All Flash Isilon NAS: Scalable Storage for Unstructured Data

Until recently, the potential of IT infrastructure was constrained by dependence on mechanical hard drives. But with the advent of flash memory, companies had the opportunity to increase the speed of data processing and improve the way they are stored.
Flash memory is faster than a hard disk, but the scale of its impact on the data center ecosystem is even wider. Due to its high speed, it reduces the time during which other elements of the ecosystem expect a response from the repository. This increases the efficiency of applications, servers and data networks.

According to analysts of the Enterprise Strategy Group , increasing efficiency with the same performance reduces the cost of a number of components of the IT ecosystem — server hardware and software licenses, and also reduces the total cost of ownership and maintenance of the data center.

This makes flash memory a profitable acquisition, even at a high price. But the price factor is also losing its strength: there is a steady downward trend in the cost of solid-state drives in the industry. Flash memory has become more accessible, and companies have the opportunity to introduce new systems with high-performance data access.


In 2016, flash drives caught up in price / capacity ratio with a 15K enterprise-class HDD.
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The idea of ​​a completely diskless data center has real features. If, until recently, solid-state drives were assigned the role of a tool for high-performance transactional workloads, today, cheaper flash memory has expanded its scope to a wide range of tasks.

The respondents to the ESG survey on data storage trends predict growth in sales of storage systems over the next 24 months due to business intelligence and big data analytics applications.

Today, the topic of using flash drives in data centers is the number one in the industry. First, experts note a tendency to gradually replace traditional rotating disks (HDDs) with solid state drives (SSDs). This helps companies improve the reliability of storage systems and reduce costs in different areas of their service. After all, the recording density is growing rapidly: the newest flash memory is eight times higher than the recently released drives. Secondly, the explosive growth in data volume doubles the storage requirements every two years, and 80% of this new data is not structured.

The value of performance in working with unstructured data

Processing unstructured information using business intelligence or big data analytics in real-time requires the performance of the AFA technology level (all-flash array) - arrays entirely built on flash memory. Such storage systems are designed specifically for the needs of unstructured data.

Today, there is a demand for access to low-latency unstructured content in the media, entertainment, design automation (EDA), research, etc.

The latest ESG survey of IT managers responsible for data integrity in companies showed that 49% of respondents already use solid-state technology, another 20% are expecting the deployment of flash systems in the next 12 months. The majority of respondents confirmed that as a result of using systems on flash memory, companies received an efficient IT ecosystem and reduced operating costs. According to the survey, other advantages of solid-state drives are increased efficiency in the use of resources, reduction in operating expenses and lower cost of ownership.


Flash storage systems improve application performance and resource efficiency. Reduce energy consumption, reduce operating costs and equipment costs, improve SLA parameters and reduce TCO. Source: ESG survey.

An ESG survey showed that 44% of companies improved their total cost of ownership, and buying flash drives was a sensible acquisition. By reducing the price of solid-state drives, modern technologies have become more accessible for a wide range of workloads and data types, including unstructured ones.

Deployment of systems on flash memory, the introduction of large capacities for structured or block data requires a lot of money, which is very heavy for many companies. Therefore, flash arrays for unstructured data should be initially well-scalable. This will make the initial investment acceptable, especially given the gradual decline in the cost of flash memory components.

But hardware is only part of the solution. Large companies will need the functionality of an enterprise-level file system for efficient operation: support for multiple protocols, automatic data migration across storage levels (tearing), and a horizontal-scalable architecture.

Flash technology is a good start for digital transformation.

For fast work with unstructured data and file content, Dell EMC has developed All Flash Isilon , a modern and inexpensive, high-density, enterprise-class networked storage system with scale-out file storage capabilities.


The All Flash Isilon data storage system uses the capabilities of cheap flash drives. The system architecture focuses on enterprise-class functionality and file system scaling. This provides high-performance access to large amounts of data.

