Quorum onQ Review - Review 2022

Quorum may non exist a household proper name fifty-fifty in It circles, but the San Jose, California-based visitor has a long full-blooded in backup, recovery, and business organization continuity. Quorum has taken that feel and poured all of it into a multifaceted Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) solution that combines advanced cloud capabilities with hardware-based disaster recovery (DR) and storage appliances too every bit support for multiple virtualization platforms. Quorum begins at $750 per month and includes the Quorum onQ-T20 appliance. Only, while the concrete appliance requirement might bother some, only its comparatively high price and express reporting proceed information technology from edging out Editors' Option winner Microsoft Azure Site Discovery in our DRaaS review roundup.

Simply put, Quorum onQ works by placing a virtual representation of the Quorum onQ appliance in the deject, which then allows users to pair an on-site physical apparatus with the cloud-based iteration of the visitor's disaster recovery services. All data from on-site servers is synchronized with the Quorum onQ appliance, which too synchronizes with the cloud service, keeping information upwardly-to-engagement and providing a rapid road to recovery, even if the physical location housing the apparatus is lost. For most situations, customers will rely on the on-site appliance to handle immediate DR and backup needs, with the cloud acting every bit a terminal resort in worst-example scenarios.

The appliance handles the DR process by taking snapshots of the main servers on site and creating virtual clones of the physical servers. Those virtual clones can be launched well-nigh instantly if a master server fails and are completely independent inside the Quorum onQ appliance or offered via the Quorum cloud service if the onsite apparatus fails. Users also have the option of installing multiple Quorum onQ appliances at multiple locations and replicating data between them, potentially eliminating the need for the cloud service if the business case can support that topology.

Installation and Configuration

Quorum offers multiple deployment options, allowing customers to commencement off with an onsite appliance and and then add boosted appliances or the company'south cloud services as their needs expand. That said, initial installation proved quite simple, consisting of identifying the advisable appliance from an installation wizard and and then adding it to the existing network.

The Quorum onQ appliance comes in multiple configurations beginning with the entry level Quorum onQ-T20, which comes in a tower course gene and consists of 16GB ram, 4 CPU cores, and 2.8TB of storage—plenty of muscle for a typical small concern. The Quorum onQ-T20 is recommended for sites that simply need two recovery nodes (virtual clones). The summit-end Quorum onQ-288-28 comes in a 2U rack mounted form factor and at the time of this writing offers 160GB RAM, xvi CPU cores and 28TB of usable storage. The Quorum onQ-288-28 is rated for 40 recovery nodes (concurrent virtual clones), and represents everything a midsized business concern would need with multiple Quorum onQ-288-28 devices probable necessary to handle enterprise-sized scenarios.

Installation of the appliances all follow the same basic steps, regardless of what model apparatus you're using, and all of them offer:

Total and incremental local backups to the Quorum onQ apparatus
De-duplication applied science
Ready-to-run virtual recovery nodes
Data replication to remote site
One click v-minute recovery
Monitoring and alerts
The ability to recover individual files and email messages

Once the apparatus is installed, configuration proved easy, too. All information technology takes is a visit to the appliances browser-based console, and then just clicking on the "Protect Me" icon, which launches a few scripts to install the client backup software, setup backup scheduling, and identify all the particulars of the physical car(s) being targeted for backup. Backside the scenes, the installation places the Quorum onQ amanuensis on the target system and starts to support the arrangement immediately, which in plow automatically creates a recovery node (RN). The RN acts as virtual machine (VM), which can be launched either on the Quorum onQ appliance or in the deject in the event of a primary organisation failure. Nonetheless, different solutions like Azure or Zerto Virtual Replication ($745.00 at Zerto) , Quorum's virtualized infrastructure is proprietary and must be managed through the Quorum tools, not standard hypervisor management tools similar Microsoft Hyper-V or VMware.

Quorum onQ Hybrid Cloud Solution - Backup Reporting

The beginning backup can take several hours, based upon the number of systems being protected and the amount of data stored on those systems. Subsequently the initial backup, the Quorum onQ appliance switches to incremental system snapshots, which only accept a few minutes and can be scheduled to occur every bit frequently equally desired, with protection schedules ranging from fifteen minutes to 24-hour intervals. The appliance too performs automated DR testing, where a RN can be tested afterward each backup to make sure it's fully functional in case it'southward suddenly needed. The appliance will e-mail a notification to the ambassador if an RN fails the self-exam, hopefully prompting that administrator to run additional tests to isolate the trouble. RN tests function by loading the RN in a private network, as a VM, so associated product systems can stay online, and not impact operations or ongoing backups.

