NASA Uses Isilon IQ to Advance Visual Imaging of Earth

NASA World Wind, i-cubed, and Isilon Systems Combine Clustered Storage with Powerful Geoprocessing Applications to Deliver Breakthrough Landsat 7 Satellite Imagery Online

Isilon(R) Systems (NASDAQ: ISLN), the leader in clustered storage, today announced that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is using Isilon IQ clustered storage to power World Wind, an open source, virtual globe enabling online users to explore the Earth and its terrain through visually rich, high resolution 3D imagery. With Isilon IQ, NASA World Wind consolidated its massive collection of Landsat 7 satellite images into one, single global namespace, simplifying its workflow and enabling immediate, 24×7 access for fast, online delivery. Additionally, Isilon clustered storage provided i-cubed’s advanced geoprocessing applications with the high concurrent throughput necessary to transform NASA’s raw Landsat 7 spectral data into groundbreaking, high resolution visuals of Earth, and then provide this processed imagery to NASA World Wind for online delivery.

“By using a vast collection of processed satellite imagery, NASA World Wind enables anyone with Internet access to experience anyplace on Earth as if they were really there,” said Patrick Hogan, Project Manager, NASA World Wind. “To ensure that our online user’s experience is seamless and compelling, we require storage that delivers high concurrent performance for processing the raw satellite data, as well as immediate, reliable access for fast online delivery.” Using Isilon IQ clustered storage, NASA World Wind has been able to meet and exceed its storage needs while also simplifying its workflow and shortening time-to-results.

“Landsat 7 satellite images offer a unique combination of resolution and coverage which make them an excellent fit for rich, 3D, global visualization applications such as World Wind,” said Mick Garrett, Chief Technical Officer, i-cubed. “Isilon clustered storage provided the high concurrent performance and immediate data access we required to complete the World Wind data set processing. The data-intensive nature of imagery, coupled with the throughput demands of parallel processing across more than 150 CPU’s, required the type of scalability and performance that Isilon provided. The Isilon IQ cluster enabled us to complete the data set and deliver it back to World Wind in record time, and Isilon support throughout the project was absolutely first rate.”

Leveraging processed Landsat 7 satellite imagery and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) data, NASA World Wind enables users to zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth, providing an eye-level view of the Earth’s surface. To achieve this compelling user experience, World Wind works with i-cubed, a leading geoprocessing service organization in Colorado, to perform the complex geoprocessing required to convert raw satellite data into rich, high resolution imagery of the Earth’s terrain, which is then returned to World Wind for integration into their Microsoft .NET based application, staging and online delivery. Using Isilon IQ, powered by Isilon’s OneFS(R) operating system software, World Wind has consolidated more than 8,000 large Landsat 7 satellite images into one single volume and single file system, providing high performance and concurrent access to i-cubed for geoprocessing applications, as well as to World Wind’s own technicians for seamless staging and fast online delivery of the processed imagery.

Prior to adopting Isilon IQ, World Wind’s traditional storage limited i-cubed’s processing applications and added unneeded complexity and time to World Wind’s workflow, making it difficult for World Wind to efficiently process the Landsat 7 data and slowing the availability of high resolution, processed imagery to users.

“NASA World Wind offers a groundbreaking opportunity for everyone to view the Earth’s terrain in a manner previously available only to scientists and researchers, thereby enabling our educational, business, and online communities to better understand our planet and its global resources,” said Brett Goodwin, Vice President of Marketing & Business Development, Isilon Systems. “Isilon IQ ultimately provides the high performance and immediate data access World Wind and i-cubed need to transform Landsat 7’s satellite data into visual imaging breakthroughs for the world to see — capabilities that traditional storage systems just can’t provide.”

Powered by OneFS, Isilon IQ delivers the industry’s first single file system that unifies and provides instant and ubiquitous access to the rapidly growing stores of digital content, eliminating the cost and complexity barriers of traditional storage architectures. OneFS is a unified operating system software layer that powers all of Isilon’s award-winning IQ family of clustered storage systems including the Isilon IQ 200, 1920, 3000, 6000, Accelerator, and EX 6000. Isilon also provides a robust suite of software applications including SnapshotIQ(TM), SmartConnect(TM), MigrationIQ(TM) and SyncIQ(TM) that leverage OneFS and clustered storage, providing the highest levels of data protection and automated data management.

About Isilon Systems

Isilon Systems is the worldwide leader in clustered storage systems and software for digital content, enabling enterprises to transform data into information — and information into breakthroughs. Isilon’s award-winning family of IQ clustered storage systems combines Isilon’s OneFS operating system software with the latest advances in industry-standard hardware to deliver modular, pay-as-you-grow, enterprise-class storage systems. Isilon’s clustered storage solutions speed access to critical business information while dramatically reducing the cost and complexity of storing it. Information about Isilon can be found at http://www.isilon.com/. About i-cubed i-cubed offers enterprise geospatial information solutions for commercial and government customers. i-cubed’s solutions leverage imagery of the Earth for visualization and engineering applications for internet portal, natural resource management, broadcast, wireless telecom, and military planning applications. i-cubed offers a full range of products and services including the imagery itself, processing to customer specifications, analysis, and hosting. Processing, exploitation, and distribution of imagery assets is managed via i-cubed’s DataDoors(TM) Archive Management Framework. In addition, i-cubed has strategic partnerships with most international satellite operators, map providers, and major GIS data providers. These relationships, coupled with i-cubed’s in-house archive of more than 150TB of geospatial data, allow the company to provide comprehensive and integrated data solutions for virtually anywhere in the world. More information can be found at http://www.i3.com/. NOTE: The names of companies mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.