We are very rapidly entering a new world, where data growth and the demand to have everything available online are placing some serious demands on existing IT technologies and strategies. In a study published by IDC, it is stated that by 2012, 80% of all disk capacity sold will be used to accommodate file-based data types.
These file-based data types are typically information assets that are created by individuals, such as productivity documents (Word Processor), financial information (Spreadsheet), research materials, multimedia data, arbitrary user data, legacy company data, images, electronic fax copies, archives, etc. All of these information types could also be affected by some potential regulatory compliant requirement.
Managing these data types have traditionally fallen in the storage area network portfolio, possibly consuming expensive high-performance disk types and phenomenal amounts of disk capacity. The challenges have traditionally been operational and financial. "Where do you place this amount of data at a cost-effective location with minimal operational impact?" File systems can easily scale to 16TB, but to have a single file system larger than 16TB, is currently a bit of a challenge with existing storage array technologies, says Sarel Naude, Senior Solutions Consultant, Ubuntu Group.
That's where EMC's Isilon product makes big sense. It is a NAS technology type that was purposely developed to accommodate and operate in environments where big, media-rich data, needs to be accessed.
Isilon has, among others, some of the following features:
* A single file system that can currently scale to 15.5PB.
* Independent, linear scalability of both performance and capacity due to modular design approach.
* Mission-critical reliability and high availability with state-of-the-art data protection.
* Large, relevant selection of software options to streamline any operational requirements.
Custom Isilon configurations are built using combinations of Scale-Out Platform Nodes:
* S-Series - Ultra-high performance purpose-built for high-IOPS-intensive file-based applications.
* X-Series - Flexible node providing a balance between large capacity and high-performance requirements.
* NL-Series - Cost-effective, highly scalable near-line storage node leveraging large capacity disk technologies.
* Performance Accelerator - Rapidly add more than 400MB per second of single stream throughput and up to 700MB per second of concurrent streams to most transactional access patterns.
* Backup Accelerator - High-speed and scalable backup and restore option to deliver the ultimate in traditional backup-to-tape requirements.
In summary, the latest EMC Isilon scale-out NAS platform, and the OneFS operating system with its various software module options, combines to deliver an extremely robust collection of management applications and a solution that can scale to meet the biggest data requirements in any organisation today.
For more information, contact info@ubuntusa.co.za or visit www.ubuntusa.co.za.
EMC South Africa link: For more information, visit www.southafrica.emc.com.
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