Administrators can too ready other fill-in-related options, such as the number of days to retain unreferenced backup information (for the ability to roll back RNs), as well every bit selecting what drives to back upward, the number of VMs to back up, also as the number of virtual CPUs, and the amount of memory to be assigned to each RN. In one case the appliance is configured and working, administrators are and then able to set up a link to the Quorum onQ cloud, which encrypts the traffic and replicates functionality in the cloud. Setup simply takes a few mouse clicks, by and large concerned with inputting license information and other details. One time the link is established, backups are automated and features can all be accessed via the management panel.

Uncomplicated Management

Simplicity is the name of the game with the Quorum onQ direction console, which is browser-based and tin can be accessed using any PC on the network. That said, access is protected via both HTTPS and traditional login credentials, although role-based access details were missing. The management panel provides administrators with the power to manage multiple appliances, as well as the "cloud" element, making it a unified dashboard for the DR process.

Status and activity information is represented using pie charts and other visual elements that evidence to be informative, but a little on the simplistic side. While that may be benign to neophytes and non-technical users, those seeking to principal and control the complete DR process will need more than information than the native Quorum onQ engine tin can provide.

The company provides ample support, training and assistance to make sure everything functions properly and the integrated cocky-testing also gives business owners a feeling of security, knowing that their DR solution is ready to take over at a moment's notice.

Quorum onQ Hybrid Cloud Solution - Recovery Node Status

High Price with Skillful Performance

Quorum offers an all-encompassing array of options when it comes to their DRaaS solution, only exist prepared to pay for even the entry-level version. That solution, which includes the low-end Quorum onQ-T20 apparatus deployed on-site, starts at $750 per month and includes full support for DRaaS, also as local disaster recovery, a scalable architecture, de-duplication, 1TB of deject based storage and one-click recovery. A 4TB solution, under the marketing name of Quorum onQ Prime ups the ante to $999 per calendar month, and more muscled solutions become upwardly from at that place and equire a call to the company to work out pricing.

The onsite iteration of the Quorum onQ appliance proves to provide almost instantaneous recovery, thank you to the functional design of the backup process and the recovery process. That design leverages the ideology of taking snapshots of the concrete (or chief) servers used by a business, then behind the scenes, uses P2V (Concrete to Virtual) algorithms to create a virtual representation of the primary system. Additional snapshots are taken every bit oft equally every 15 minutes and kept at the ready if needed. That design allows administrators to launch a recovery node in a matter of seconds to take over from a failed master node.

The Quorum onQ cloud-based DRaaS service does introduce boosted latency into the recovery process and requires a rather fat pipe to initially move all of the information into the cloud (though this only occurs once during initialization). However, from a performance standpoint, the hosted RNs run just as quickly as their onsite counterparts with 1 caveat, which is the latency added past accessing the VM via a broadband connection as opposed to a local surface area network (LAN). That may pose a problem for some low-latency applications, like video servers, but for most general business software the event should be negligible. The simply other knock we take hither is that customers are relegated to Quorum's cloud for this service, and merely like Carbonite Carbonite Server Backup , don't take the choice to point their DR at third-party clouds similar Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Rackspace.

Exploiting P2V Magic

Past using the P2V, Quorom has solved a multitude of compatibility problems past capturing all of the information stored on a server using imaging technology. That can eliminate the need to install boosted fill-in agents for databases, application servers and other processes that may alive on the concrete server.

Quorum onQ Hybrid Cloud Solution proved to be one of the nigh capable DRaaS solutions in this roundup, offering well-nigh-instantaneous recovery from a major system failure via its on-premises, appliance-based model. Adding the cloud option brings fifty-fifty more recovery capabilities into the picture, as well equally truthful DRaaS, where geographic diversity can get a life-saver for businesses suffering through disasters that result in the loss of local facilities. While its high price volition put information technology out of accomplish for some small to midsize businesses (SMBs), those who are serious well-nigh protecting their business and data should give it a close look.

Quorum onQ Hybrid Cloud Solution - Protected Node Selection