EMC Isilon prepares next scale-out NAS OS

EMC today announced that it is preparing the next version of its EMC Isilon OneFS scale-out NAS operating system.

Building on the late-2012 launch of OneFS 7.0, the next version of Isilon’s operating system will extend customers’ ability to harness 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 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 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 requirement, EMC said.

In addition to the 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, Isilon has announced integration with EMC ViPR software-defined storage through which it will extend 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.

The addition of a native Hadoop HDFS 2.0 integration makes it the first storage solution to offer a native Hadoop integration with HDFS for big data analytics. 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.

“EMC Isilon’s OneFS 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,” said Bill Richter, President, Isilon Storage Division, EMC.

“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.”

The next version of OneFS is expected to be delivered by later this year. The REST Object Access to Namespace, HDFS 2.0 and Syncplicity on Isilon are available today and will also be supported on the next version of OneFS.

The announcement was made during EMC World 2013 in Las Vegas, where CNME Editor Ben Rossi is reporting from this week. You can follow live updates on Twitter at @ComputerNewsME and #EMCWORLD.