Quantum DXi5500

Enterprise ready storage is a big issue today. Even small businesses are buying storage in the terabyte-plus range and larger enterprises are purchasing more storage than they would have ever expected.

All of this storage is creating a problem - back-up. The more data you have, the longer it takes to back it up and it's not getting any easier. The amount of data to be backed-up causes other problems. The first is that the back-up window, the time when the server is not being used, is shrinking. With more data to copy, this means that back-ups are in danger of affecting the working day.

The second problem is data duplication. As users begin to move stuff from local machines to servers, the amount of space used for redundant data increases. With collaboration, files and data are emailed between users creating large numbers of copies of the same data. This means that an increasing amount of backup space is being wasted.

These problems have led to the rise of the disk-to-disk backup market where data is moved to a secondary disk array, de-duplicated and then backed-up. This is where the Quantum DXi5500 sits.

The DXi5500 arrives as a standard large box full of little packages. In one box is the main system unit housing the 5U chassis, communication boards and power supplies. A separate box contains the hard disks pre-mounted in the chassis and numbered to fit into the array.

There is a third box that contains the cables (4 power, 2 iSCSI, 2 Fibre Channel), mounting rails, documentation (quick start guide) and a CD.

At the back of the DXi5500 are keyboard, monitor, mouse and COM ports. There is a pair of Gigabit Ethernet ports and two plug-in cards that have fibre channel ports on them. There are four power supplies in the chassis and these are all designed to be hot swap.

At the front is a small panel with the power and reset switch and a range of LEDs. Unlike many storage devices, there are no communication or controller cards. This is, after all, a server with lots of storage.

The DXi5500 we received was only half populated and this is a standard configuration. You can buy fully or half populated. Quantum initialises and configures the drives for you to save time and ships all the drives labelled as to where they fit in the chassis. Unused slots are filled with blanking plates to ensure that airflow and cooling is not compromised.

The first thing to do is take the CD, put it in a machine and watch some of the videos, especially those covering installation and configuration. This will save a lot of time later when you come to configuration.

The chassis itself is heavy but luckily, the power supplies are designed to be hot swap and can be easily removed to lighten the weight of the unit. As with all storage systems, make sure you have someone to help you install into the rack.

Once the chassis is in the rack and the power supplies reinserted, the hard disks can be added. These went in easily without any problems. As Quantum configure and initialise the array for you, all you need to do is slide in the drives. They are all numbered and marked up so you know where each drive belongs.

Drives belonging to Array controller 1 fit at the bottom of the chassis and drives for Array controller 2 at the top. The drives are populated from the bottom of each set working left to right so that drive 0 is bottom left and drive 11 is top right. What would have been helpful would be some indication on the chassis of the sequence or a quick reference card printed on the outside of the chassis. Although the sequence is noted in the Quick Start guide it is not the intuitive way of installing the drives.