The new Hitachi Unified Storage (HUS) offers a single management framework where access to blocks, files and objects is seamless and resides in a fluid and virtualized environment. Hitachi has also announced that its entire hardware product portfolio, including the new HUS, will be supported by Hitachi Command Suite (HCS) management software. Hitachi aims to be the first enterprise-class storage vendor to provide a single software management platform for all of its products.
The new Hitachi Unified Storage (HUS) offers a single management framework where access to blocks, files and objects is seamless and resides in a fluid and virtualized environment. Hitachi has also announced that its entire hardware product portfolio, including the new HUS, will be supported by Hitachi Command Suite (HCS) management software. Hitachi aims to be the first enterprise-class storage vendor to provide a single software management platform for all of its products.
Unified storage products are often engineered for the needs of smaller organizations that do not have the storage volumes, IT resources, or budgets to acquire and manage separate platforms for block and file data. Hitachi hopes to set a new direction for unified storage in the enterprise with an object-based file system that intelligently adds metadata for each file and enables fast file snapshots and clones, faster replication over WAN, and fast data searches. HUS also supports Hitachi Content Platform (HCP) for a true object store with custom metadata and regulatory compliance so HCP can share HUS capacity with file and block applications in the same storage pool.
Unlike solutions that scale only by capacity, HUS scales by predictable performance, replicated data, block volume size and filesystem size. High-end storage functionality like page-based auto-tiering is available to facilitate placement of data for the highest performance at the lowest cost. HUS also features data efficiency capabilities such as thin provisioning.
Hitachi Command Suite
Hitachi Command Suite unifies management across all Hitachi storage models: block (Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform), file (Hitachi NAS Platform, Hitachi Unified Storage), content (Hitachi Content Platform), and appliances (Hitachi Data Ingestor). It also manages external virtualized storage environments and includes a unified business intelligence layer that adds service-centric functions.
HCS Key Features
- Scale system capacity to nearly 3PB
- Automatically correct performance issues and provision quickly with dynamic virtual controllers
- Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning pools and grows file and block storage for flexibility without capacity limitations
- Leverage 256TB file systems and a single name space to reduce administrative effort
- Meet SLAs with 99.999% data availability and advanced management tools
- Manage storage from an application management portal
- Perform system maintenance without interrupting host I/Os
- Crash-consistent snapshots for application-aware backup and recovery
Scalable and Heterogeneous Storage and Services
The HDS strategy is to abstract the storage environment to create model for organizations to manage storage as a service to their consumers regardless the physical devices that serve up the storage. HUS is supported by a network of partners to help reduce operational and capital costs for products including Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server and Microsoft Exchange Server, VMware View (VDI), and Oracle databases.
The new Hitachi Application Protector is an application-aware, snapshot-based data protection, backup and recovery software suite for Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server and SharePoint. Hitachi Application Protector lets administrators for each of these applications protect their data sets using familiar interfaces such as Microsoft Management Console. With this technology, application administrators can initiate backup and recovery jobs and more easily meet service level objectives for critical business applications.
Hitachi Data Systems also plans to introduce a purpose built backup appliance later this year, based on Hitachi deduplication IP that enables faster, more reliable data protection.
