Quantum Feature of the Month: DXi Advanced Reporting

In the series – ‘Quantum Feature of the Month’ – I will highlight handy features you may not know your Quantum technology can do.

Today, I would like to give kudos to Quantum.  I recently had the luxury of sitting in a hands-on demonstration for a feature called “Dxi Advanced Reporting.” This is a reporting feature for all Quantum DXi-series backup targets.

This is what I learned:

DXi Advanced Reporting combines comprehensive performance data logging with powerful visual reporting and analysis tools to help you identify potential problems and optimize system operation.

The reports let you view and work with a wealth of performance and system statistics such as capacity utilization, Ethernet and fiber channel activity, data and system disc activity, CPU load, and data deduplication/replication and space reclamation activities.

Using just the report above, you can see disc utilization, deduplication rates. You can even focus on the activity during a particular time, down to the seconds, allowing you to isolate when a problem may have occurred or to point out a problem due to fluctuations in your graph.

Once you get used to checking these reports, you can very quickly pin point when data has expired and when you have added data to a backup appliance. Some trends even help you recognize when you have added a new disc shelve. All of this information is derived directly from the report above.

In summary, this is a great tool for Quantum users. Coming from an admin’s point of view, if you can find ways to make your job easier, please do! I know during these hard times we have to juggle multiple specialties, so I’m glad there are tools like DXi Advanced Reporting to make it faster to check the system check boxes and produce reports for management.

For those unfamiliar with Quantum, they develop tape and disc based backup targets and produce target based backup appliances.

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