Q&A: Isilon Systems chief executive Sujal Patel

As data volumes grow exponentially, with unstructured data leading the way in the shape of large audio, image and video files, firms are having to move beyond the primeval two-node server, using direct attached storage, into the brave new worlds of clustered storage and storage virtualisation. One of the vendors leading the way in clustered storage is Isilon Systems, founded by chief executive Sujal Patel in 2001. We asked Patel about the key issues in this important sector.

Has the current financial instability affected Isilon?

Sujal Patel: Globally we have not seen any real effect from the macroeconomic conditions – it appears to be limited to financial services and banking. It will trickle back to other areas, but I think that since we are a relatively new entrant to what is a gigantic market, it will not affect us as much. In fact, the credit crunch might be good for us, especially in relation to high-performance computing (HPC) storage systems, because as a company we are focused mainly on commercial and large-enterprise environments. Some of the financial institutions under pressure are rolling out HPC platforms to analyse past data and pinpoint where and when their financial problems started.

There is a lot of hype surrounding solid-state storage. What are your thoughts?

We have not produced a solid-state (flash) storage system yet, but the price of multi-level cell (MLC) flash storage per megabyte is 10 times that of spinning disk drives. We will release a flash-based system, but it depends when the price crossover point occurs – that is, when flash becomes cheaper than spinning disk. There is also a need for a new interface for solid-state systems to get the most out of the technology.

What interconnects does Isilon hardware use for clustering systems?

We use Infiniband connections to couple nodes together, and customers can scale to three, five or a maximum of 96 nodes. We have seen some customers using 10Gbit/s Ethernet (10GbE) optical-fibre connectivity – either as an interconnect between physical storage servers or between groups of storage servers clustered into a domain. For storage-intensive applications the power consumption of a relatively small number of Infiniband connections, while higher than the equivalent number of 10GbE connections, is insignificant compared with a rack containing 240-250 disk drives.

Which companies are your main competitors in the clustered storage arena?

When we are out in the field we normally see the likes of EMC and NetApp. One of the difficulties new competitors face is growing a customer base from scratch. We started with a focus on vertical markets that had run into unstructured data storage problems, such as media and entertainment companies. We now have manufacturing firms such as Pratt & Whitney as customers, as well as biotechnology and pharmaceutical firms, network carriers and the US federal government. Most storage capacity shipped this year will be for unstructured data, and by 2010, clustered storage will be an $8bn (£4.4bn) market – a third of the global storage spend.

Which disk drives do you use?

We use both Hitachi and Seagate drives and some product lines use both. Everything on our system is standardised on Serial ATA-based drives and the failure rate for such systems is about one per cent, similar to that occurring in the Fibre Channel world.

About Sujal Patel

Sujal Patel is chief executive, founder and president of Isilon Systems. It is his second term as chief executive, the first being from Isilon's founding in 2001 to August 2003. He also served as chief technical officer from 2001 until March 2008 and was made chief executive again in October 2007.

From 1996 to 2001, Sujal worked in various engineering roles at media delivery vendor RealNetworks, partly as chief architect of the company's core system. Sujal holds a BSc in computer science from the University of Maryland.

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