Dell EMC PowerScale and Isilon, Are They the Same?

In June 2020, Dell announced the Gen6.5 PowerScale model of the Isilon Scale-Out NAS and further changed the product brand name to PowerScale. Dell’s naming policy was also adopted for the Power family, such as PowerStore, PowerMax, and PowerFlex. The chassis uses a 1U PowerEdge R640 and is powered by OneFS 9.0 to deliver the same software functions as Isilon.

EMC PowerScale and Isilon, are they the same?

People often ask: What are the differences between PowerScale and Isilon? How are they different? In what scenarios can they be used? Here are the answers. In June 2020, Dell announced the Gen6.5 PowerScale model of the Isilon Scale-Out NAS and further changed the product brand name to PowerScale. Dell’s naming policy was also adopted for the Power family, such as PowerStore, PowerMax, and PowerFlex. The chassis uses a 1U PowerEdge R640 and is powered by OneFS 9.0 to deliver the same software functions as Isilon.

Differences between PowerScale and Isilon

Difference in chassis, drives, and scalability

• PowerScale offers two models, the F200 and F600
  Both are composed of the 1U PowerEdge. Each unit has a single-node design, with a minimum first-time purchase of 3 nodes. Only one node is needed for future expansion.
  The F200 comes with 4 x 2.5” SAS SSDs, the per-node raw capacity ranges from 3.84 TB to 15.36 TB

The F600 comes with 8 x 2.5” NVMe SSDs, the per-node raw capacity ranges from 7.68 TB to 61.44 TB

• Isilon offers multiple models
  Archive A200 and A2000, Hybrid H400, H500, H600, and H5600, and All-Flash F800 and F810
  They come in the Isilon 4U chassis, with each node supporting 15 to 30 drives. Each chassis offers 4 nodes with 60 to 120 drives. The minimum purchase is one chassis with 4 nodes, and two nodes are required for each subsequent expansion.

Differences in network interface

• The PowerScale offers a maximum of 100 GbE for node interconnection to replace Isilon’s maximum interconnection interface of 40 GbE.
  The PowerScale F200 offers
  Front-end:    2 x 10 GbE (SFP+) or 2 x 25 GbE (SFP28)
  Back-end:    2 x 10 GbE (SFP+) or 2 x 25 GbE (SFP28)

• The PowerScale F600 offers
  Front-end:    2 x 10 GbE (SFP+) or 2 x 25 GbE (SFP28) or 2 x 100 GbE (QSFP28+)
  Back-end:    2 x 100 GbE (QSFP28+)

• Isilon offers a range of models ranging from 10 GbE to 40 GbE, as well as the InfiniBand interface to connect with older models.

Front-end:    2 x 10 GbE (SFP+) or 2 x 25 GbE (SFP28) or 2 x 40 GbE (QSFP+)

Back-end:    2 x InfiniBand connections supporting QDR links or 2 x 10 GbE (SFP+) or 2 x 40GbE (QSFP+)

Comparison of PowerScale & Isilon

	PowerScale	Isilon
Generation	Gen6.5	Gen6
Model	F200 、F600	A200 、A2000 H400 、H500 、H600 、H5600 F800 、H810
Chassis size	1U	4U
Nodes per chassis	1	4
Drive type	SAS SSD NVMe SSD	SATA HDD 、 SAS HDD SAS SSD
Drive size	2.5”	2.5” 、3.5”
Number of drives per node	4~8	15~30
Minimum number of nodes for first purchase	3	4
Number of nodes for each expansion	1	2
Online repeat data deletion and compression	F200 、F600	F810 、H5600
Front-end network	10GbE  、25GbE 、100GbE	10GbE 、25GbE 、40GbE
Back-end network	10GbE 、25GbE 、100GbE	10GbE 、40GbE 、InfiniBand

How to use PowerScale and Isilon in combination

The Isilon does not come in a high-density chassis like the PowerScale. When high performance applications without high capacity are required, the PowerScale F200 or F600 is recommended for Tier 1 hot data. After analysis, cold data can be tiered to Tier 2 using the Isilon A200 or A2000 with a higher density and higher capacity. Both the PowerScale and Isilon support scalability up to 252 nodes and 3.8 PB to ease worries about space.
The performance of the PowerScale is up to 15.80 million IOPS at a throughput of 945 GB/s, highly suitable for environments requiring performance, such as AI, data analysis, IoT, digital media, healthcare, and life science.
Suitable scenarios for PowerScale & Isilon

•  AI/ML/DL: e.g. TensorFlow, Spark ML, Nvidia, ADAS
•  Stream and IoT: e.g. Nautilus, Kafka, Splunk • Big Data and Hadoop: e.g. Cloudera, Hbase, Hive, Spark
•  Cloud native: e.g. Kubernetes, Docker
•  Cloud solutions: e.g. Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, AWS
•  EDA: e.g. Synopsys, Cadence, Mentor
•  NGS and PACS: e.g. Broad Institute GATK, Illumina, GE
•  Multimedia editing/management/streaming: e.g. Grass Valley, Adobe, Apple, Sony • Video surveillance: e.g. Genetec, Milestone
•  File sharing, archive, backup, etc.

Basically, there are only hardware differences between the PowerScale and Isilon. Both are OneFS Scale-Out NAS with consistent functions. Through the above simple comparison, we hope that users can understand more about the PowerScale and Isilon. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact SYSAGE.

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#Scale-Out NAS

Reference: https://www.sysage.com.tw/news/technology/202