Smart Data Migration from PowerScale Isilon

Discover, curate and migrate PowerScale Isilon data for AI 27x faster while cutting storage costs 70%+.

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Smarter, Faster, Proven PowerScale Isilon Migration

Large enterprises are migrating from Dell EMC Isilon PowerScale to modern storage platforms and to cloud file and object storage solutions. Whether it’s a cloud migration or on-premises, most enterprises are now adopting storage as a service (STaaS) strategies that are more scalable, automated and cost-efficient in order to flex with fast-changing unstructured data environments. Customers like Pfizer are using Komprise to change the economics of enterprise data storage by tiering off Dell Isilon to modern all-flash storage + cloud. And, they are enabling Smart Data Workflows to leverage cloud data services to glean more value from their on-premises data storage footprint and their unstructured file and object data in the cloud.

The Smart Migration for PowerScale Isilon Difference

Komprise Intelligent Data Management is one platform to analyze, mobilize, extract and manage your unstructured data to save over 70% on storage and backup and move to the cloud 27x faster with Elastic Data Migration.

With Komprise for Dell PowerScale Isilon migrations and data management you can:
  • See Across Silos and Plan Effectively: Use Komprise Analysis and Deep Analytics to understand what unstructured data to migrate and plan your cloud migration. Gain insight into data type, ownership, data usage, age and access patterns, growth and other valuable metrics to define which directories, shares and files to migrate and to which target storage​.
  • Transparently Tier Cold Data: Leverage the patented Komprise Transparent Move Technology™ (TMT) for cloud tiering. Move cold data off Isilon to low-cost cloud storage with zero disruption to users or applications. Komprise acts even on data already moved by CloudPools to get it into the cloud in native format without requiring any additional Isilon capacity for rehydration.​
  • Migrate Isilon data 27x Faster with No Rehydration: Komprise analytics helps you decide what data should go where, and Komprise migrates the data with seamless automation. Even if you have used storage-tiering solutions such as CloudPools or FabricPools, Komprise migrates the data to the right mix of cloud file and object storage without requiring any rehydration – so you do not need to buy any more NAS.​ Faster SMB Migration. Faster NFS Migration.
  • Global Search and Smart Data Workflows: Komprise provides a Global File Index of all your file data, even after its moved to the cloud. You can search, build queries on the data, use tags, and have Komprise automate data workflows to feed data into cloud data services.
Unlike Isilon CloudPools, Komprise Transparent Move Technology (TMT):
  • Puts you in control of your data, staying with native file format in the cloud for “AI-ready data” and no vendor lock-in.
  • Maintains app and user access without stubs.
  • Stays out the hot data path for zero impact to primary data workloads.

By tiering cold data first, customers realize immediate cost reductions and reduce the data for migration. This is in stark contrast to point migration tools that must treat all data the same. Komprise is the easy, fast, no lock-in path to the cloud for file and object data.

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Faster Isilon Migration

With Komprise Elastic Data Migration you can run, monitor, and manage hundreds of data migrations faster than ever at a fraction of the cost.

  • Elastic Parallelism: The Komprise architecture scales according to the parallelism of your data across shares, directories and files to maximize performance.
  • WAN Optimized: Komprise minimizes network usage by reducing the number of requests over the network to migrate efficiently even over WANs.
  • 27x Faster: Komprise migrates more than 27 times faster than generic tools across heterogeneous clouds and storage. Read the white paper.
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Migrate NAS Reliably

Komprise has extensive experience in migrating petabyte-scale data volumes from Isilon to NetApp, Qumulo, AWS, Azure, and other NAS platforms backed by world-class support.

  • Maintain Full File Fidelity: Komprise migrates with all file permissions, access controls and data integrity intact with support for SMB, NFS, and dual protocol shares.
  • MD5 Checksum Validation: Ensure data integrity with MD5 checksums on every file while maintaining migration performance.
  • Adaptive: Komprise automatically retries if network or storage is unavailable so you don’t have to worry.
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Simplify Data Management

Komprise automatically moves data to secondary storage so that data always lives in the right place at the right time according to its age, usage or other parameters

  • Ease of Use: Komprise is a hybrid SaaS solution that is easy to set up and easy to use.
  • Intuitive Dashboards: Komprise dashboards and reports allow you to monitor and manage hundreds of simultaneous migrations and get status updates.
  • API-Driven: With Komprise you can also perform or manage migrations through APIs, making it easy to integrate Komprise Smart Data Workflows into your processes.​

A Fast, No Lock-In Path to the Cloud

With Komprise you will save and make money on your unstructured data. Empower users with AI-ready data that can be natively accessed. Leverage data services in the cloud without lock-in.

