Chuck's Blog

Isilon's OneFS -- The Definition Of A Modern File System?

As part of the EMC World festivities, EMC's Isilon group is announcing a few new features available today -- as well as previewing their next release, dubbed Waikiki.

Even with my obvious EMC bias, I can make a strong argument that OneFS is now clearly in a class of its own: architecture, functionality, robustness, performance, efficiency, etc.  You could teach an advanced course in file system design and use OneFS as a perfect example.

The gap between OneFS and everything else shows every sign of widening over time.  The Isilon team now uses a fast-cadence development model, and we should be expecting regular drops of tick-tock functionality on a 6 month cadence going forward.

Join me for a quick recap of "what's new" in the OneFS world -- there's a lot to like.

EMC MegaLaunch II Overview

This morning, EMC is announcing 42 new or updated storage products.  That's a lot to consider.

Why 42?  

Other than the obvious reference from The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, it's one more than the 41 products we announced at our last MegaLaunch event in early 2011.

I've done my best to look at each group of new or improved products, and share the highlights (as I see them) in an extended series of posts linked below.

I thought in this post I'd share what I think are the big trends motivating all this new R&D.

Isilon: Charting The Changes

Of all the EMC World product announcements I'm covering, one of the key ones every storage professional is going to want to pay attention to is the preview of the new Isilon OneFS "Mavericks" upcoming release.

Not only is there a ton of new product content, it may change the way you think about providing scale-out storage services in *your* enterprise going forward.

Isilon has always had the upper-hand in big data storage: a compellingly simple scale-out NAS / CIFS / iSCSI "single file system" cluster architecture that has enjoyed great success in many specialized verticals: entertainment, genomics, etc.

Since EMC announced the acquisition in November 2010, we've poured a mind-bending amount of resources into the product and the team.  

With this major release, you can see clear evidence of what all that investment is doing for our customers.

The Other Side Of Big Data

Yes, I admit it.  I am caught hook, line and sinker on the transformative potential of big data analytics to not only change business, but change the world we live in.  It grows more heady and more intoxicating with every passing week.

Red pill, blue pill ...

But there's another important aspect to the big data discussion that shouldn't be ignored -- and that's the plethora of big data models that aren't entirely based on advanced analytics, but are still strategically important big data applications in their own right.

Our cohorts at Isilon have done a masterful job at accelerating value for our customers in this space, which occasionally tends to get overshadowed by the more flashy topics.

So, in the interests of inclusiveness, I'd thought I'd share with you the other side of the big data story.

HDFS: Coming Soon To An Array Near You

As enterprises around the globe are beginning to exploit the value in their unstructured data, Hadoop is starting to find its way into more enterprise settings.

Enterprise IT buyers are justifiably a demanding lot, which creates plenty of opportunity for IT vendors such as EMC to create products that meet their newer needs.

Such is the case with the new native HDFS (Hadoop Distributed File System) capabilities from EMC's Isilon group.  

As you'll see, it makes exploiting the power of Hadoop and large unstructured data sets incredibly more efficient and powerful.

And before too long, I suspect other storage vendors will scramble to offer something very similar :)

The Squabble Over Single File Systems

Many of you are endlessly entertained by the back-and-forth bickering between us storage vendors over things like benchmarks. 

Sometimes the disagreement is over how the test was conducted, or the use of "lab queen" configurations that would never be found in a customer environment.

And, occasionally, there's very strong disagreement around comparing two very unlike things using a common standard.   That's what this post is about.

Why should you care? 

In a world of exploding data growth, massive scale and limited resources, how you do things may end up being more important than what you do. 

I believe many IT architects will want to take note of this particular debate, because you'll be seeing ever-more variations of this same theme in the near future.

Big Data, Big Numbers: New SPEC Results From EMC/Isilon

I always warn people -- be careful of what you ask for, you just might get it.

For years, various competitors have heckled EMC that we ought to be more active and participatory with regards to public storage benchmarks.

Today, our Isilon team has released some truly astounding SPEC numbers that should get you thinking about this whole scale-out performance thing in a new way.

There's a lot of juicy insights here -- in addition to the predictable bragging rights -- so let's dig in and see what we've got.

More Isilon Big Data Magic

Now that Isilon is a full member of the EMC storage family, there's a lot to like.

For storage aficionados like me, Isilon's OneFS technology is so simple and effective for storing big data, it's almost magical.

If you're willing to dive into the details, be prepared to potentially unlearn many of your previous assumptions about how things work in a NAS environment.

The way that OneFS does things might be academically interesting in more modest environments -- say, a handful of terabytes. 

But as capacity under management grows to hundreds -- or typically thousands of terabytes, the elegance of the OneFS approach starts to become downright compelling.

Today, Isilon announced a slew of enhancements and upgrades at the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) show.  Not surprising, storage at NAB is all about video and content at scale.

And there's a lot to like with today's announcements.