Storwize and Isilon Demo Joint Solution at VMworld

Storwize and Isilon Systems, Inc. demonstrate Isilon IQ with the Storwize STN-6000 data reduction appliance, providing a complete primary storage optimization solution for VMware infrastructures at VMworld 2009, September 1 to September 3 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

The Storwize-Isilon demo will clearly show a 70% reduction of capacity for VMware ESX environments, dramatically lowering the Total Cost of Ownership for VMware storage by taking advantage of the high level of redundancy inherent in VMware storage files, and then optimizing those files by applying real-time data compression.

The combination of the Isilon IQ scale-out NAS, featuring industry-leading utilization rates of more than 80 percent and the Storwize STN-6000 capacity optimization solution, provides customers with industry-leading usable capacity per raw terabyte (TB) to simplify management, lower cost per TB, and reduced power, cooling and floor space requirements.

With experts estimating that companies spend at least $2.50 on network storage for every dollar spent on virtualization software, the combination of Storwize and Isilon technology shatters that assessment and redefines the economics of deploying VMware storage.

According to Peter Smails, Senior Vice President of Storwize, "VMware is a great platform for saving money on server infrastructure, but it moves the cost and complexity challenge to storage and potentially negates server savings. Storwize solutions address this challenge by enabling massive consolidation of the VMware storage infrastructure. VMware-based server virtualization has changed the way organizations acquire, allocate and assign physical servers and Storwize is changing the way IT looks at physical storage capacity requirements by creating ‘end-to-end’ savings and unparalleled ROI."

"File-based data continues to grow rapidly in both capacity and importance throughout the enterprise, regardless of budgeting pressure, requiring efficient, primary storage solutions that accelerate productivity and reduce costs," said Ram Appalaraju, vice president of marketing, Isilon Systems. "And, it is most evident in VMware environments. By integrating Isilon IQ storage solutions with Storwize’s real-time data compression, enterprise users who have implemented server virtualization can reduce cost, maximize efficiency, and speed data access for mission-critical applications."

The Storwize-Isilon solution features primary data reduction performed in real-time at the point of origin so less data is physically written to primary disk, providing significantly greater efficiency than traditional NAS. Additionally, by reducing file sizes when data is written to disk, data reduction savings cascade throughout the entire data lifecycle as only the compressed files are migrated, replicated, archived, deduplicated, and backed up.