We are a NetBackup shop looking to implement a disk based backup infrastructure utilizing data deduplication, to evolve our tape infrastructure to more of a secondary copy, archival media. For the central data center at least we are leaning towards a deduplication appliance solution. Of course we're taking a serious look at Data Domain. Their Jan 18 announcement's performance numbers for the DD890 and the Global Dedupe Array are impressive.

I'm intrigued, though, by this lesser known player, Quantum. Their DXi8500 certainly boasts more modest performance numbers does than the DD890, but it has three features that catch my attention: 1) SAS drives; 2) Direct-To-Tape; 3) The options to inline, post-process or not dedupe at all a segment of data.

I'd appreciate any comments from folks who run or have run a model from Quantum's DXi series, as well as from anyone who evaluated them vs. Data Domain. Thanks.