V5000 with Veeam.

 

Hope you take a look at the DXi V5000 and find it useful.

+1

Userlevel 7
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Nice, I needed to google what Quantum DXi (never heard about before) is and that’s cool! I’ll give a try!

Userlevel 2

Hi @SteveF, the new DXi V5000 looks really interesting.

Nowadays, I play around with it and my first impresion is very positive. Nevertheless, I would like to ask you regarding Quantum DXi V5000 integration with Veeam. How does it work? I have created NFS share within Quantum DXi V5000 and then set this share as repository in Veeam. Are there any other types of integration with Veeam?

Any response will be much appreciated!

Userlevel 5
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Hi @SteveF, the new DXi V5000 looks really interesting.

Nowadays, I play around with it and my first impresion is very positive. Nevertheless, I would like to ask you regarding Quantum DXi V5000 integration with Veeam. How does it work? I have created NFS share within Quantum DXi V5000 and then set this share as repository in Veeam. Are there any other types of integration with Veeam?

Any response will be much appreciated!

You can add it as a “Deduplicating storage appliance” when adding it as a repository.

 

It’s also mentioned in the user guide.

Userlevel 7
Badge +20

Hi @SteveF, the new DXi V5000 looks really interesting.

Nowadays, I play around with it and my first impresion is very positive. Nevertheless, I would like to ask you regarding Quantum DXi V5000 integration with Veeam. How does it work? I have created NFS share within Quantum DXi V5000 and then set this share as repository in Veeam. Are there any other types of integration with Veeam?

Any response will be much appreciated!

You can add it as a “Deduplicating storage appliance” when adding it as a repository.

 

It’s also mentioned in the user guide.

This is how I would add it to get the most out of the storage with the free version otherwise you are limited to the 5TB.

Userlevel 2

Hi @Chris.Childerhose and @MattM ! Thank you for your answers! Unfortunately, adding Deduplicating storage appliance is possible only with Veeam Enterprise version. To sum up, there are two options how to connect Quantum DXi V5000 and Veeam Backup and recovery - create NFS share in Quantum DXi and use it as Backup Repository in Veeam and the second one is using Deduplicating storage appliance directly in VBR console. In fact, I was not sure how to integrate DXi with Veeam Data Mover.

Userlevel 7
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Hi @Chris.Childerhose and @MattM ! Thank you for your answers! Unfortunately, adding Deduplicating storage appliance is possible only with Veeam Enterprise version. To sum up, there are two options how to connect Quantum DXi V5000 and Veeam Backup and recovery - create NFS share in Quantum DXi and use it as Backup Repository in Veeam and the second one is using Deduplicating storage appliance directly in VBR console. In fact, I was not sure how to integrate DXi with Veeam Data Mover.

If you get an NFR license you could try it out as a Deduplication appliance though. 😉

Userlevel 7
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Thanks….I’ll have to check this out.  I’m a fan of the DataDomain line, but now that I’m out of enterprise and in the SMB space, this may be a great item to check out.  I hadn’t really considered putting some software in the middle of things until now.

Userlevel 7
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Thanks for the hint. Could be a good replacement for the free HPE StoreOnce which stops working from time to time. I'll look at it when I have some time.

Userlevel 7
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Got this installed today and working pretty well so far.

Userlevel 1

Hi @SteveF, the new DXi V5000 looks really interesting.

Nowadays, I play around with it and my first impresion is very positive. Nevertheless, I would like to ask you regarding Quantum DXi V5000 integration with Veeam. How does it work? I have created NFS share within Quantum DXi V5000 and then set this share as repository in Veeam. Are there any other types of integration with Veeam?

Any response will be much appreciated!

You can add it as a “Deduplicating storage appliance” when adding it as a repository.

 

It’s also mentioned in the user guide.

This is how I would add it to get the most out of the storage with the free version otherwise you are limited to the 5TB.

The DXi will deduplicate the data it receives in either case, so you don’t lose the deduplicating advantage by using it as a raw NFS target.

What you do lose is the Veeam integration features, which reduce bandwidth requirements, and allow server supported synthetic full backups using Veeam Fast Clone.

Userlevel 6
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@GreenHenry sorry for the delay in replying to you.  @Chris.Childerhose did a great job picking up the ball and answering your questions.  I used an NFR license and setup the DXi as a dedupe appliance, but the NFS target use case is a great alternative.

I've been running it in my home lab for quite a while, and works very well.

Before this I used the HPE StoreOnce Virtual Appliance, but only had 1TB (up to 1:20, 20TB) and “support” or use for 3 years.

I was planning to make a review in my home lab, but right now very busy with other things, hopefully soon!

nice one @GreenHenry 

 

Userlevel 7
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I tried it today in lab test.

