Secure, reliable data storage is essential for all businesses in the modern environment.

EMC Isilon is one product that provides network-attached storage (NAS) platforms to also support the next generation.

We were introduced to the new EMC Isilon product at WestCon Group's recent Imagine conference.

The storage technology has recently been installed in the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI) in Australia and is being used to create a data platform that will support next generation DNA analysis.

It will extend the MCRI’s data storage capabilities to 15 petabytes, well up from the 117 terrabytes of storage it currently has.

MCRI is one of the few major medical research centres that now have the technology to sequence the entire human genome. However, that generates huge amounts of data that needs to be analysed and stored so that further analysis can be undertaken.

It is estimated that when the new platform goes live, the number of patients being tested using Next Generation DNA Sequencing at MCRI will grow from 60 to more than 1000 in a year.

But it’s not only the next generation of people that EMC Isilon supports, it also supports the next generation of businesses.

The OneFS operating system that powers EMC Isilon storage solutions provides a scalable, high performance, modular storage architecture that can grow easily with any business. It can help accelerate a wide range of processes and workflows while providing high levels of data protection.

In contrast to stand-alone storage systems that must scale up when additional performance or capacity is needed, OneFS enables an EMC Isilon storage system to scale out, seamlessly increasing the existing file system or volume into petabytes of capacity.

Storage capacity and performance capabilities can be increased quickly and easily. Nodes can be added to the file system and be ready to use in minutes.

As new nodes are added OneFS uses an EMC Isilon AutoBalance function to automatically reallocate and rebalance data, and make storage space more useable and efficient.

Another advantage of EMC Isilon scale-out storage is that throughput and I/O per second scale linearly with the number of nodes present in a single system.

This means that as your EMC Isilon storage environment grows, performance increases linearly, unlike traditional systems.

OneFS incorporates several strategies for data protection, including snapshots for back up and recovery, and data replication for disaster recovery protection

EMC Isilon is distributed in New Zealand by Westcon Group.