Industry’s Only 3D Scaling Platform Helps Customers Maximize Performance, Improve Scalability and Provide Investment Protection for VMware Environments
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — February 8, 2011 — Hitachi Data Systems Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT), today announced VMware® vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) support on Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) and, through the platform’s unique 3D scaling architecture, can extend this capability to more than 100 virtualized multivendor storage arrays. As the first storage platform to offer full VAAI support for virtualized storage, Hitachi VSP provides a truly integrated foundation for growing VMware environments, giving customers the flexibility and scalability they need while protecting existing investments.
“While other vendors may support VAAI, only Hitachi Data Systems has the external storage virtualization necessary to address our customers’ top business needs to optimize application performance and reduce IT costs,” said Hu Yoshida, CTO, Hitachi Data Systems. “Competitive approaches require customers to ‘rip and replace’ existing infrastructures and go through the painstaking process of migrating hundreds or even thousands of virtual machines to benefit from VAAI. The 3D scaling architecture of Hitachi VSP allows customers to scale up, out and deep to take immediate benefit of VAAI to improve virtual machine density, scalability and virtualized application performance.”
“VAAI is key in enabling the next wave of VMware adoption," said Mark Bowker, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. “Hitachi's support for VAAI in a heterogeneous storage environments will help customers accelerate virtualization deployments as they wrestle with production applications and are held hostage by the manual configuration, sizing, and performance challenges.”
In a January 2011 CIO Peer2Peer Research Panel poll, 97 percent of respondents indicated they were investing in server virtualization projects and more than 50 percent said they planned to initiate storage virtualization projects over the next 12 months. The number one reason given to support the move to more virtualization-focused initiatives was the need to remedy existing storage and server resource inefficiencies. Hitachi VSP is the only solution available today that cost-effectively solves these challenges. Hitachi VSP provides full VAAI support, including:
- Full Copy: speeds up virtual machine cloning and Storage vMotion in the storage system by up to 18 percent by enabling the storage arrays to make full copies of data within the array
- Write Same (Block Zeroing): speeds up provisioning of new virtual machines by up to 85 percent by eliminating the need to write zero formats, immediately removing previously deleted blocks and increasing the space efficiency of the system
- Hardware Assisted Locking (SCSI Reservation Lock): enables faster locking and improves virtual machine density and performance by up to 35 percent by removing SCSI reservation conflicts
Hitachi VSP 3D scaling, dynamic tiered storage and tight integration with VMware vSphere® provide an ideal IT platform for VMware and cloud environments. Hitachi VSP addresses the challenges of server virtualization as these environments scale, enabling customers to:
- Achieve the highest performance and virtual machine density for virtualized applications in production environments
- Automate and consolidate tiered storage assets while ensuring the highest levels of reliability, performance and availability
- Simplify and unify storage management to maximize IT resources, and importantly, reduce IT costs and minimize risk
- Scale to support large-scale virtualized application environments, including VDI
Hitachi Data Systems is the first company to fully certify virtualized storage with VMware VAAI, and builds upon its July 2010 announcement of Hitachi Adaptable Modular Storage (AMS) family support for VMware vSphere 4.1. Since 2002, Hitachi Data Systems and VMware have delivered innovative, end-to-end virtualization for storage consolidation, backup and archiving, business continuity and storage management. As the leader in storage virtualization and an Elite-level partner in the VMware Technology Alliance Partner program, HDS uniquely bridges the gap between server and storage infrastructures in customers' data centers and helps customers optimize the operational efficiency and resiliency of their IT environments to achieve significant cost savings.
Availability
Hitachi VSP support for VAAI is available worldwide. VMware VAAI is supported on VMware vSphere 4.1 and later.
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About Hitachi Data Systems
Hitachi Data Systems provides best-in-class information technologies, services and solutions that deliver compelling customer ROI, unmatched return on assets (ROA) and demonstrable business impact. With a vision that IT must be virtualized, automated, cloud-ready and sustainable, Hitachi Data Systems offers solutions that improve IT costs and agility. With more than 4,500 employees worldwide, Hitachi Data Systems does business in more than 100 countries and regions. Hitachi Data Systems products, services and solutions are trusted by the world’s leading enterprises, including more than 70 percent of the Fortune 100 and more than 80 percent of the Fortune Global 100. Hitachi Data Systems believes that data drives our world – and information is the new currency. To learn more, visit: http://www.hds.com.
About Hitachi, Ltd.
Hitachi, Ltd., (NYSE: HIT / TSE: 6501), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is a leading global electronics company with approximately 360,000 employees worldwide. Fiscal 2009 (ended March 31, 2010) consolidated revenues totaled 8,968 billion yen ($96.4 billion). Hitachi will focus more than ever on the Social Innovation Business, which includes information and telecommunication systems, power systems, environmental, industrial and transportation systems, and social and urban systems, as well as the sophisticated materials and key devices that support them. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company's website at http://www.hitachi.com.
Press Contacts:
Hitachi Data Systems
Melissa Rossiter
(408) 970-4849
melissa.rossiter@hds.com
Lois Paul & Partners
Greg Funaro
(781) 782-5896
Greg_funaro@lpp.com
© Hitachi Data Systems Corporation 2011. All Rights Reserved. Hitachi is a registered trademark of Hitachi, Ltd. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries. Hitachi Data Systems is a registered trademark and service mark of Hitachi, Ltd. in the United States and other countries.
