NEXT: Hitachi Vantara Unveils Virtual Storage Platform 5000 AFA and Ops Center Software

At NEXT 2019, Hitachi Vantara Corp., a subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., announced a next-gen storage and infrastructure foundation with a new scale-out, scale-up architecture for any workload at any scale.

The solution includes Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) 5000 Series, the company’s latest and a world’s fastest ⁽¹⁾ enterprise storage array, along with the Ops Center management software and updated Storage Virtualization OS. Together, these technologies can accelerate data center workloads and deliver future-proof IT with an architecture that is a foundation for modernizing data center, cloud and DataOps environments.

“The Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform 5000 series is the proving ground for our customers to gain a digital advantage over their competition and achieve better business outcomes,” said Brad Surak, chief product and strategy officer, Hitachi Vantara. “Hitachi Vantara is delivering the foundation for modern, enterprise infrastructure innovations that our customers require, with new solutions that are engineered using future-proof technology to take on the data center challenges of tomorrow.“

Foundation for modern, enterprise infrastructure
VSP 5000 series provides the core storage foundation for all digital business operations with the speed and scale to power existing workloads as well as new, data-intensive workloads emerging through multicloud and AI-driven environments. It is agile enough to store block and file data and supports workload diversity ranging from traditional mission-critical business applications to containers to mainframe. VSP 5000 series enables all workload consolidation that maximizes operational efficiencies.

All-new architecture
The VSP 5000 series is an enterprise flash array optimized to deliver performance and resiliency by taking advantage of SAS architecture, NVMe and storage class memory (SCM). Powered by the company’s Accelerator Fabric, it is a fast NVMe flash array, which can help users get to insights and business outcomes faster with up to 21 million IO/s. Resource-intensive application owners can also see an improvement with response times as low as 70μs.

The VSP 5000 series with the new dedupe optimizer uses ML algorithms to perform on-the-fly optimizations of dedupe processes based on block size and other characteristics. This optimizes between in-line and post-process dedupe for maximum data reduction with minimal performance impact, delivering up to 7:1 total reduction.

The VSP 5000 series is built for always-on digital business. Its self-protecting IO Architecture and quadruple redundant fabric deliver an 99.999999% availability.

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Transform data center operations
The VSP 5000 is an advancement for organizations that are looking to modernize their data center to meet the demanding service-level requirements across a range of workloads and edge-to-core-to-multicloud deployment models.

The Ops Center brings AI to infrastructure management and operations to improve decision making and modernize resource delivery for ROI. It can accelerate customers toward an autonomous data center by automating up to 70% of tasks and can offer faster, more accurate insights to diagnose system health and keep data operations running in top condition.

Customers can instantly add new value to their existing storage infrastructure by leveraging a VSP 5000 model to virtualize their current systems, lowering TCO by up to 20%. Virtualization will bring all the data services available with the VSP 5000 series to older systems.

The VSP Cloud Connect Pack adds an HNAS 4000 file storage gateway to move data to a public cloud to free up additional data center capacity. Data that is moved to the public cloud is enriched with metAdata: making it indexable and searchable.

Flexibility to optimize any workload
The company Storage Virtualization OS (SVOS) powers the VSP 5000 series and is optimized for scale-out architectures, NVMe performance and next-gen storage media including SCM. It incorporates AI intelligence that adapts to changing conditions to optimize any workload performance, reduce storage costs and predict faults that could disrupt operations.

The VSP 5000 series is a storage system in the industry that offers the flexibility to mix NVMe and SAS flash media in the same system array to optimize cost and performance across workloads. Intelligent tiering leverages AI and ML to dynamically promote and demote data to an optimized tier to accelerate applications.

The VSP 5000 series is designed so customers can start small and grow, as needed, to massive scale – all while delivering predictable service levels. It is designed to accelerate and consolidate multiple workloads of any type – traditional transactional systems, modern containerized applications, analytics and even mainframe – consolidating more applications for cost savings and data center footprint reduction.

Its upgradeable architecture is future-ready to bridge from well-established storage technologies to advances such as SCM and NVMe-oF without forklift upgrades or more hardware investments.

