Breaks the Barrier in Operational Efficiency and Redefines Midrange Storage
Kuala Lumpur, November 18, 2008 -- Hitachi Data Systems, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE:HIT) and the only provider of Services Oriented Storage Solutions, today unveiled its next-generation line-up of midrange storage systems, the Hitachi Adaptable Modular Storage (AMS) 2000 Series. Breaking new ground in operational efficiency, Hitachi Data Systems is introducing a wide range of pioneering technologies, previously unavailable on a midrange storage platform, that deliver improved performance, connectivity, scalability, reliability and ease-of-use to midrange customers, and demonstrate Hitachi’s rich heritage of world-class storage innovation. Customers benefit by implementing a sophisticated, cost-effective midrange storage platform that can scale to better address their growing storage environments and diverse application requirements.
"Despite the fact that mid-sized businesses and operations have precisely the same challenges as larger ones, all too often the storage industry has met their needs for reduced scale and increased affordability with a significantly compromised feature set," said Mark Peters, analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. "The new AMS products from Hitachi turn such old-fashioned notions on their head, providing mid-sized storage systems that blend advanced functionality and affordability with flexibility and ease of use. Hitachi's innovative combination of a SAS backend with an advanced active-active controller is what underpins the systems' extensive capabilities, which users can access via a straightforward GUI.” 
The Hitachi AMS Series 2000 delivers up to 4x the performance compared to prior generations, and also offers storage consolidation for iSCSI, NAS, and Fibre Channel storage area network (SAN) connections. The AMS Series 2000 is comprised of three models: the Hitachi AMS 2100, the Hitachi AMS 2300, and the Hitachi AMS 2500. The entire portfolio of midrange storage systems meets the benchmarking standard "Five 9's" of availability, 99.999 percent uptime. The new Hitachi AMS Series 2000 delivers the following technology breakthroughs:
The industry’s Hitachi Dynamic Load Balancing Controller turbocharges the storage system to peak levels of performance with virtually no-touch. Unlike asymmetrical controller designs of traditional midrange storage systems, the breakthrough Hitachi Dynamic Load Balancing Controller eliminates typical bottlenecks and “hot spots” that can decrease I/O response times by monitoring utilisation rates of each controller and dynamically enables workload balancing.
The industry’s first 3Gb/s Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) Backplane in a midrange storage platform, providing the fastest, most cost-effective way to process and transfer data through a storage controller engine. This breakthrough technology curbs the architectural limitations of arbitrated loop designs with support for up to 32 3Gb/s high-performance point-to-point links that deliver a blistering 9600 MB/sec of bandwidth and dramatically speed data transfer.
“With the depth and breadth of their midrange portfolio and strong channel partnership culture, Hitachi Data Systems is uniquely positioned in the midrange storage market,” said Layne Hellickson, storage solutions consultant, Advanced Systems Group. “We’re proud to partner with Hitachi Data Systems and help meet the evolving needs of our joint customers, while pushing the evolution of the storage market forward.”
“Spin down; Spin up” Power Savings Feature that enables hard disk drives to be powered down when not being accessed by a business application, and powered up quickly when the application requires them. In the face of rising energy costs and datacenter power consumption, the “spin down” feature significantly reduces the cost of storing and delivering information, thereby minimising carbon footprints and cooling costs. This provides an ideal solution for customers with large archived data or virtual tape libraries where data is accessed infrequently.
Optimised for Virtual Server Environments through the combination of its Dynamic Load Balancing Controller and SAS backplane, the Hitachi AMS Series 2000 addresses the impact that server virtualisation technology places on traditional storage architectures, such as performance imbalances, provisioning difficulties, and overall quality-of-service issues, and negates current architectural shortcoming of traditional midrange platforms.
"The shift to a virtualised IT environment, creation of richer digital content, and expanded use of data replication are driving major changes in modular storage systems," said Richard Villars, Vice President of storage systems research at IDC. "Products like Hitachi's new generation of modular storage systems address organisations’ need for storage solutions that deliver improved scalability, operational efficiency, and IT responsiveness while making it easier to control costs."
o Future Support for Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning to enhance storage capacity utilisation and minimise costs by allowing virtual disk storage to be allocated based on future application requirements. If the need for additional physical disk arises, capacity can be purchased at a later time (and at a lower cost) and implementation occurs transparently, without any disruption to mission-critical applications. Hitachi Data Systems was first to deliver enterprise-class thin provisioning for both internal and externally-attached heterogeneous storage on the Hitachi Universal Storage Platform V Series in 2007.
