Isilon Into Enterprise Market

From VMWorld 2010, Isilon Systems, Inc. has integrated the iSCSI protocol into its OneFS operating system, delivering an unified scale-out storage platform for the enterprise. With Isilon scale-out storage, users can consolidate file- and block-based applications onto a single, shared pool of storage, simplifying data management to increase resource utilization and efficiency for virtualized and non-virtualized environments.  

"Until now, enterprises have been forced to either deploy separate systems for separate applications, or attempt to consolidate on complex architectures that handicap growth and inflate costs," said Sam Grocott, vice president of marketing, Isilon. "At Isilon, we believe there’s a better, simpler way and with our new unified, scale-out storage platform, we’re delivering. Our innovative data storage and management solutions meet the needs of today’s virtualized enterprise data center by scaling storage in-line with virtual server demands to minimize costs and maximize efficiency."  

"The adoption of virtualization and the need to consistently reduce costs are currently significant factors in enterprise IT strategy, making data storage solutions that simplify management, consolidate applications and minimize expenses key to IT efficiency going forward," said Pushan Rinnen, Research Director, Gartner. "Unified scale-out storage is a compelling solution for both virtualization and general-purpose IT, as it enables simplified data management, file- and block-level access, and keeps costs in-line with business needs."

"With Isilon, we have the flexibility to support our VMware environment via both NFS and iSCSI, so we can power our block databases and NFS-based VMs all from one, simple solution," said John Welter, vice president of technology, North West Group. "The ability to consolidate everything onto a single point of management has allowed us to boost application performance, while simultaneously reducing costs."

Isilon’s new iSCSI functionality integrates with Isilon’s suite of enterprise-class data management and protection software applications, providing a simple yet powerful scale-out solution that supports industry standard file-based protocols, including CIFS, NFS, HTTP and FTP, as well as the block-based iSCSI protocol, in a single, shared pool of storage. With Isilon, enterprises can easily configure, manage, clone, thin provision, snapshot, tier, replicate and secure LUNs, eliminating the cost and complexity of traditional scale-up SAN and NAS to drive increased application performance and business agility.

By delivering both file and block-level data access from a single, scale-out solution, Isilon eliminates the data fragmentation and low resource utilization common with traditional SAN and NAS in virtualized environments, enabling enterprise businesses to maximize the benefits of server virtualization.

"With Isilon, we’ve been able to shed the complexity of our previous SAN and consolidate our Exchange and SQL databases, CommVault backups, and all our corporate file shares onto a single, easy-to-use operating system," said Eric Bass, Director of IT, Cypress E&P. "Now I don’t have to worry about storage and can instead focus on what really matters – managing data to move our business forward."

"Isilon’s simplicity has long been its most compelling differentiator, as it provides scaling of performance, capacity and application consolidation all in a single operating system," said Donnie Downs, CEO, Plan B Technologies, Inc. "By adding iSCSI functionality to its platform, Isilon is now an even more compelling solution for a broad range of mainstream enterprise applications, regardless of data type."  

Pricing and Availability
Isilon’s iSCSI functionality is available immediately and is free for existing Isilon customers. Isilon’s iSCSI functionality seamlessly integrates with Isilon’s entire suite of enterprise-class data management and protection software applications including SmartPools, InsightIQ, SmartConnect, SmartQuotas, SnapshotI, and SyncIQ.