Isilon has integrated the iSCSI protocol into its OneFS operating system, delivering what the company says is the industry’s first unified scale-out storage platform for the enterprise. The advance enables Isilon scale-out storage users to consolidate file- and block-based applications onto a single, shared pool of storage. Isilon announced the simplified data management, available for both virtualized and non-virtualized environments, from the VMworld event in San Francisco this week.
The new functionality, available for free to all existing Isilon customers, lets enterprises deploy a single system rather than separate systems for separate applications, according to Sam Grocott, vice president of marketing, Isilon. The solution scales storage in-line with virtual server demands to minimize costs and maximize efficiency, he said.
Analysts say that such storage systems can help IT organizations with the challenges presented by the pressure to reduce costs and adopt virtualization.
“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, in a statement. “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.”
Isilon’s new iSCSI functionality integrates with the company’s existing data management and protection software applications, and 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, the company said in a statement. The solution allows enterprises to configure, manage, clone, thin provision, snapshot, tier, replicate and secure LUNs, in a way that eliminates cost and complexity of traditional scale-up SAN and NAS, according to Isilon, which drives increased application performance and business agility. Data fragmentation and low resource utilization is also reduced.
