New Converged,
Hyper-Converged and Scale-Out Platforms Use Virtualization, Flash and
the Industry’s Broadest Infrastructure Automation
Dubai, United Arab Emirates – May 11, 2015 – Hitachi
Data Systems Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd.
(TSE: 6501), announced a leap forward in its technology leadership for
delivering software-defined infrastructures in the Middle East. In
addition to enabling customers to simplify IT and free data from
traditional hardware and location constraints it also makes it more
accessible for all existing and new analytics-driven workloads. These
new and enhanced offerings have been designed to help customers achieve
greater levels of information access through virtualized,
hyper-converged and scale-out platforms that are built to accelerate the
journey to IT as a service (ITaaS) through application-led,
software-defined architectures. Hitachi Data Systems also unveiled new solutions and services to make society safer, smarter and healthier to the Middle East.
To effectively unlock
the value of a software-defined infrastructure, technology must simplify
operations through automation, drive insight through better access to
information, and improve agility through abstraction that turns fixed
assets into flexible resources.
Hitachi Data Systems is delivering on those goals by:
- Extending its Hitachi Storage Virtualization Operating System (SVOS) to an expanded Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) family
- Expanding the Hitachi Unified Compute Platform (UCP) family to cover core to edge or small to large converged and hyper-converged infrastructure models
- Introducing the Hitachi Hyper Scale-Out Platform (HSP) for fast-growing data analytics workloads
- Bringing to market new software to automate the provisioning and protection of application environments
Storage Virtualization to the Masses
With the newest
additions to the Hitachi VSP family – the G200, G400, G600 and the
upcoming G800 – Hitachi Data Systems is the only IT vendor to address
customer workload requirements from entry to the mainframe with a single
software stack. Extending the reach of powerful software capabilities
that are built into Hitachi SVOS allows the entire VSP family to offer
native heterogeneous storage virtualization and multi-site active-active
storage – as well as fully compatible data migration, replication and
management. Customers now have the ability to choose systems based on
the necessary capacity, performance and price required to meet their
business goals, not because of functional difference.
Customers looking at
smaller systems will now get access to the same virtualization
technology that has existed in prior HDS high-end systems that have
achieved the highest overall product and use-case specific scores within
Gartner’s Critical Capabilities for General-Purpose, High-End Storage Arrays1.
These proven capabilities provide a leap forward in consolidating and
simplifying user environments of all sizes and allow simpler migrations,
easier management and full resiliency without the complication of
appliances.
Best of Breed Converged Platforms for Any Workload
The Hitachi Unified
Compute Platform (UCP) portfolio has been expanded with new
hyper-converged and converged infrastructure models that now cover
customers’ needs to rapidly and more easily support core to edge IT
workloads. The latest additions to the UCP family include the
hyper-converged Hitachi UCP 1000 for VMware EVO:RAIL, and the converged
Hitachi UCP 2000, both use new rack servers and target small to medium
or remote or branch office environments. The Hitachi UCP 6000 converged
model integrates the recently launched Hitachi CB 2500 blade servers,
and delivers unmatched price-performance for mission critical workloads.
The UCP family, with industry leading Hitachi Unified Compute Platform
Director infrastructure automation software, allows customers to drive
operational efficiencies through rapid deployment and provisioning of
infrastructure for managing an agile data center, prepared to change
workloads to match business needs.
Creating the Active Data Lake for Big Data Analytics
The hyper-converged
architecture of the new Hitachi Hyper Scale-Out Platform (HSP) provides
cost-effective compute performance and on-demand capacity. Capable of
ingesting massive amounts of mixed data types across a distributed,
clustered architecture, the simple, automated management of HSP allows
elastic data growth by using Hitachi file system technology with open
source management and virtualization software. HSP is the ideal
scale-out platform for Hadoop environments, allowing users to analyze
data in place and eliminate the need to move large data sets to perform
analytics functions for big data.