Johnson Khoo, Managing Director, Hitachi Data Systems Malaysia stated: “Hitachi Data Systems is leveraging its deep R&D expertise and storage innovation to offer customers best-in-class technologies and solutions that deliver ease of management, reliability and scalability, aimed at meeting the ever-growing demands of midrange customers. The Hitachi AMS Series 2000 delivers tangible efficiencies not only to business operations, but also to the environmentals of the data center. In the face of dwindling IT budgets and high energy costs, this is a very powerful value proposition that will enable Hitachi Data Systems to accelerate its penetration into the midrange storage market.”
“The AMS 2000 platform is undoubtedly one of the top midrange storage products available today, Pavel Miloschewsky, General Director, MHM Computer. ”The capability the load balancing active/active controller provides for large capacity volumes is a feature customers are now seeking in abundance. Hitachi Data Systems has surpassed our expectations and will do so with customers alike.”
Hitachi Data Systems also announced additional updates to its midrange storage portfolio with security and data protection capabilities enhancements to its Hitachi USP VM storage system for those customers interested in enterprise-class functionality in a smaller configuration (see separate press release). With evolving economic challenges and ever-changing business requirements, customers need greater flexibility for their storage infrastructure, the new Hitachi midrange portfolio provides a comprehensive set of solutions that deliver an industry-first platform as well as enterprise-class functionality ideally suited midrange environments such as, storage virtualisation, dynamic tiering, and advanced replication, allowing customers to further enhance their return on storage assets investments. With the combination of the new Hitachi AMS Series 2000 and the newly enhanced USP VM, Hitachi Data Systems is providing the most comprehensive midrange storage portfolio to maximise storage asset investments and optimise operational efficiency and resilience.
For more information on the Hitachi Adaptable Modular System Series 2000, please visit http://www.hds.com/products/storage-systems/adaptable-modular-storage-2000-family/index.html.
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Hitachi Data Systems Introduces Enhancements to the Hitachi Universal Storage Platform Family"Hitachi Data Systems continues to outdistance its competitors with innovative solutions that directly address the needs of customers," said Josh Krischer, founder, Josh Krischer & Associates. "What makes this solution so effective is the Hitachi high-end enterprise controller design which enables most advanced functionality – including advanced security features such as the new internal data encryption, virtualisation, 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.”
New Encryption of Data-at-Rest Feature
Further recognising customers’ needs to reduce business risk and comply with increasingly stringent security requirements, Hitachi Data Systems is offering several enhanced security features to enable customers to focus on regulatory compliance and corporate governance, while reducing complexity and cost. The enhancements also enable significant heat and power savings, compared with other alternative technologies.
The new controller-based encryption of data-at-rest feature provides confidentiality protection for internal hard disk drives 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. This means that IT managers can 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.
Additionally, the integrated key management can 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. Hitachi is the only vendor that encrypts data through the storage controller, and therefore does not require host CPU power or expensive inline appliances. This benefits customers by offering lower cost, a lower energy footprint, and greater heat and power savings.
Bryan Cripps, Storage Architect of Sealed Air Corporation, a leading global innovator and manufacturer of a wide range of protective packaging and performance-based materials including BubbleWrap® stated: “Leveraging the advanced enterprise-class functionality of the Hitachi Universal Storage Platform V, we’re 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 our most demanding workloads. This solution has enabled us to further reduce management complexity and ownership costs while keeping the business running smoothly.”
Improved Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning Software for Performance Optimisation
Hitachi Data Systems is also announcing enhancements to the Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning software, including dynamic online virtual volume expansion for Microsoft® Windows® servers and extended support for Hitachi TrueCopy® Remote Replication and Hitachi Universal Replicator software. The extended support enables pair operations between dynamically provisioned volumes and static volumes, and online Dynamic Provisioning volume capacity expansion. The improvements to the Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning software benefits customers by offering greater flexibility both in daily data asset protection functions and disaster recovery procedures without sacrificing storage savings, administrative simplification and performance optimisation.
Enhanced Business Continuity Capabilities
Hitachi Data Systems is offering enhanced functionality to the Hitachi Universal Replicator and Hitachi TrueCopy® software solutions, which is designed to protect against data loss and enable the continued operation of critical business applications. For IT administrators tasked with managing business continuity, replication and disaster recovery strategies, the new 3 Data Center Universal Replicator cascade pass-through solution, an out-of-region protection strategy, 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. This solution saves storage costs at the intermediate site and provides Hitachi TrueCopy software synchronisation times with long distance recoverability.
