Hitachi Vantara Unveils AI Operations Software and New Flash Storage Systems

Hitachi Vantara, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi has introduced new innovations to drive data center modernization. Hitachi unveiled new high-performance storage systems in the industry’s only storage family with a 100% data availability guarantee, and integrated, and cross-platform AI-powered analytics and IT automation software. The all-new, all-flash and hybrid Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) systems and AI operations software give customers unprecedented 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 artificial intelligence 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 vice president of Storage at 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 service level agreements.”

 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 the industry’s most advanced AI operations software portfolio, which includes Hitachi Infrastructure Analytics Advisor, Hitachi Automation Director and Hitachi Data Instance Director to deliver a more agile data infrastructure.

Hitachi Infrastructure Analytics Advisor (HIAA) delivers an AI-powered “brain” to provide deeper data center insights by looking across the data path, including virtual machines, servers, networks and storage. HIAA uses machine learning to more efficiently optimize, troubleshoot and predict data center needs. New 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 Hitachi Automation Director allows immediate fixes based on best practices.

Hitachi Automation Director (HAD) software provides an “engine” for orchestrating the delivery and management of IT resources so that teams can focus on innovation. A highly customizable solution, HAD automates core IT service delivery routines including virtual machine, network zoning and storage and data protection tasks to reduce errors that impact uptime, customer experiences and return on investment (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 Hitachi Data Instance Director (HDID) data protection to safeguard against data loss or downtime.

The new integrations between HIAA, HAD and HDID are part of Hitachi’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 Hitachi VSP to help customers easily 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, vice president, Product, Storage and Availability Business Unit, VMware. "Our joint integration work helps Hitachi VSP customers seamlessly leverage many VMware solutions including VMware vSphere, Virtual Volumes and Site Recovery Manager to simplify daily operations and disaster recovery 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 rock-solid foundation for consistent delivery of data at high speed and low latency, with support for diverse workload requirements and multi-cloud integration. Hitachi’s new all-flash VSP F series and hybrid-flash VSP G series systems support an agile data infrastructure with the industry’s only 100% data availability guarantee and up to 3x more IOPS 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 new enterprise-class Hitachi 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, Hitachi is introducing new midrange models. They include the VSP F350, F370, G350 and G370 systems. The systems are powered by the next generation of Hitachi Storage Virtualization Operating System, SVOS RF, which has been re-architected for increased performance, scalability and data efficiency. All new VSP systems are backed by Hitachi’s new flat service model and come with a Foundation software package that includes Hitachi’s proven infrastructure analytics and copy data management software. All new Hitachi VSP systems are available now.

The new systems have significant improvements compared to prior VSP models:

• Performance scalability: Scaling to more than 2.4M IOPS and 41GB/s of bandwidth.
• More efficiency: Up to 70% more IOPS per core for increased price/performance.
• Greater 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 vice president, Infrastructure and Edge Products at 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 today will help create the agile data infrastructure and intelligent operations our customers need to drive transformation.”