Hitachi Data Systems Enhances Hitachi Universal Storage Platform Family

Hitachi (News - Alert) Data Systems has significantly enhanced the Hitachi Universal Storage Platform family. The company continues offering a best-in-class storage services platform that can help customers boost heterogeneous storage asset utilization in order to more efficiently manage business-critical operations and lower storage management costs.

 

Josh Krischer, founder of Josh Krischer & Associates, pointed out that Hitachi Data Systems continues to outdistance its competitors with innovative solutions that directly address the needs of customers.

 

What makes this solution so effective, according to Krischer, is the Hitachi high-end enterprise controller design. This design enables most advanced functionality - including advanced security features such as the new internal data encryption, virtualization, logical partitioning, thin provisioning, business continuity and disaster recovery services - across the enterprise storage infrastructures.

 

“The pace of innovation is unmatched in the industry, which continuously increases the gap between Hitachi Data Systems and its main competitors,” he stated.

 

In an effort to reduce business risk and comply with increasingly stringent security requirements, Hitachi Data Systems is offering a number of enhanced security features that allow customers to focus on regulatory compliance and corporate governance, while reducing complexity and cost. The company claims that the enhancements also enable significant heat and power savings when compared with other alternative technologies.

 

Hitachi Data Systems’ new controller-based encryption of data-at-rest feature provides confidentiality protection for internal hard disk drives. This is achieved by translating the data into secret code in the encrypting back-end director as it is written to the drives and decrypting the data when it is read. IT managers can therefore successfully encrypt data on all of the internal hard disk drives, and return hard disk drives with sensitive information for maintenance purposes, while ensuring data confidentiality.

 

The integrated key management can also be used to securely export encryption keys that can be backed up and stored at an offsite location or with a commercial key escrow service for added security, explained the company’s sources. Because Hitachi encrypts data through the storage controller, it does not require host CPU power or expensive inline appliances.

 

Hitachi Universal Storage Platform V greatly benefitted Sealed Air Corporation, a global innovator and manufacturer of a wide range of protective packaging and performance-based materials including BubbleWrap. Bryan Cripps, Storage Architect of Sealed Air Corporation stated that leveraging the advanced enterprise-class functionality of the Hitachi Universal Storage Platform V, they are able to unite previously isolated storage systems into one virtual pool of storage to gain data migration and advanced storage management capabilities that meet even their most demanding workloads.

 

This solution has enabled Sealed Air to further reduce management complexity and ownership costs while keeping the business running smoothly.

 

Hitachi Data Systems has also enhanced the Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning software, including dynamic online virtual volume expansion for Microsoft (News - Alert) Windows servers. The company has also extended support for Hitachi TrueCopy Remote Replication and Hitachi Universal Replicator software that enables pair operations between dynamically provisioned volumes and static volumes, and online Dynamic Provisioning volume capacity expansion.

 

The enhanced Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning software offers greater flexibility to customers both in daily data asset protection functions and disaster recovery procedures without sacrificing storage savings, administrative simplification and performance optimization.

 

According to company officials, their company is offering enhanced functionality to the Hitachi Universal Replicator and Hitachi TrueCopy software solutions, which have the ability to protect against data loss and enable the continued operation of critical business applications. The new 3 Data Center Universal Replicator cascade pass-through solution reduces the total storage requirement with the use of dynamically provisioned pools in the intermediate site, and ensures the availability of up-to-date copies of data in dispersed locations. The company adds that this solution saves storage costs at the intermediate site and provides Hitachi TrueCopy software synchronization times with long distance recoverability.

 

Hu Yoshida, VP and CTO, Hitachi Data Systems explained that by continually enhancing the Hitachi Universal Storage Platform V and VM, Hitachi Data Systems is ensuring that customers are able to benefit from the most advanced, critical storage solutions for today's changing business environments.

 

With these improvements, his company is extending its promise of innovation and reliability to customers, while ensuring that companies of varying sizes with different IT demands can benefit from the industry's highest performing and most scalable storage solution in the market today.

 

Hitachi Data Systems is also introducing two new data security services: Disk Destruction and Recycling Service and Disk Data Eradication Service, in a bid to insulate exposure to legal liabilities or loss of customers' corporate data assets. These services enable both the physical destruction of failed or retired hard disk drives and ensure complete verifiable eradication of data, without interrupting customers’ business-critical operations.

 

The company has introduced support for 450GB 15K rpm Fibre Channel disk drives for companies needing more storage capacity for their growing data information. A rackless version of the Hitachi USP VM has also been launched. This version can be easily and cost-effectively installed in customer’s preferred standard or existing 19-inch rack.

 

The newly enhanced Hitachi USP VM boasts features like storage virtualization, dynamic tiered storage, dynamic provisioning, and advanced data replication, and enhanced security capabilities.