Dell EMC is the market leader in flash storage, and Isilon is the leading scalable NAS. A new development of Dell EMC All Flash Isilon for highly scalable data storage combines the price / performance advantages of flash technology with the efficiency, flexibility and resiliency of the Isilon OneFS OS. The Isilon All-Flash system will be available for order in 2017.


Dell EMC is the world leader in flash arrays. Source: IDC.

The Isilon OneFS operating system is the eighth generation of software and has more than 7,000 installations. Its scope of application is analytics, file sharing, backup and archiving. Due to the modular architecture, Isilon dynamically scales from 16 to 68 PB by adding cluster nodes.

Isilon All-Flash Scale-Out NAS with Isilon OneFS OS

The Isilon All-Flash Scale-Out NAS storage system aims to use flash memory for all critical unstructured data and workloads. Flash array allows you to achieve extreme performance. Unfortunately, the majority of such solutions are focused on supporting block access applications, but block data today makes up only 20% of the data of most companies.


The performance of the Dell EMC All Flash Isilon high-performance and scalable enterprise-class storage system is achieved by combining a high-density diskless chassis with a reliable and flexible Isilon OneFS operating system.

A number of manufacturers have already launched NAS flash arrays to the market. But these early versions of the products do not have enterprise-class capabilities, data protection capabilities, security, and effective management. This favorably distinguishes the EMC All Flash Isilon solution from its peers - all of these important points are taken into account and implemented.


Dell EMC All Flash Isilon will make the transition to diskless data centers real.

The strength and uniqueness of All Flash Isilon is not in hardware, but in software. The solution is based on the Isilon OneFS operating system, which is used on other Isilon platforms and is used by thousands of companies around the world. The current eighth generation Isilon OneFS with its unlimited corporate-level capabilities is considered the world's first scalable NAS storage platform.

All Flash Isilon combines high performance flash memory with scalability and other enterprise-grade tools:

• Performance: All Flash Isilon provides up to 250,000 IOPS (I / O operations per second) and bandwidth of 15 GB / s per chassis to support the most complex unstructured workloads, and the overall cluster performance is up to 25 M IOPS and 1.5 TB / s with.
  
  
• Scalability: With All Flash Isilon, you can increase storage capacity from 92 to 924 TB in a single 4U chassis and up to 92.4 PB in a single Isilon cluster.
  
  
• Operational flexibility: The solution runs under the Isilon OneFS operating system with support for multiple protocols (including NFS, SMB, FTP, HDFS, REST, SWIFT and HTTP). This makes it possible to support a wide range of applications and types of loads on one platform.
  
  
• Protection of corporate data: All Flash Isilon ensures unstructured data integrity and high availability with redundancy up to N + 4, as well as enterprise-level backup and disaster recovery.
  
  
• Security: Security options include role-based access control (RBAC), secure access zones, WORM data protection as per SEC, file system auditing, and data encryption.
  
  
• Efficiency: All Flash Isilon has a low total storage cost. Storage utilization can exceed 80%, and SmartDedupe deduplication can increase the effective capacity by another 30%.
  

All Flash Isilon is: • 924 TB of flash memory in 4U chassis; • Scalability up to more than 92 Pbytes (100 chassis) with a single file system; • multiprotocol support (NFS, SMB, HDFS, SWIFT, FTP, HTTP, NDMP); • SmartPools and CloudPools: automatic data migration across storage levels, including the cloud; • data management: deduplication, quoting, SmartConnect, InsightIQ ; • data protection: from N + 1 to N + 4 ECC, mirroring, snapshots, replication; • security: WORM, auditing, encryption, access zones, role-based authentication.

With the help of InsightIQ software, all changes in the storage environment are visible.

In a single family

The advantage of the Dell EMC All Flash Isilon is that the system is based on a new super-dense chassis with flash drives and a scalable file system Isilon OneFS. This is a compatible extension of the entire product family, not an isolated storage system or another “data island”.


