TGen deploys Isilon IQ to power multiple genome sequencing devices to discover new treatments for diseases

Isilon® Systems (Nasdaq: ISLN) today announced that The Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) has deployed Isilon scale-out NAS as the primary storage solution powering its next-generation biomedical research. By using Isilon IQ to power multiple genome sequencing devices, TGen has unified its mission-critical operations onto a single, high-performance, highly scalable shared pool of storage, increasing workflow productivity and reducing costs to accelerate the discovery of new treatments for life-threatening diseases. TGen has also leveraged Isilon scale-out NAS and data compression technology from Isilon partner Ocarina Networks to repurpose its previous SAN system as a backup archive, further reducing costs and increasing IT efficiency across the organization.

"The amount of data our scientists generate is growing very rapidly – with no end in sight – so it's critical to our research that we can allocate necessary storage capacity and performance to our scientists on demand," said Dr. Edward Suh, CIO, TGen. "With Isilon, we have an efficient system that can scale in-step with our needs, making it a core component of the IT support necessary for all we do at TGen."

TGen is a nonprofit organization focused on developing diagnostics, prognostics and therapies for cancer, neurological disorders, diabetes and other complex diseases. As TGen's research team rapidly grew in size and undertook more complex studies using next-generation sequencing devices, its traditional SAN system couldn't scale cost-effectively to meet storage capacity and performance demands, forcing TGen to expend unnecessary time and resources on inefficient data movement between disparate storage silos, system performance bottlenecks and file system disruption.

By deploying Isilon IQ, TGen has unified its entire next-generation genomic sequencing workflow onto a single file system capable of scaling up to 10.4 Petabytes (PB) of capacity and 45 Gigabytes per second (GBps) of aggregate throughput, accelerating TGen's mission-critical research, while reducing storage management to less than 10 percent of one full-time equivalent (FTE). Additionally, Isilon's heterogeneous protocol support and ease of integration enabled TGen to leverage data compression software from Ocarina to repurpose its previous SAN system for backup, increasing operational efficiency and retaining the value of its existing IT resources.

"Translational genomics is leading the way to better diagnostics, treatments and cures for life-threatening diseases, but its success depends on researchers having immediate data access and on-demand storage capacity to speed time-to-discovery," said Sam Grocott, vice president of marketing, Isilon Systems. "TGen's use of Isilon IQ to accelerate their research is indicative of the benefits our scale-out NAS solutions can deliver for any life science organization looking to increase productivity and reduce costs."