Quorum may not be a household name even in IT circles, but the San Jose, California-based company has a long pedigree in backup, recovery, and business continuity.
Quorum has taken that experience 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 as well as support for multiple virtualization platforms.
Quorum begins at $750 per month and includes the Quorum onQ-T20 appliance.
But, while the physical appliance requirement might bother some, only its comparatively high cost and limited reporting keep it from edging out Editors' Choice winner Microsoft Azure Site Discovery in our DRaaS review roundup.
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Simply put, Quorum onQ works by placing a virtual representation of the Quorum onQ appliance in the cloud, which then allows users to pair an on-site physical appliance with the cloud-based iteration of the company's disaster recovery services.
All data from on-site servers is synchronized with the Quorum onQ appliance, which also synchronizes with the cloud service, keeping information up-to-date and providing a rapid road to recovery, even if the physical location housing the appliance is lost.
For most situations, customers will rely on the on-site appliance to handle immediate DR and backup needs, with the cloud acting as a last resort in worst-case scenarios.
The appliance handles the DR process by taking snapshots of the primary servers on site and creating virtual clones of the physical servers.
Those virtual clones can be launched almost instantly if a primary server fails and are completely contained within the Quorum onQ appliance or offered via the Quorum cloud service if the onsite appliance 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 start off with an onsite appliance and then add additional appliances or the company's cloud services as their needs expand.
That said, initial installation proved quite simple, consisting of identifying the appropriate appliance from an installation wizard 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 form factor and consists of 16GB ram, 4 CPU cores, and 2.8TB of storage—plenty of muscle for a typical small business.
The Quorum onQ-T20 is recommended for sites that only need two recovery nodes (virtual clones).
The top-end Quorum onQ-288-28 comes in a 2U rack mounted form factor and at the time of this writing offers 160GB RAM, 16 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 would need with multiple Quorum onQ-288-28 devices likely necessary to handle enterprise-sized scenarios.
Installation of the appliances all follow the same basic steps, regardless of what model appliance you're using, and all of them offer:
- Full and incremental local backups to the Quorum onQ appliance
- De-duplication technology
- Ready-to-run virtual recovery nodes
- Data replication to remote site
- One click five-minute recovery
- Monitoring and alerts
- The ability to recover individual files and email messages
Once the appliance is installed, configuration proved easy, too.
All it 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 machine(s) being targeted for backup.
Behind the scenes, the installation places the Quorum onQ agent on the target system and starts to back up the system immediately, which in turn 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 cloud in the event of a primary system failure.
However, unlike 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 like Microsoft Hyper-V or VMware.
The first backup can take several hours, based upon the number of systems being protected and the amount of data stored on those systems.
After the initial backup, the Quorum onQ appliance switches to incremental system snapshots, which only take a few minutes and can be scheduled to occur as frequently as desired, with protection schedules ranging from 15 minutes to 24-hour intervals.
The appliance also performs automated DR testing, where a RN can be tested after each backup to make sure it's fully functional in case it's suddenly needed.
The appliance will email a notification to the administrator if an RN fails the self-test, hopefully prompting that administrator to run additional tests to isolate the problem.
RN tests function by loading the RN in a private network, as a VM, so associated production systems can stay online, and not impact operations or ongoing backups.
Administrators can also set other backup-related options, such as the number of days to retain unreferenced backup data (for the ability to roll back RNs), as well as selecting what drives to back up, the number of VMs to back up, as well as the number of virtual CPUs, and the amount of memory to be assigned to each RN.
Once the appliance is configured and working, administrators are then able to set up a link to the Quorum onQ cloud, which encrypts the traffic and replicates functionality in the cloud.
Setup only takes a few mouse clicks, mostly concerned with inputting license information and other details.
Once the link is established, backups are automated and features can all be accessed via the management console.
Simple Management
Simplicity is the name of the game with the Quorum onQ management console, which is browser-based and 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 console provides administrators with the ability 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 prove to be informative, but a little on the simplistic side.
While that may be beneficial to neophytes and non-technical users, those seeking to master and control the complete DR process will need more information than the native Quorum onQ engine can provide.
The company provides ample support, training and help to make sure everything functions properly and the integrated self-testing also gives business owners a feeling of security, knowing that their DR solution is ready to take over at a moment's notice.
High Price with Good Performance
Quorum offers an extensive array of options when it comes to their DRaaS solution, but be prepared to pay for even the entry-level version.
That solution, which includes the low-end Quorum onQ-T20 appliance deployed on-site, starts at $750 per month and includes full support for DRaaS, as well as local disaster recovery, a scalable architecture, de-duplication, 1TB of cloud based storage and one-click recovery.
A 4TB solution, under the marketing name of Quorum onQ Prime ups the ante to $999 per month, and more muscled solutions go up from there 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, thanks to the functional design of the backup process and the recovery process.
That design leverages the ideology of taking snapshots of the physical (or primary) servers used by a business, then behind the scenes, uses P2V (Physical to Virtual) algorithms to create a virtual representation of the primary system.
Additional snapshots are taken as frequently as 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 primary node.
The Quorum onQ cloud-based DRaaS service does introduce additional latency into the recovery process and requires a rather fat pipe to initially move all of the data 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 one caveat, which is the latency added by accessing the VM via a broadband connection as opposed to a local area network (LAN).
That may pose a problem for some low-latency applications, like video servers, but for most general business software the effect should be negligible.
The only other knock we have here is that customers are relegated to Quorum's cloud for this service, and just like Carbonite Carbonite Server Backup , don't have the option to point their DR at third-party clouds like Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Rackspace.
Exploiting P2V Magic
By using the P2V, Quorom has solved a multitude of compatibility problems by capturing all of the information stored on a server using imaging technology.
That can eliminate the need to install additional backup agents for databases, application servers and other processes that may live on the physical server.
Quorum onQ Hybrid Cloud Solution proved to be one of the most capable DRaaS solutions in this roundup, offering near-instantaneous recovery from a major system failure via its on-premises, appliance-based model.
Adding the cloud option brings even more recovery capabilities into the picture, as well as true DRaaS, where geographic diversity can become a life-saver for businesses suffering through disasters that result in the loss of local facilities.
While its high price will put it out of reach for some small to midsize businesses (SMBs), those who are serious about protecting their business and data should give it a close look.
The Bottom Line
Quorum onQ represents a top-of-the-line disaster recovery (DR) solution.
Combining flexible backup with IT-grade options for off-site protection, multi-site failover, and the ability to store and execute virtual machines (VMs), Quorum has enough feature depth to attract almost any kind of business.
