Hitachi Vantara: Flash Storage Systems and AI Operations Software

Hitachi Vantara Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., introduced innovations to drive data center modernization.

The company unveiled performance storage systems in the industry’s storage family with a 100% data availability guarantee, and integrated, and cross-platform AI-powered analytics and IT automation software.

The new, all-flash and hybrid Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) systems and AI operations software give customers agility and automation to reduce costs and increase operational efficiencies-the foundation for any modern data center initiative.

Developers will gain increased flexibility and can now run more workloads in a single system through Docker and Redhat Openshift container integration with Swarm and Kubernetes orchestration.

“As AI and machine-learning technologies mature, enterprise storage vendors have an opportunity to provide considerable assistance to customers on their journey to autonomous operations,” said Eric Burgener, research VP, storage, IDC. “Vendors like Hitachi Vantara, with their enhanced AI operations portfolio, are leveraging AI/ML to simplify infrastructure management while improving platform reliability, infrastructure efficiency and the ability to meet SLAs.“

Automation Director screenshot
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Intelligent operations
As data center operations become more complex, operational efficiencies can deteriorate and the risks of downtime or data loss increase. Hitachi Vantara is introducing an AI operations software portfolio, which include Infrastructure Analytics Advisor, Automation Director and Instance Director to deliver a more agile data infrastructure.

Infrastructure Analytics Advisor (HIAA) delivers an AI-powered ‘brain’ to provide deeper data center insights by looking across the data path, including VMs, servers, networks and storage. HIAA uses machine learning to more efficiently optimize, troubleshoot and predict data center needs.

HIAA capabilities include:

Predictive analytics: AI mines telemetry data to predict when new storage purchases will be required, improving budget planning and helping to prevent performance dips. Machine learning analyzes all resources associated with storage to help ensure the right resource is purchased.
4x faster root-cause analysis: A patented AI engine analyzes telemetry data and configuration changes across the data path to isolate issues and uses a new heuristic engine to recommend resolution. Integration with Automation Director allows immediate fixes based on best practices.

Automation Director (HAD) software provides an ‘engine’ for orchestrating the delivery and management of IT resources so that teams can focus on innovation. A customizable solution, HAD automates core IT service delivery routines including VM, network zoning and storage and data protection tasks to reduce errors that impact uptime, customer experiences and ROI.

HAD has been enhanced to:

Integrate with IT service management (ITSM) tools, including the ServiceNow platform, for improved tracking and control of IT resource delivery.
Improve REST API integration for provisioning of third-party resources, including storage.
Take commands from HIAA for issue remediation and storage configuration data.
Automate the setup of Instance Director (HDID) data protection to safeguard against data loss or downtime.

This integration between HIAA, HAD and HDID are part of the company’s growing AI operations initiative to help customers begin the journey to autonomous operations. These offerings are now available both independently and packaged together with the firm’s VSP to help customers get the tools that drive data center modernization.

“VMware and Hitachi are working together to bring a new operational model to the data center,” said Lee Caswell, VP, product, storage and availability business unit, VMware, Inc. “Our joint integration work helps Hitachi VSP customers seamlessly leverage many VMware solutions including vSphere, Virtual Volumes and Site Recovery Manager to simplify daily operations and DR scenarios. And by sharing telemetry data between Hitachi AI operations software and vCenter-native management tools, we help customers digitally transform their business and realize the power of modern infrastructure.“

Agile data infrastructure
Data center modernization begins with a solid foundation for consistent delivery of data at high speed and low latency, with the company’s all-flash VSP F series and hybrid-flash VSP G series systems support an agile data infrastructure with 100% data availability guarantee and up to 3x more IO/s performance and 2.5x greater scalability compared to prior VSP models. This means customers can expect faster analytics processing and application performance – fueling a faster return on data. Cloud and container integration allow more workloads to run on a single system, while helping to eliminate data silos and support new workloads.

The enterprise VSP models include the all-flash VSP F700 and VSP F900 and the hybrid flash VSP G700 and G900 systems. To reach a broader range of customers, The company is introducing midrange models. They include the VSP F350, F370, G350 and G370 systems. The systems are powered by the next generation of the firm’s storage virtualization OS, SVOS RF, which has been re-architected for increased performance, scalability and data efficiency. All VSP systems are backed by the firm’s flat service model and come with a foundation software package that includes the company’s infrastructure analytics and copy data management software. All VSP systems are available.

Systems have improvements compared to prior VSP models:

Performance scalability: Scaling to more than 2.4 million IO/s and 41GB/s of bandwidth.
Efficiency: Up to 70% more IO/s per core for increased price/performance.
Consolidation: 8x more volumes and one million snapshots per system
Improved data efficiency: Up to 3.4x faster deduplication and 5x faster SVOS-based compression.

“Hitachi is helping the world’s business and IT leaders respond to modern data challenges by leveraging predictive analytics and automation as part of their larger data management and digital transformation initiatives,” said Iri Trashanski, senior VP, infrastructure and edge products, Hitachi Vantara. “With the criticality of data in our customers’ environments, there is no room for good-enough storage technology or data-silos created by weak infrastructure. The technology announced will help create the agile data infrastructure and intelligent operations our customers need to drive transformation.“

Hitachi Vantara Data Center Modernization video with Bob Madaio, VP, infrastructure solutions marketing, Hitachi Vantara