Hitachi Storage Platform: Features & Price

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Bottom Line:

Hitachi is targeting the high end of the AFA market and mission-critical applications. It has one of the highest satisfaction, support and quality ratings with customers. Its entry price can be higher than competitors, but impressive performance numbers make it a strong candidate for many midsize and large enterprise projects.

Jump to: Hitachi VSP Features Table

Company Description:

Hitachi Vantara is a rebranding of Hitachi Data Systems (HDS). Hitachi Vantara was established in the Fall of 2017 through the combination of the capabilities of HDS, Pentaho and Hitachi Insight Group. As a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., it helps data-driven leaders find and use the value in their data to innovate intelligently and reach outcomes that matter for business and society.

Info-Tech Research Group selected the company as a Champion in its Mid-Range Storage 2017 report, calling Hitachi Vantara a feature-rich architecture that is consistent from the enterprise down to mid-range. Customers include Nasdaq, Marketo, Paytronix and Edo.

Product Description:

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) F series is a flash-powered solution for mission-critical applications. The scalability of the VSP F series goes to 34 PB of raw flash capacity and 4.8 million random read IOPS. This allows for consolidation of more applications. The series includes the VSP F350, F370, F700, F900 and F1500 models.  The VSP F1500 is compatible with mainframe workloads. At the heart of every VSP F series model is Storage Virtualization Operating System RF (SVOS RF) which provides storage virtualization, high availability, flash-optimized performance, quality of service controls and data protection.

“This software provides common features, management and interoperability across our portfolio to consolidate assets, reclaim space, extend life, and reduce migration efforts,” said Bob Madaio, Vice President, Infrastructure Solutions Marketing, Hitachi Vantara.

Key Features:

Implementation: 

Very good. The product installation is straightforward and can be accomplished by a novice user in 45 minutes or less. This includes the physical racking of a unit, setting up network connectivity, host mapping, RAID group creation and mapping a volume to a server. Hitachi allows customers to self-install the VSP F350 and F370 which are the smaller and lighter models.

Technical support:

Good, based on level of contract. Hitachi offers three levels of support contracts which vary in terms of response times when onsite service is required. All of their plans include online support tools as well as telephone support services. They also offer remote monitoring and diagnostic services.

“They give us highly-professional consulting for redesigning IT infrastructures focused on flash-centered infrastructures and technical support was also satisfying for me. Implementation was easy,” said the IT Manager in the manufacturing industry

Raw Capacity:

4 PB or clustered up to 34 PB.

Performance:

• 4.8 million random read IOPS.
• 48 GB/s

According to SPC tests from last year, the A800 delivered the most IOPS at both the lowest response time and lowest $/GB than any of the other vendors. Note, however, that since that time several AFAs have been upgrades or entirely replaced.

RAID/Data Protection:

• A 100% data availability guarantee
• Snapshots
• Synchronous replication

Storage Saving Features:

Deduplication and compression. Capacity reduction is selectable at the volume level for optimizing between efficiency and performance.

Data Management:

• Every system comes packaged with software including Hitachi Infrastructure Analytics Advisor (HIAA) for AI-driven insights and Hitachi Data Instance Director (HDID) for protection and copy data management.

• An upgrade to the advanced software package delivers Hitachi Automation Director (HAD) to accelerate deployments and automate resolution of issues discovered by HIAA.

• Support for Docker, Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift as well as OpenStack.

• Quality of Service controls.

• Storage virtualization consolidates external arrays as an extended pool of capacity with common management workflows and monitoring.

• Storage Virtualization Operating System RF (SVOS RF) which provides storage virtualization, high availability, flash-optimized performance, and data protection.

NVMe: No

Delivery:

All models in the VSP F series are sold as appliances where software is packaged with every system.

Pricing:

Starting list price for the all-flash VSP F350 with the Foundation software package is $70,480. The system comes with 7.6TB of flash storage (raw), 36 months standard maintenance, and the Foundation software package, which includes the SVOS RF operating system core functionality and local data protection. It also provides Hitachi Storage Advisor for management, Hitachi Data Instance Director for protection and copy management as well as the AI-powered Hitachi Infrastructure Analytics Advisor.