Minimum requirements to begin installation are:
2 CPU

5GB of RAM

There’s two type of configuration supported:

3 disks + 1 for OS

1 disk + 1 for OS.

 

OS it’s a CentOS.

The 4 disks configuration support upgrade to PAID version, instead 2 disks configuration not.

 

Free community it’s FREE for 5TB. Deduplication need to be enabled in share creation configuration.

 

The official guide is a little bit confusing and useful informations are too fragmented over several pages.

I found these videos really helpful:

4 disks:

2 disks:

 

Userlevel 7
Badge +20

I tried it today in lab test.

Minimum requirements to begin installation are:
2 CPU

5GB of RAM

There’s two type of configuration supported:

3 disks + 1 for OS

1 disk + 1 for OS.

 

OS it’s a CentOS.

The 4 disks configuration support upgrade to PAID version, instead 2 disks configuration not.

 

Free community it’s FREE for 5TB. Deduplication need to be enabled in share creation configuration.

 

The official guide is a little bit confusing and useful informations are too fragmented over several pages.

I found these videos really helpful:

4 disks:

2 disks:

 

Those are great videos.  I did find when trying to enable the VDSP for Veeam on the appliance it required more RAM than what the CE version has so I powered it down and made it 24GB I think as the Veeam piece wanted 19GB it said IIRC.

Hope this helps anyone trying to use it.

Userlevel 7
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@SteveF   very interesting, I will try to download the community edition version to do some testing with Veeam.
Is it basically a virtual deduplication appliance or does it have greater capabilities?
I will follow this guide. 
https://domalab.com/quantum-dxi-vmware/


Thanks for share

Userlevel 6
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@Link State you are correct that the DXi v5000 is a dedupe appliance.  Hope you enjoy it.

Userlevel 7
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Like I said, I can’t pass up a good thing that is also free.  So, I am going to download the DXi V5000 and install it in my home lab.  I will also write a future blog on how to use the DXi V5000 with Veeam.

 

Hope you take a look at the DXi V5000 and find it useful.

I deployed and and configured the appliance, from Veeam and the respective dedup repo!

And created the respective Dedup appliance repo.
very interesting!
I drafted a guide.

Userlevel 2

Hello,

I would like to discuss following questions regarding Quantum DXi V5000:

 

Which version of NFS and CIFS/SMB is supported?

Is supported S3 protocol?

Is multi-tenant set up possible?

 

However, I was digging through the documentation and other materials I couldn’t find, what I was looking for.

 

Any help will be much appreciated!

Userlevel 7
Badge +20

Hello,

I would like to discuss following questions regarding Quantum DXi V5000:

 

Which version of NFS and CIFS/SMB is supported?

Is supported S3 protocol?

Is multi-tenant set up possible?

 

However, I was digging through the documentation and other materials I couldn’t find, what I was looking for.

 

Any help will be much appreciated!

I don't believe S3 or multiple tenants is possible but maybe if licensed?  I will try to find the versions of NFS and CIFS unless someone beats me to it. I won't be able to check until Friday.

Userlevel 6
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@GreenHenry I reached out to my friends at Quantum and here are the responses to your questions:

 

The NFS protocol is “NFS v3 or NFS v4”, the exact version is negotiated with the client.

 

Samba is based on 4.5.3-7781, with Quantum’s own modifications. It’s an older version but has been modified from the original so the version is not exactly 4.5.3.

 

S3 protocol is not supported unfortunately. DXi can be installed in AWS with S3 storage and used as a replication target, however, so cloud is supported. A version writing directly to S3 is planned by the end of the year.

 

Multi tenancy: The short answer is “yes.”  You can setup operator level users with access to different shares who can only control assigned shares. But, these operators have visibility to other shared parts of the system, so the tenants would have knowledge of each other.

 

Of course, you can just have shares for different users with different authentications, but if you give access to login to DXi each user will have visibility of other users, even if they can’t affect their resources.

 

Hope this answers your questions.

Userlevel 2

Hi @SteveF, thank you so much for useful information! It helped me a lot! I would just ask a little deeper about multi tenancy. I understand, that there is possible to create multiple shares and each of them can be dedicated to a group of users. So, let's say, there is one company and each department has one dedicated share. It means, that the environment is within one network ip space. Nevertheless, it is not possible to have one DXi appliance with shares for more companies, is it?

Userlevel 6
Badge +2

@GreenHenry I spoke to Quantum about this question and they indicated that they could have support for a capability like what you described in the future, but they do not right now. Currently there isn’t a way to control which shares are accessible via which ethernet ports.

Thanks for the great question.  It’s ideas and feedback like this that allow us to strengthen our joint solutions.

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