Automated, Application-Led Storage Provisioning and Data Protection
Hitachi Data Systems
is also introducing and enhancing a wide range of software tools that
will help users build the ITaaS infrastructure they desire, while
delivering greater self-service capabilities to internal users. These
new application-aware solutions offer greater automation of, and
protection for, critical customer workloads, reducing costs and
complexity while increasing efficiency in software-defined environments.
Hitachi Automation
Director, a new application that works with the Hitachi Command Suite
management infrastructure, provides configurable best-practice-based
service templates for simple, application-specific provisioning of
storage resources to databases, applications and VDI environments.
Built-in support for role-based access control means that, once
established, these templates can be used by business users in a move to
self-service provisioning.
As a lightweight
complement to Hitachi Command Suite, Hitachi Infrastructure Director is a
new storage configuration and management application that uses the new
VSP systems’ APIs to provide simple, intuitive management, guided by a
built-in recommendation engine, for environments in which simplicity is
more important than the need for manual control of every detail. Hitachi
Infrastructure Director gives users the power to direct simplified
management operations to rapidly deploy new storage systems and services
for the new models in the VSP family.
With the ability to
automate data protection and provide granular control of storage-based
copies, Hitachi Data Instance Director simplifies data protection
through automation and orchestration of Hitachi storage-based snapshot,
clone and replication technologies, in addition to live backup,
continuous data protection, and archive capabilities under a single
platform. Data Instance Director provides a simple interface that
matches data protection service levels to business priorities using a
unique, whiteboard-style interface.
Supporting Quotes
“The fundamentals of
IT are changing. Whether it is the adoption of ‘third platform’
technologies and striking the proper balance among the different modes
of IT, or the ongoing move to providing IT as a service, there is real
change taking place, all while our customers are trying to move to
ITaaS,” said Sean Moser, senior vice president global portfolio and
product management, Hitachi Data Systems. “Customers are looking for
ways to be more agile and flexible to gain a competitive advantage.
Hitachi is delivering a new generation of software-defined technologies
built to support the changing needs of customer application environments
to deliver on those goals and connect what works today with what’s
next.”
“As the global IT
horizon starts shifting, the needs and wants of the Middle East also
develops and migrates to sleeker, more responsive options. With this new
solution, we are able to open opportunities to the mid-market while
simplifying operations. It is an exciting time for us as we introduce
this truly unique opportunity to the region,” said Aaron White, General
Manager for Middle East and Turkey, Hitachi Data Systems.
“For us to truly
unlock the value of software-defined storage, the chosen technology must
simplify operations through automation, drive insight for more flexible
and robust access to data and create agility through abstraction by
making fixed resources flexible. Hitachi offers a portfolio to make our
goal of a software-defined infrastructure a reality,” said Darius
Harris, senior IT manager, Nedbank, South Africa. “In a big move toward
this goal, Hitachi is extending its Storage Virtualization Operating
System (SVOS) to an expanded Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) family,
essentially bringing the power and potential of storage virtualization
within reach to organizations like ours."
“Attaining higher
utilization on clusters and storage pools is critical for us, as is
having a single point of support,” said James Hanley, vice president and
general manager for cloud, platform and data center at CSC. “With HDS,
we are able to deploy an enterprise-class converged infrastructure
through automated orchestration of our server, network and storage
resources.”
“The Hitachi UCP
technologies will help us stay ahead in the markets, fine tune what we
need to supply to best meet customer needs, and support a most efficient
business model,” said Andreas Kranabitl, managing director for SPAR’s
information and communication services (ICS). “We at SPAR are now wisely
prepared to meet and proactively address any changes and growth.”
“As a long-time
Hitachi Data Systems partner, we are accustomed to the company setting
the bar high,” said Nicholas Laine, director and office of the CTO at
ESI Technologies, Inc. “They do not disappoint with their new
software-defined storage platform, delivering the agility, performance
and scalability needed to meet the demand for current and future
applications.”
