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ESG Oohs & Aahs Over Isilon: Page 2 of 3

ESG also says Isilon's management tools are intuitive and that the system operated normally during simulated hardware failures. According to the report, "two of the most compelling characteristics about Isilon IQ that ESG Lab experienced firsthand are how easy it is to add storage capacity in a single file image and how well the I/O throughput scaled in a pure sequential streaming environment."

Tony Asaro, an ESG Lab tester, says the most impressive thing was its linear scaleability of performance, and how easy it was to manage. "Those are the aspects that make it unique versus other systems out there," he says.

However, there were some negatives, Asaro says: "It doesn't do snapshots, it doesn't support server-less backups, and it's not tuned for smaller files -- it's more for large files."

And there's always the question of how much relevance these kinds of labs-based tests have in the real world. The report points out that the ESG Lab conducted testing at Isilon's headquarters and did not use Isilon IQ in a production environment. ESG recommends customers do their own evaluations before making buying decisions.

Earlier this week, Isilon announced that Corbis, Paramount Digital Entertainmnet, Digital FilmWorks, ResearchChannel, and the University of Washington Medical Center are using Isilon IQ to store scanned images, audio, video, and other large file types.