  • Ease into the Cloud: Not ready to put the Isilon out to pasture just yet? Start with Komprise cloud tiering to regain capacity and delay storage spend. Next replicate your Isilon to any third-party NAS for Cloud DR. When you are ready, Komprise can help with the final data migration and cutover.
  • Eliminate Complexity and Errors of Free Tools: Free data migration tools require significant human babysitting, are slow, and lack critical enterprise features like MD5 checks.
  • Eliminate Sunk Costs of Point Migration Tools: Data migration point tools have complex legacy architectures. Komprise makes cloud data migrations simple, fast and reliable and eliminates sunk costs. Get ongoing value from the Komprise Intelligent Data Management Platform for additional use cases and data lifecycle management.

Learn More > >

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Smart File Data Migration for IBM COS

Komprise works with IBM to accelerate migrations from Dell PowerScale Isilon to IBM Cloud Object Storage (COS).

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Smart File Data Migration for Azure

Komprise is a select partner in the Microsoft Azure File Migration Program, giving Azure customers access to industry leading file-migration at no cost.

Read White Paper

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Smart File Data Migration for AWS

The proven Komprise file and object data migration technology has received AWS Migration and Modernization Competency Certification.

Read White Paper

Komprise Strategic Partners

Komprise is a preferred cloud data migration partner for Azure and AWS. We also have strategic alliances with IBM, Pure Storage, Qumulo and VAST Data and deep integrations for Google, Cohesity, Dell EMC, NetApp, Nutanix, Wasabi and more.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is Isilon?
Isilon Systems was a computer hardware and software company founded in 2001 by Sujal Patel and Paul Mikesell. It was headquartered in Seattle, Washington and sold clustered file system hardware and software for unstructured data. Isilon Systems became a publicly traded company on December 16, 2006. Isilon Systems was acquired by EMC Corporation in November 2010.In 2020, Dell rebranded their Isilon NAS product line PowerScale.

Learn about the history of Isilon here

Learn more about Dell PowerScale here

What are the Isilon Tiering options?
The Isilon tiering solution from Dell is now called PowerScale CloudPools. CloudPools software provides policy-based automated tiering that allows for an additional storage tier for the Isilon cluster at your data center. CloudPools supports tiering data from Dell PowerScale Isilon to public, private or hybrid cloud options. This technology is a form of storage pools, which are collections of storage volumes exported to a shared storage environment.

Cloud tiering can deliver significant cost savings as part of a cloud data management strategy by offloading unused cold data to more cost-efficient cloud storage solutions. The approach you take to Isilon tiering can either create an easy path to the cloud with native access and full use of data in the cloud or it can create costly cloud egress and vendor lock-in. Array block-level tiering is a mismatch for the cloud. Isilon cloud tiers blocks rather than entire files.

Learn more about Isilon Tiering here

Read the white paper: Block-level vs File-level tiering

How does Komprise make Dell PowerScale Isilon data AI-ready during migration?
Migrating off Isilon or PowerScale is also the moment to make that data usable for AI. Komprise Transparent Move Technology preserves files in native format wherever they land, whether that’s cloud object storage, a new NAS platform, or a hybrid environment, so nothing has to be rehydrated or reformatted before it can be used. Unlike Isilon CloudPools, which tiers at the block level and creates cloud egress costs and lock-in, Komprise keeps data in native, AI-ready data format from day one. Combined with a Global Metadatabase that indexes and enriches metadata as data moves, this turns a migration project into a foundation for AI Data Ingestion instead of just a lift-and-shift.
How much faster and cheaper is Komprise for Isilon and PowerScale migrations?
Komprise Elastic Data Migration moves data up to 27x faster than generic migration tools, using elastic parallelism and WAN-optimized transfer to migrate hundreds of shares and directories simultaneously with full file fidelity and MD5 checksum validation. By tiering cold data off PowerScale Isilon first with Komprise Transparent Move Technology, customers cut the volume of data that needs to be migrated and reduce overall storage, backup, and DR costs 70%+, all without rehydration penalties or vendor lock-in, even on data already moved with CloudPools.
How does Komprise Intelligent Data Management go beyond migration for Dell PowerScale/Isilon customers?
Migration is only the starting point, and this is why we call it a Smart Migration: tier and reduce ROT data before you move, not after. Using Komprise Transparent Move Technology and Intelligent Tiering, cold and redundant, obsolete, and trivial data gets identified and tiered off PowerScale Isilon first, shrinking the volume of data that actually needs to migrate and cutting storage costs 70%+ before a single file moves. See Smart Data Migration.

Once data is off Isilon or PowerScale, Komprise Intelligent Data Management keeps working: the Global Metadatabase gives IT and data teams a live index of file and object data across every storage platform, not just the ones data migrated to. KAPPA data services extract embedded metadata from PDFs, images, and other files to enrich that index further. AI Data Ingestion uses this metadata to deliver only the right, AI-ready, governed data to AI pipelines, and Transparent File Tables let data teams query file and object data directly from Snowflake, Databricks, and other lakehouse tools without duplicating it. For ongoing lifecycle management, Smart Data Workflows automate tiering, retention, and sensitive data handling long after the migration project ends.