Hitachi Data Systems Adds Native NAS and Cloud Tiering to Virtual Storage Platform, Expands Analytics Software

SINGAPORE, 27 April 2016 – Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE:6501), today announced new upgrades and additions to its Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) G series portfolio designed to reduce the ongoing costs of traditional environments and exploit and monetize data, which is too often trapped in silos of technology. Digital transformation has put data at the center of business strategy and has made IT a key element of corporate success, but is also putting new pressures on IT to modernize processes, systems and skillsets. To help break down data silos and modernize storage management, Hitachi Data Systems has embedded NAS functionality, cloud optimization and enhanced VMware integration into VSP G400, VSP G600 and VSP G800 storage platforms to simplify and accelerate data center modernization efforts.

​“Hitachi Data Systems continues to invest heavily in innovation and in its industry-leading Virtual Storage Platform to help customers transform and modernize their IT infrastructures. The ever-changing fundamentals of IT demand that storage systems are agile, reliable and cost-effective. The enhanced VSP family meet those needs and beyond,” said Joe Ong, Managing Director, Singapore & Vietnam, Hitachi Data Systems (pictured).

Customers continue to re-assess their IT strategies to find ways to optimize and reduce the ongoing costs of traditional storage and cloud services, but they are in need of flexible solutions that can address disparate environments such as virtualization, remote and core data centers and dynamic cloud strategies, to meet infrastructure requirements for a variety of applications. As a cloud-optimized, unified storage platform, the VSP G series was built to meet these needs and continues to exemplify Hitachi’s strong investment philosophy in innovation, with more than 4,000 patents in SAN and NAS -related technologies.

Today’s announcement adds the option to include two high-performance NAS modules in the VSP G400, VSP G600 and VSP G800 systems. These modules help to reduce capital expenditures by providing a single, SAN and NAS storage platform for all workloads in a compact form factor. Operating costs also decline, as VSP G series systems require less power, cooling and space in the data center. Adding further cost control, the new unified VSP G series offerings allow customers to leverage existing infrastructure investments regardless of environment – whether for remote offices where IP infrastructure is dominant to data centers utilizing robust Fibre Channel technology or a cloud environment employing Hitachi Content Platform (HCP), Hitachi Managed Cloud Services, Microsoft® Azure™ or Amazon S3 cloud services. The data migrator to the cloud software feature allows customers to create automated and intelligent, content-aware data management policies. These policies ensure that data is automatically and seamlessly tiered to private, public or hybrid cloud platforms and freeing up critical Hitachi Accelerated Flash resources for Tier 1 applications.

Hitachi continues to be in lockstep with VMware to deliver on the vision for software-defined storage with full support for VMware vSphere® Virtual Volumes™. This support allows customers to maximize resources, reduce storage complexity and increase efficiency by enabling application-specific storage service levels to be applied to each virtual machine (VM). In addition, Hitachi Virtual Infrastructure Integrator 3.0 delivers scalable VM protection by simplified VMbackup, recovery and cloning services for VMware vSphere-based infrastructures.

“VMware and Hitachi have had a long-term partnership, and together, we continue to empower our mutual customers to simplify their IT operations and accelerate the adoption of the unified hybrid cloud. Hitachi’s unified storage solutions combined with support for VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes will enable enterprises to reduce storage complexity and cost, while increasing efficiency on their journey to a modernized, software-defined data center,” said Skip Bacon, vice president, storage and availability, VMware.

Available across the Hitachi VSP family, the new Hitachi Infrastructure Analytics Advisor (HIAA) delivers increased performance while reducing costs and risk through intelligent analytics. HIAA quickly and proactively identifies, diagnoses and helps resolve potential performance and capacity issues, including those concerning third-party storage. The software identifies opportunities to improve performance and reduce risk through intelligent analytics with preemptive alerts. Customers can drive down costs with comprehensive capacity and performance planning using enterprise-scale IT analytics with long-term historical trending.

Hitachi Data Systems is the only IT vendor to address customer workload requirements from entry to mainframe with a single storage software platform. The powerful software capabilities built into Hitachi Storage Virtualization Operating System (SVOS) allow the entire VSP family to offer flash optimization. SVOS further supports native heterogeneous storage virtualization and multi-site, active-active storage as well as fully compatible data migration, replication and management from a single interface. Hitachi SVOS provides system element management and advanced storage functions, such as storage virtualization, thin provisioning, service-level controls, performance instrumentation and security across multiple storage platforms.

“With demand increasing around virtualized environments, IT applications and data availability, customers can’t afford a misstep. They need a reliable, scalable, high-performance solution that lowers risk, reduces operating and management costs, minimizes overprovisioning and maximizes existing assets. The Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform with native NAS functionality is a slam dunk,” said Cheryl Neal, vice president, Avnet Data, Networking and Security business unit in the Americas.