Isilon is great usable storage that you can scale in any direction. It
lives under the one Namespace and super easy to admin.

For backup/restore...
Isilon only provide NDMP or direct backup ala Cifs/NFS
# NDMP in TSM is only full and differential. there is no incremental
option. You need to purchase a "backup accelerator" for every 2 or so
drives you want to physically connect to the isilon cluster.
# Direct backup requires complete tree traversal but can be scaled. Uses
the same hardware that user's benefit from.

How these effect you depends on your data and backup windows etc
The newer Isilon nodes should be faster to do tree walks as their
Metadata is stored on SSD(Make sure you confirm this on the models you
get).

Even with the limitations of snapdiff that I have documented here
http://adsm.org/forum/showthread.php?25002-snapdiff-backup-caveats
I would still pick NetApp if you can. If your unstructured data is
large, snapdiff can save a lot of time.... essentially it can instantly
determine what files have changed since the last backup and only sends
the changed files through to TSM, eliminating any tree traversal.

Grant

PS ESXi using NFS is GREAT!!!

On 10/02/12 04:26, EVILUTION wrote:

This may be a bit off topic but consider this a thread bump....

We have about 25TB worth of unstructured data spread across seven windows 
servers using DFS.  We are using TSM with a monthly image backup as well as 
daily journal based backups to collect the data but I'm concerned about restore 
times.

I have convinced managment that we need a filer but they do not want to 
purchase a file JUST to for file server backup/recovery.   They now want to 
depoly test and dev VM's on the solution and possibly use the platform for 
virtual desktops (VDI) and maybe even a workstation backup solution.

I spoke with Gartner and without hesitation the recommended the ISILON over all 
other solutions.  For those of you that already have ISILON do you feel it was 
the right choice?

We are an EMC storage shop so ISILON would be easy to sell but I feel better 
about purchasing a proven solutions (NETAPP) rather than something that EMC may 
chew up and significantly change.

My primary concern is still with the backup of the data contained on the device 
along with virus protection and access control.  Please provide your feedback.

+----------------------------------------------------------------------
|This was sent by jeff.jeske AT sentry DOT com via Backup Central.
|Forward SPAM to abuse AT backupcentral DOT com.
+----------------------------------------------------------------------