Isilon Moves Down, Adaptec Moves Up

Isilon and Adaptec -- NAS vendors who compete with larger vendors by targeting their platforms to specific markets -- are expanding their product families. (See Isilon Adds System, OEM Deal and Adaptec Launches NAS.)

Isilon is moving downward, rolling out a lower-end version of its clustered storage systems -- the IQ 200. Adaptec is going upstream, bringing out the highest end of its resurrected NAS family, the Snap Server 650.

Here's a rundown on both platforms:

Isilon IQ 200. Rather than take on NAS giants EMC and Network Appliance head-on, Isilon has built its systems specifically for companies looking for clustered systems. (See Energy Firms Clamor for Clusters and Storage Shapes Up for Multimedia.) Isilon has about 300 customers using its enterprise systems, mostly in the broadcast, oil and gas exploration, life sciences, and telco verticals. Following its IPO last month, the company is looking to broaden its market presence with a lower-cost system that could bring it into shops and departments that don't want to fork over $80,000 or so for storage. (See Double-Take, Isilon Go Public.)

The IQ200 has a list price of $39,000 for a three-node cluster that includes 6 Tbytes of capacity. The 1U boxes run the same OneFS operating system as Isilons higher-end systems, and the same snapshot, replication, and load-balancing applications are available for additional licenses. (See Isilon Updates Software.)