Analysis: Isilon Updates Hard and Soft …

Others firms like Dell (with Compellent and EqualLogic) or HP (with 3par) are working to integrate their hardware acquisitions into a common portfolio. Not EMC with EqualLogic, specialized in file and unstructured data scale-out storage for "Big Data" with an innovative architecture radically different of EMC’s technology.

Since becoming a division of EMC following its acquisition last December for $2.25 billion, Isilon has not changed. The business cards of the employees has not been (yet) updated. No trace of the name EMC – but on the press release. The new Isilon Systems division continue to be headed by Sujal Patel, previously CEO of Isilon, with all the former staff. EMC’s sales force is supposed to offer Isilon’s products. Isilon’s sales force do not sell EMC products. And the former Isilon’s R&D continues to work separately in the same location.

But one of the change is that now Isilon, not public company anymore, do not divulgue any financial results. The last known figures were revenues of $138.2 million for nine months ended in September 30, 2010 increasing by 60% year-to year, with net of $7.1 million. There is no reason to see this growth ending.

The division just announced several enhancements of hardware and software:

• Two S200 and X200 NAS platforms, now available, added to the current S series for IO/s intensive applications, X series for sequential throughput workflows and NL series for nearline.
• Three updated software: OneFS 6.5, SyncIQ 3.0 and InsightIQ 1.5

The S200, starting at €40,770 (or $57,569) per node, is a highest performance scalable NAS for transaction workflow with up to 86GB/s concurrent throughput in a single file system (€36 per MB/s) and a maximum of 1.4 million IO/s per 2U rack, thanks to the use of two Intel Westmere processors. The unit, with up to 96GB memory, can contain 25 2.5-inch SAS HDDs (from Hitachi GST) or SSDs (from Stec) for a maximum capacity of 14TB.

The X200, also in 2U but with one Intel Nahalem chip and 48GB maximum memory, is targeted for capacity more than performance with 12 SATA-based 3.5-inch HDDs (also from Hitachi GST) or SSDs (also from Stec) for up to 24TB, this time for up to only 300,000 IO/s and 33GB/s maximum throughput. This device starts at €19,440 or $27,450 per node.

Both of them have new SSD support for data and metadata.

The updated OneFS 6.5 enhanced enterprise authentification and supports natively CIFS as well as NFS 4.0 and Kerberized NFSv3.

SynsIQ 3.0, an option costing $4,590, is aimed at replication and used snapshot identifies changes – a different kind of de-dupe – to accelerate the transfer of data between two locations.

Finally InsightIQ 1.5 is an SRM software for scale-out analytics.