Power Shift to Green Storage—Part II
This analyst report investigates the practical requirement of setting in place a green strategy for storage as part of a wider context of a green IT strategy. It is a follow-on and update to “Power Shift to Green Storage." (links to /assets/pdf/itcentrix-power-shift-to-green-storage.pdf) This report argues that “light green” strategies that reduce carbon have to be coupled with “dark green” strategies that save money. It further argues that these strategies should be implemented as a matter of urgency; failing to act is likely to damage the reputation of IT and inhibit the ability of IT to drive change. (July 2008)
Hitachi's Data De-duplication Appliances
The throughput of the ProtecTIER solution was significantly better than that of the hash-based architecture. In addition, it could handle much larger backup objects, which allowed greater compression ratios for large objects to be backed up with lower storage costs. The ProtecTIER solution allowed much greater operational flexibility and fewer points of control, which resulted in lower operational staff requirements. (February 2008)
Hitachi’s Continued Assault on Innovation
The financial case was simple. The USP V will add five percent more usable capacity than the alternative over the next 12 months at half the cost, saving more than $800K (even after accounting for migration expenses). It saves an array and is expected to allow the redeployment of a full-time equivalent. (November 2007)
Strategic Options for Virtualized Storage Services
At the low end, Hitachi provides a stand-alone virtual controller approach with superior functionality with thin provisioning, and superior growth options for performance-critical Tier 1 storage. For modular storage, it provides the same virtualization, thin provisioning and tiered storage functionality as the high end, but at a much lower entry point and much smaller footprint. (September 2007)
Hitachi Announces Game-changing Functionality
Over the last number of years, the growth rate of storage resources has been extraordinary, driven by applications that have a greater thirst for more and larger files and a diversity of performance requirements. In the fall of 2004 with the initial announcement of the Universal Storage Platform, Hitachi Data Systems set the standard for enterprise-class storage and at the time put forth a vision to provide an architecture capable of efficiently managing enormous amounts of storage, both internal and external to the controller, utilizing virtualization technology that would eventually make storage allocation invisible to applications. (09-May-2007)
An IT View of Services-Oriented Storage
By taking the lead on a services-oriented approach to storage architectures, Hitachi is focused on dramatically improving organizations’ abilities to align IT storage resources with ever-changing business requirements. Because of its powerful controller-based virtualization engine, HDS is in a unique position to package and deliver storage services across heterogeneous data center assets and at the same time capitalize on industry momentum behind Service-oriented architecture (SOA). This strategy, if put into action and made tangible, has the potential to alter the competitive landscape of the storage business. (07-Mar-2007)
Three-Node Disaster Recovery Topologies
"The risk of permanent data loss is a growing problem for organizations as the degree of interdependency between systems increases.The norm for disaster tolerance in most organizations is a two-node disaster recovery topology, with one production site and a backup disaster recovery location. In the event of a disaster, this approach will always result in some permanent data loss. For many organizations, this is becoming unacceptable, and reducing the probability of permanent data loss is a business imperative.
Recent technological advances in storage controller design have enabled the cost-effective implementation of three-node disaster recovery topologies. A three-node disaster recovery topology will dramatically improve production against permanent loss and "corruption" of data. Moreover, this approach provides the foundation for much faster system recovery and a sounder path for future systems development and integration." (01-Jul-2006)
The Hitachi VTL: Virtual Tape with a “Wow” Factor
It is not often that ITCentrix reviews technology and says "Wow". The ProtecTIER option on the new open system virtual tape library VTL from Hitachi Data Systems is such a product. The ProtecTIER technology used in the Hitachi VTLs exploits the fact that data to be backed up is usually very similar to data previously backed up. With imaginative new algorithms, the amount of backup data to be stored on the VTL is reduced by between 15 and 33 times. This means that 500 terabytes of tape or traditional VTL will consume between 15 and 33 terabytes on the Hitachi VTL. Wow." (01-Jul-2006)
Hitachi's New Generation Active Archive Platform
"ITCentrix believes the architecture developed by Hitachi conceptually provides the best archiving platform available in the industry. It simplifies the development of applications and provides optimum performance. Because data is held independent of the applications, archive data can use the same infrastructure resources as any other production data." (09-Jun-2006)
Attacking the NAS Market With Compelling Business Value
"With general availability in February 2006 of two types of NAS solutions, Hitachi Data Systems has signaled its intent to make an aggressive move into the NAS market space and compete in the long-term. The first is the introduction of a new product family of Hitachi TagmaStore™ Workgroup Modular Storage and Adaptable Modular Storage (WMS and AMS) low-end to midrange NAS filers. The second solution is the improved performance of the original NAS Blade add-ons to the Hitachi TagmaStore™ Universal Storage Platform (USP) and Network Storage Controller (NSC), which attack the SAN/NAS integrated storage market. Hitachi Data Systems has quickly become the high-end storage market leader with the success of its USP and NSC. The company is leveraging this expanded customer base to address the NAS market. Each NAS product has distinct value components." (22-Feb-2006)
Hitachi's Storage Management Vision Expands Reach and Range
“Our extensive analysis clearly shows the NSC provides impressive efficiencies. Relative to competitive best-of-breed midrange storage products, the NSC can reduce total cost of ownership by as much as 32-percent over a three-year period.”
(11-Jul-2005)
Managing Storage across the Data Center with Hitachi TagmaStore Universal Storage Platform
"ITCentrix has looked in detail at the business case for this new approach to storage management in two environments, a banking organization, and a large manufacturing firm. The business case in both is compelling, with break-evens of 6 months or less, triple-digit ROI, and a more than 30% reduction in the total cost of storage and storage management.
ITCentrix recommends users investigate this new approach, which potentially offers the best of both worlds; a choice of hardware platform best suited to the cost, performance, and functionality requirements of the application and user budget, and a single simplified storage management infrastructure, with significant reductions in management and operational savings." (07-Sep-2004)
