Latest EMC Isilon Scale-Out NAS Innovation Supports Next-Generation Cloud, Analytics and Mobile Workflows

At EMC World 2013, EMC (NYSE:EMC) announced that it is preparing the next version of its EMC® Isilon® OneFS® scale-out NAS operating system. Building on the successful late-2012 launch of OneFS 7.0 (“Mavericks”), the next version of Isilon’s industry-leading operating system will extend customers’ ability to harness the transformational power of Big Data. The new version will include data deduplication capabilities, audit and security features, as well as enhancements for object-oriented storage, Hadoop HDFS 2.0 and Syncplicity® enterprise file sharing. These new capabilities will enable enterprises to extend the unmatched scalability and efficiency of Isilon’s solutions to meet an ever-broadening range of next-generation cloud-based, Big Data analytics and mobile workflows and applications.

The enterprise storage landscape is rapidly transforming as traditional IT requirements for data protection, security and performance combine with the challenges of managing large, rapidly growing file-based and unstructured “big data” environments. Isilon’s scale-out NAS solutions, long the standard for massively scalable, highly efficient storage that is simple to manage, will now incorporate the type of efficiency, compliance and security features that enterprises need to leverage the transformative power of big data while meeting essential large-scale corporate IT requirements.

New Enterprise Customer Benefits in the Next Version of OneFS

Improved storage efficiency – To support more demanding applications and workloads across the enterprise, the next version of IsilonOneFS will enable storage administrators to configure a simple set-and-forget block-level deduplication policy ranging from individual directories up through the complete storage pool.  By providing an automated way to drive yet greater levels of storage efficiency across datasets, organizations can further reduce operating costs while enhancing Isilon’s already industry-leading utilization levels.

Enhanced security and compliance – The next release of OneFS will bring important enterprise enhancements for regulatory compliance.  IsilonOneFS integrated support for the EMC Common Event Enabler (CEE) will provide access to industry-leading audit software applications to allow the recording of all file access over SMB/CIFS protocols and to facilitate report creation and chain of custody tracking to meet regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA.

In addition to these new features of OneFS, Isilon is also announcing enhancements to its operating system intended to support its customers in their transformation to next-generation workflows and applications focused on cloud-based data access, Big Data analytics, and mobility.

As customers build these next generation applications, they are looking for new web-scale interfaces to compliment traditional file interfaces.  Based on this, and in an effort to provide its customers with the broadest possible range of options regarding object-oriented storage access, Isilon today announced:

– Integration with EMC ViPR™ Software-Defined Storage through which Isilon will extend the unmatched scalability and efficiency of its scale-out architecture to object storage. This integration opens up new options for access to object storage APIs from Amazon S3, EMC Atmos® and others.

– OneFS now incorporates a REST Object Access to Namespace interface which provides access to data and is part of the Platform API which enables automation, orchestration and management of Isilon storage.

– For customers that are deploying the OpenStack ecosystem and want to leverage this integration with storage, Isilon will be supporting OpenStack Swift and Cinder integration, delivering an enterprise class storage solution, increasing reliability, security, efficiency and enterprise interoperability.

As the first storage solution to offer a native Hadoop integration with HDFS for big data analytics, Isilon continues its leadership by adding a native Hadoop HDFS 2.0 integration.  With simultaneous support of HDFS 1.0 and 2.0, Isilon allows customers to try new distributions before converting to 2.0, and allows the export of the same data in multiple ways. This new integration supports Pivotal HD (formerly Greenplum HD) for SQL queries on the Hadoop data store.

Isilon’s recent integration with Syncplicity online file sharing improves business productivity by offering a flexible, cloud-based solution with the IT management visibility required for enterprise-level control over data and storage resources.  It also reduces risk by providing a secure, encrypted, on-premise file storage solution to meet IT governance and protection requirements while providing users a “frictionless” environment where they can easily sync, access, and share files at any time, from anywhere, and from any device.

Availability

The next version of OneFS is expected to be delivered by later this year.

EMC Executive Quotes:

Bill Richter, President, Isilon Storage Division

“EMC Isilon’sOneFS operating system is the gold standard for scale-out NAS — and now it’s even more efficient and secure while enabling compliance with critical industry regulations. Additionally, the integration of OneFS with EMC ViPR, Hadoop HDFS 2.0 and Syncplicity illustrates how open and flexible EMC’s Isilon scale-out NAS offering is – and the ability to support Big Data, mobile and cloud-based workflows makes this a critical solution for enterprises today.

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