Last week I received a call from one of our sales field folks – half petabyte opportunity, but it required dedupe and interaction with IBM’s TSM. We do have customers using us in conjunction with TSM today and NFS is a supported target (and source.) However, Isilon doesn’t have native deduplication yet …
What do we do in a situation like this? Partner!
There are a few different partners that might fit the bill, of which, two quickly came to mind: CommVault and FalconStor.
CommVault has excellent deduplication capabilities and paired with a big NL-cluster, that’s one simple backup – but it would require the customer to move away from TSM and the VTL model. No go.
Next, FalconStor. Marrying their tape library with a three node 36NL (72 usable) or 72 NL (144 usable) creates a high-speed, easy-to-use storage system combined with powerful deduplication presented as a VTL.
The moral of the story is that when you have a compelling, scalable storage appliance (which is exceedingly simple) a complete solution is that much easier to create.
