Kelman Technologies, DNA Productions and Leading Seismology Institutions Among Isilon Customers Deploying Solution Combining Isilon IQ Clustered Storage with Cisco SFS InfiniBand Server Fabric Switches

SEATTLE, WA — NOVEMBER 14, 2005 — Isilon® Systems, the leader in clustered storage, today announced that leading enterprise customers across a broad range of industries have deployed InfiniBand®-enabled clustered storage systems from Isilon using Cisco InfiniBand Server Fabric Switches (SFS). Customers such as Kelman Technologies Inc., DNA Productions and the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) are among the more than 90 percent of all Isilon customers who have chosen to deploy InfiniBand-based versions of Isilon’s products since they were first introduced to the market in April 2005. Isilon is the first company to implement InfiniBand in a clustered storage solution. Over the last three months, enterprise customers have deployed more than 2,500 ports of Cisco SFS InfiniBand switches as the high-bandwidth, low-latency interconnect for their Isilon IQ clustered storage systems. By integrating Cisco SFS switches with Isilon’s state-of-the-art clustered storage architecture, Isilon provides its customers with a high-performance, high-capacity, scalable data storage solution while ushering next-generation data center connection technologies into mainstream enterprise environments.

“We have seen rapid growth in the enterprise adoption of InfiniBand for high-performance server clusters and grid computing solutions,” said Stu Aaron, director of marketing and product management, Cisco Server Networking and Virtualization Business Unit. “Now, with the Isilon solution, we’re excited to see the high performance benefits of InfiniBand extended to storage clusters as well. The success Isilon is having with this offering is testament to the compelling customer value proposition of InfiniBand.”

“Isilon remains one-hundred percent focused on delivering game-changing business benefits to the enterprise storage market, and we view InfiniBand as a key new technology component of that value proposition for our customers,” said Sujal Patel, co-founder and CTO, Isilon Systems. “Cisco continues to push the frontier of networking technologies and is laying the foundation for what we believe is the next generation of enterprise computing and storage infrastructures.”

Rapid Adoption Across A Broad Range of Industries Kelman Technologies, Inc., a leader in the field of seismic data processing for use in oil and gas exploration, has deployed a 25 terabyte Isilon IQ 1920i cluster coupled with a 24-port Cisco SFS 7000 InfiniBand server switch at its Houston location to meet the massive data throughput requirements of its Intel Linux compute cluster. With the increased demand for seismic analysis worldwide, Kelman Technologies’ use of Isilon IQ clustered storage with InfiniBand allowed the company to achieve extremely high concurrent data throughput — in excess of 50-60 megabytes per second per node — while removing the burdensome management constraints of traditional SAN and NAS storage systems. The speed of Isilon enabled Kelman to implement its leading-edge depth migration technology and win contracts with large international oil and gas companies that were previously unobtainable.

“We rigorously evaluated a number of storage solutions and ultimately chose Isilon’s because it offered the most compelling combination of high performance and low capital acquisition costs,” said Pat McKenny, V.P. Geophysical Processing, Kelman Technologies. “The performance and manageability of the Isilon IQ storage system has provided Kelman with a huge business advantage.” DNA Productions, Inc., a full-service animation company, has deployed a 42-node, 80 terabyte Isilon IQ 1920i cluster coupled with a 96-port Cisco SFS 7008 InfiniBand server switch, enabling them to harness the sheer computing muscle of their render farm to achieve new levels of realism in animation. With its networked storage interconnected through low-latency, high-performance Cisco SFS InfiniBand switches, Isilon IQ provides more than 3 Gigabytes per second of total aggregate throughput running through one single pool of shared digital content, dramatically accelerating DNA’s mission-critical film production.

“We looked at nearly every SAN and NAS storage system and ultimately selected Isilon IQ because it allows us to deliver better results, more quickly and with less cost,” said Brian Chacon and Rich Hirneise, DNA Productions. “Isilon’s use of InfiniBand enables us to achieve the high-performance and concurrent throughput requirements we need to create the incredible animation audiences have come to expect.” The Incorporated Research Institution for Seismology (IRIS) is deploying a 60 terabyte Isilon IQ 6000 cluster coupled with a 24 port Cisco SFS 7000 InfiniBand switch to accelerate the collection and delivery of its exploding seismology data stores. IRIS, supported by the National Science Foundation, other federal agencies, universities and private foundations, is dedicated to exploring the Earth's interior through the collection and distribution of seismographic data. In deploying an InfiniBand-enabled Isilon IQ clustered storage system, IRIS creates one single pool of seismology data, allowing them to move to an all digital workflow and leave behind the scalability restraints and resources requirements associated with their former tape-based storage system. The Isilon IQ 1920, 3000, 4800 and 6000 products are the first clustered storage systems to implement low-latency, high-performance InfiniBand architecture-based communications for intracluster connectivity without requiring any changes to a customer’s existing IT environment. By combining Cisco SFS InfiniBand switches with the power of Isilon’s OneFS™ distributed file system and enterprise-class, industry-standard hardware, Isilon IQ creates a complete, cost-effective storage solution that delivers high-performance and highly concurrent throughput more than 10 times that of traditional storage systems. The Isilon IQ clustered storage system offers the InfiniBand switch option at the same price as its GigE-enabled products, making InfiniBand a compelling solution for its performance, linear scalability and cost advantages.

Cisco SFS InfiniBand server switches combine InfiniBand's unprecedented bandwidth and latency characteristics with enterprise-class high availability, delivering interconnects for server clusters that provide high performance at an affordable cost. The Cisco SFS 7000 series InfiniBand server switches provide 24 to 96 ports of 10 Gigabytes per second server connectivity in platforms designed for best-in-class reliability, high availability and serviceability — delivering the highest-bandwidth, lowest-latency clustered storage interconnect available in the marketplace.

About Isilon Systems

Isilon is the leader in clustered storage. Isilon's award-winning family of Isilon IQ products consists of high-performance clustered storage systems that combine an intelligent distributed file system with modular industry-standard hardware to deliver unmatched simplicity and scalability. Isilon IQ was designed for unstructured data and for use in data-intensive markets such as media and entertainment, digital imaging, life sciences, oil and gas and government. The Seattle-based company is financed by Lehman Brothers Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, Atlas Venture, Madrona Venture Group and Focus Ventures. For more information, please visit: http://www.isilon.com