Centralizing Multi-Cluster Observability for Dell EMC Isilon Through Datadog Integration

Executive Summary

Dell EMC Isilon is a robust NAS solution that provides flexible and robust storage space for high-volume unstructured data. The customer was facing significant business challenges when trying to do centralized monitoring across multiple Isilon clusters. Also, the customer was facing the problem of continuously accessing the platform to efficiently monitor the health and operations of the infrastructure.

This case study describes how Crest Data developed an agent-based integration by leveraging REST APIs to pull data from the Isilon platform and ingest the metrics into the Datadog platform. The solution improved visibility with out-of-the-box (OOTB) dashboards, allowing users to proactively monitor the performance and usage. The customer could easily and quickly resolve the issues with improved visibility into the Isilon clusters.

About the Customer

The customer is a global leader in the energy and petrochemical sector, operating across the entire value chain from exploration and production to refining and retail. It manages an industry-leading portfolio of resources and is one of the largest integrated fuels, lubricants, and chemical companies in the world.

Customer Challenge

The customer was facing difficulties centralizing monitoring while utilizing Dell EMC Isilon, especially when they were managing multiple clusters. Although Dell Isilon is a robust NAS solution capable of offering flexibility and scalability at any scale, providing consistent access to the platform to track the health and status also proved to be a critical challenge.

Also, without a unified monitoring solution, the customer was facing problems in gaining in-depth visibility into the performance and usage of their Isilon clusters and nodes. This made it difficult to quickly identify and resolve the queries that led to increased downtime and a bad user experience.

Customer Solution

To efficiently handle this problem of multiple cluster handling, Crest Data developed a Datadog agent-based integration, which used a custom check to pull data from the Isilon platform via REST APIs and ingest the metrics into the Datadog platform. This provided a holistic view of health and operational insights related to infrastructure.

The various key benefits offered by the solution are as follows:

Improved Visibility: The customer could get a comprehensive view of the performance and usage related vital figures of both the Isilon cluster and its individual nodes.
Comprehensive Data Insights: The integration provided easy access to more than 35 metrics, allowing deep insights into the storage environment.
Immediate Time-to-Value: With out-of-the-box (OOTB) dashboards, the customer could immediately start proactively monitoring without spending much time in manual configuration.
Rapid Troubleshooting: By centralizing these metrics using a unified solution, the customer could quickly identify and resolve issues, which helped reduce downtime, providing a better end-user experience.

Thus, this solution helped the customer to leverage Isilon data and extract actionable insights within the broader Datadog observability ecosystem.

About Crest Data

Crest Data is a data and AI-first product engineering and technology solutions provider with deep expertise in cloud and AI, cybersecurity, observability, data analytics, and workflow automation. In this case study, Crest Data applied its extensive observability expertise to develop a custom Datadog agent-based integration to address the challenge of centralized monitoring for multiple Dell EMC Isilon clusters.

Having delivered 200+ integrations and 100+ successful Datadog migrations, Crest Data has deep expertise in observability and security domains. With 1,200+ experts and a track record of 5,500+ successful projects across 150+ global customers, and backed by strong partnerships with Datadog, AWS, Google, Microsoft, Dynatrace, ServiceNow, and NetApp, Crest Data delivers outcome-focused solutions that strengthen security, improve platform reliability, and enable sustainable digital growth.