Isilon and Dell Selected by Illumina

Isilon Systems, Inc. announced that Illumina, Inc. has selected Isilon as the storage infrastructure for IlluminaCompute, its new, fully integrated, high-performance computing solution for its Genome Analyzer sequencing platform.

IlluminaCompute combines powerful sequencing software with high-performance blade servers from Dell, Inc., and Isilon scale-out NAS to create a flexible and scalable computing solution for human scale genomic data analysis. With IlluminaCompute, research organizations of all sizes can eliminate the cost and complexity of decentralized sequencing solutions by deploying a single, high-performance computational and storage infrastructure, streamlining the sequencing and analysis of genomic data.

"The remarkable data growth associated with our Genome Analyzers has created the need for a turnkey solution capable of combining compute power, storage capacity and data analysis into one, cost-effective package," said Scott Kahn, vice president and chief information officer, Illumina. "Isilon’s scale-out NAS was the obvious choice for the storage component of IlluminaCompute, as not only does Isilon IQ deliver unmatched scalability, performance and simplicity, but many of our customers are already running Illumina Genome Analyzers with Isilon storage solutions."

Isilon IQ, featuring its OneFS operating system software, creates a single, high performance, highly scalable, shared pool of storage to unify massive amounts of file-based data, such as genomic sequences, simplifying storage management and accelerating data access to speed time-to-results. Additionally, Isilon’s unique ‘pay-as-you-grow’ scaling of performance and capacity enables customers to purchase only the storage they require, while maintaining the flexibility to expand the system as needs change, reducing both capital and operational expenditures.

"Illumina’s selection of Isilon as the storage infrastructure for its IlluminaCompute solution is clear validation of Isilon’s compelling value proposition for data-intensive sequencing environments," said Leonard Iventosch, vice president of global channels and OEM, Isilon Systems. "By partnering with Illumina and Dell for IlluminaCompute, we are demonstrating our commitment to empowering the next generation of genomic research with cost-effective, high-performance solutions that drive increased productivity and value."

IlluminaCompute is a unique bundling of compute hardware, informatics software and high-availability storage, tuned specifically for a high-throughput sequence analysis workflow. Server and disk management overhead is kept to an absolute minimum, reducing the need for dedicated IT and bioinformatics staff and empowering organizations to focus time and resources on their research. IlluminaCompute provides sufficient processing resources for computational-heavy analysis that require clustered processing and shared data repositories, such as genome assembly, deep sequencing and metagenomics research.

"This OEM relationship is also indicative of our continued focus on driving business growth by expanding our partner ecosystem with world-class companies," added Iventosch. "Isilon scale-out NAS is an optimal solution for data-intensive applications, such as next-generation sequencing, and our products’ ability to easily integrate and interoperate across a wide range of mission-critical applications provides us the ability to explore partnerships other storage vendors simply can’t pursue."