Additional benefits of VSP 5000 Series, Ops Center and SVOS:

• Entry-priced model, VSP 5100 comes loaded with value-added software that enables complete storage management, system analytics and native copy data management.

• 100% data availability guarantee for all VSP models including the VSP 5000 series.

• For customers requiring nonstop operations that can survive a regional outage, the firm’s Global-Active Device (GAD) is available for the VSP 5000 Series and delivers synchronous clustering of applications between sites that are up to 500km apart.

• Easy-to-use Ops Center Administrator templates can simplify management and streamline IT workflow.

• With Ops Center, users can experience accelerated management automation to improve IT operational efficiencies and free staff to focus on innovations.

The Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) 5000 series, Ops Center and Storage Virtualization OS are available.

“Hitachi Vantara has been a trusted partner to help Conagra Brands modernize our data center operations,” said Matt Bouges, enterprise IT architect, Conagra Brands, Inc. “The latest Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, combined with the new Hitachi Ops Center and latest storage virtualization OS, delivers the performance and efficiencies we need to reduce the time and money we spend running IT while accelerating IT’s time to value, helping grow the business.“

“NVMe-optimized storage platforms provide significant opportunities for customers to cost-effectively consolidate mixed enterprise workloads onto fewer systems,” said Eric Burgener, research VP, infrastructure systems, platforms and technologies group, IDC. “For IT leaders considering this type of consolidation, issues like performance, availability and scalability are critical. With their new VSP 5000 series storage arrays, Hitachi is delivering across all of these metrics, turning in industry-leading high-end throughput on systems that deliver sub 100-microsecond latencies backed by its venerable 100% data availability guarantee.“

“With the challenges facing organizations to stay competitive and relevant, no one wants unnecessary complexities in their storage environment. At Sirius, we look to provide our customers with solutions that will address the company’s business objectives without taxing the resources managing them,” said Darren Gourley, VP, infrastructure solutions, Sirius Computer Solutions, Inc. “With the new Hitachi Storage Advisor and Hitachi Automation Director, users can quickly and easily configure, customize and deploy solutions; intelligently manage storage environments; and automate and streamline common workflows. These new tools could be a game-changer for our customers.“

“Today’s customers are looking for high performance and scalability without compromise on agility or resiliency. The new Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) 5000 series allows us to deliver vs. those demands and more,” said Scott Webb, storage practice manager, World Wide Technology, Inc. “With Hitachi VSP 5000, customers can solve business problems across any workload, application and now, any infrastructure.“

“For years, Hitachi Vantara and ViON have been focused on helping customers realize the power of their data,” said Tom Frana, CEO, ViON Corp. “Virtualization is important in today’s market and ViON is happy to see the new Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) 5000 series announced this week at Hitachi NEXT.“

“Increasingly, customers tell us they need to do more with less. The new Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) 5000 series sets a new bar for performance, scalability and resilience, addressing business challenges across any workload, application or infrastructure,” said Philipp Alexander, MD, SVA System Vertrieb Alexander GmbH. “Additionally, AI automation in the new Hitachi Ops Center allows customers to do more with less without specialized expertise or training.“

“Increasingly, our customers are asking for speed and scalability with no risk of downtime. With its scale-out, high-performance NVMe architecture, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) 5000 series delivers the unprecedented speed and resilience required to ensure that the customer is always open for business,” said Jack Kim, VP, service business division, HIS. “It also enables cost savings with consolidation at massive scale and eliminates risk of downtime and non-compliance fines with unmatched data security. For our customers, the Hitachi VSP 5000 series is a winning proposition.“

“Our customers deserve innovative, best-in-class infrastructure solutions without compromise. Over and over, Hitachi Vantara steps up to deliver these offerings,” said Suk-Hee Lee, director, LGH. “With its new Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) 5000 series, Hitachi has not only delivered a scale-out, high-performance NVMe architecture, but has offered a path to NVMe-oF if our customers require it.“

The Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) 5000 series, Ops Center and Storage Virtualization OS are available.

⁽¹⁾ Based on internal testing using industry-standard benchmarks vs. published claims of competitive products.