The two arrays can scale in capacity and performance separately by adding either capacity extension nodes or performance extension nodes.

For example, in an X-Series cluster, you can add about 400MB/sec of single-stream or 700MB/sec concurrent throughput with each extension node.

Nick Bali, senior software engineer with Sony Imageworks, said his company has already tested the S200 array for its video rendering environment and achieved over 100,000 simultaneous metadata operations, "a huge improvement over previous generations.

"The performance increase is so dramatic, we've already placed an order for these new Isilon nodes, adding to the primary and archive Isilon clusters we already have in production," he said.

The Isilon S200 and X200 are both immediately available. The S200 begins at a list price of $57,569 per node and the X200 begins at a list price of $27,450 per node. Isilon's OneFS 6.5 and SyncIQ 3.0 are also both immediately available and free for Isilon customers with an existing support contract. OneFS 6.5 is standard with any S200 or X200 purchase, while SyncIQ has a list price of $4,950 per node.