You meet a customer for the first time. They explain that their current environment for NAS does not meet their needs. You want to make sure that Isilon is a good fit for their needs. What would be…

Question

Options

• AWhat protocols are accessing your NAS?
• BWhat application are you using to create directories?
• CIs your datacenter ISO9001 compliant?
• DHow many users are in your Directory Services?

• A
  75% (36)
• B
  4% (2)
• C
  6% (3)
• D
  15% (7)

Explanation

Asking about protocols (NFS, SMB/CIFS, HDFS, S3, etc.) is the most critical prequalifying question because Isilon's value proposition is built around its multi-protocol support for unstructured data at scale - if a customer's workloads don't align with protocols Isilon supports, it may not be the right fit at all. Protocol compatibility is a fundamental technical gate before any deeper discovery.

Why the distractors are wrong:

• B - The application used to create directories is irrelevant; directories are managed by the OS/filesystem layer, not a consideration for NAS selection.
• C - ISO 9001 is a quality management certification for business processes, not a datacenter or storage compatibility requirement - it has no bearing on whether Isilon fits.
• D - The number of directory services users could be tangentially relevant later (for user quotas or authentication), but it doesn't prequalify the solution - Isilon can integrate with Active Directory, LDAP, etc., regardless of user count.

Memory tip: Think "protocols first, everything else second." In NAS sales engineering, protocols are the handshake - if Isilon can't speak your customer's language (NFS for Linux, SMB for Windows, HDFS for Hadoop), no other feature matters. The word prequalifying signals you want a binary gate question, and protocol compatibility is that gate.

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