The Dell EMC Isilon family of products (hybrid and flash arrays) with different capacity and performance indicators allows you to choose a solution for any task.

Advantages of the solution:

• A flash array with full OneFS functionality: enterprise-level capabilities are paramount when maintaining and protecting content. All Flash Isilon implements the same OneFS features found in Isilon disk arrays — support for multiple protocols, encryption and security, automatic migration between storage levels and the cloud, and a full set of fault tolerance features.
  
  
• Switch to flash memory when necessary: All Flash Isilon with the Isilon OneFS operating system can be pooled with existing Isilon clusters to create a hybrid solution. The flexibility of deployment allows you to switch to flash drives when you need it, but there is no need to completely replace the existing storage infrastructure. This saves the company from the complex and costly migration of large-capacity file storage.
  
  
• High density with granular scalability: All Flash Isilon is characterized by high density - 924 TB of flash memory in a 4U chassis. The All Flash Isilon architecture supports system scaling with a smaller pitch - up to 24 TB per node: in this way, capacity is increased gradually, which reduces one-time investments.
  

The advantage of All Flash Isilon in the option to automatically copy data to suitable cost storage resources. Using Isilon SmartPools and CloudPools, the solution uses automated multi-level data storage. This makes it possible to simply migrate data to cheaper levels, including cloud storage, as soon as they become less valuable. For companies, this saves capital costs and optimizes storage resources. The automatic data copy option frees up All Flash Isilon storage for the most demanding applications.

At any time, Isilon can be expanded with data services and third-party software vendor (ISV) products. This will expand its capabilities and increase its scope from active archiving to big data analytics and the storage of video surveillance system records.

For different tasks and needs, different Isilon NAS platforms have been developed: for intensive transactional loads; economical; high density or software only. But they all meet the specific requirements of different loads to the performance and storage capacity.

The latest version of OneFS supports CloudPools for storing data in the cloud, IsilonSD Edge software and updating the system without stopping it.

Evaluation of analysts

Analysts give Isilon the title of market leader in scalable file systems for several reasons. Experts praised the stability of the product, high efficiency of working with data, ease of management and data mobility, as well as high satisfaction of the companies that implemented the solution. According to Gartner, Isilon is a mature, scalable NAS platform, ready for use in many business sectors.

Isilon's scope is expanding, and today the solution is used not only for traditional file systems, but also for video surveillance, big data analytics, backup and active archiving.

Gartner is confident that users working with unstructured data will appreciate the wide range of Dell EMC products, active pricing, new deployment models and storage usage. The advantages include the possibility of buying only the software version of the system, leasing, subscription and payment for the resources actually used.

According to experts, the way to transition to infrastructure with the leading role of flash storage is as important as the final result. For example, large-capacity storage environments with unstructured data are expensive and time-consuming to migrate. A complete replacement of the existing infrastructure for deploying a new storage environment on flash drives is also a high risk of losing important information during data transfer. But vendors who have already eliminated the problems of high cost and complexity of full data migration in current generations of hardware, analysts are sure to eliminate these problems in future generations of data storage.

Experts predict that in the near future, capacity will be measured in tens and hundreds of petabytes. In such a situation, the issue of data migration is inevitable. Those companies that do it first will become more efficient than competitors and save on operating expenses.

Conclusion

Today, the speed of generating, analyzing and sharing data has become a key indicator of enterprise competitiveness. To meet the demands of the times, they need fast, high-performance data access. And the tasks of business intelligence are just one example. Experts predict that a quick analysis of genetic information in health care can save lives and reduce health care costs without loss of quality of services. In the future, companies in the media and entertainment industry will increase video and photo resolutions to 8K and 16K. In CAD, high-performance access to digital content will accelerate product development. A qualitative breakthrough in processing speed and data storage method was made possible by flash technology. Dell EMC offers IT companies to improve competitiveness and make this transition today on favorable terms, without high costs and risks.