“By continually enhancing the industry-leading 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,” said Hu Yoshida, VP and CTO, Hitachi Data Systems. “With these improvements, Hitachi Data Systems 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.”
New Enterprise-Class Data Security Services
In an effort to insulate exposure to legal liabilities or loss of customers’ corporate data assets, Hitachi Data Systems is also introducing two new data security services: Disk Destruction and Recycling Service and Disk Data Eradication Service. Provided via a partnership with PeakData LLC, these services enable both the physical destruction of failed or retired hard disk drives and ensure complete verifiable eradication of data, without interruption to customers’ business-critical operations.
Support for 450GB Hard Disk Drives
For companies needing more storage capacity for their growing data information, Hitachi Data Systems is introducing support for 450GB 15K rpm Fibre Channel disk drives. This provides a new high-capacity, high-performance drive with 50 percent more storage capacity than the currently available 300GB 15K rpm internal disk drive. It allows a greater amount of data to be stored in the same physical space, and reduces costs for power, cooling and data center facilities with the performance advantages of 15K rpm drives.
Best-in-Class Virtualised Tiered Storage Solution for Midrange customers
Additionally, Hitachi Data Systems is introducing a rackless version of the Hitachi USP VM that customers can easily and cost-effectively install in their preferred standard or existing 19-inch rack. With evolving economic challenges and ever-changing business requirements, mid-range customers need more than just a traditional one-size-fits-all architecture and feature set. With features like storage virtualisation, dynamic tiered storage, dynamic provisioning, and advanced data replication, and enhanced security capabilities, the newly enhanced Hitachi USP VM brings high-end capabilities that midrange customers can immediately take advantage of. The Hitachi USP VM in combination with the innovations introduced with the new Hitachi AMS Series 2000 (see separate press release), Hitachi Data Systems is providing the most comprehensive midrange storage portfolio to maximise storage asset investments and optimise operational efficiency and resilience.
Hitachi Data System Malaysia launches its inaugural Annual User Conference 2008 titled ‘Delivering Value Beyond Storage’
Titled ‘Delivering Value beyond Storage – A Services Approach to Data Management’, the one-day conference brought together over 300 technology professionals from a variety of verticals, Hitachi Data Systems partners, industry experts and media on a common networking platform to discuss the storage challenges faced by enterprises today and how storage solutions can be used strategically to derive tangible business benefits.
“Organisations are reeling under the impact of today’s knowledge economy. Data growth is causing severe bottlenecks to organisations who are not equipped to deal with the influx of information. At Hitachi Data Systems, our mission is to help enterprises to maximise the power of their data through the best technology, and a strategic business approach. The event is a mechanism to bring us closer to our customers to understand their issues so that we continue to deliver on our promise of providing excellent service, quality products and most importantly align storage goals to business goals that work in the long term,” said Ravi Rajendran, General Manager, ASEAN, Hitachi Data Systems .
“End-users are making informed decisions on IT infrastructure solutions as they are focused on the long-term impact of the technology services. As markets in Asia move towards sophistication our window of opportunity in guiding enterprises to obtain business value from storage deployment, also increases. The User Conference is a great opportunity for us to listen to our partners and customers, that assists us to serve their needs better,” said Johnson Khoo, Managing Director, Hitachi Data Systems Malaysia.
This year, the annual conference focussed on Hitachi Data Systems Services Oriented Storage Solutions (SOSS) approach to data-management and how it can bring value to an organisation, going beyond the obvious benefits of the storage deployment.
The event also featured talks by industry experts such as Hu Yoshida, Chief Technology Officer, Hitachi Data Systems on “Services Oriented Storage”, Phil Gann, Director, Storage Infrastructure, Asia Pacific, Hitachi Data Systems on “Storage Economics”, Simon Piff, Program Director, AP Storage Research, IDC on “Storage Market Trends”, and also a customer reference presentation by Dato’ Dr. Mohd Shukor bin Hj Mahfar, Deputy Director General (Operations), Inland Revenue Board of Malaysia (Lembaga Hasil Dalam Negeri) on “eServices”.
The Hitachi Data Systems Malaysia User Conference 2008 comprised engaging sessions on different aspects of storage and some of today’s most talked about topics like File Services, Virtualisation, SMB Solutions were under the spotlight.
At the event, Hitachi Data Systems also unveiled its next-generation line-up of midrange storage systems, the Hitachi Adaptable Modular Storage (AMS) 2000 Series. Breaking new ground in operational efficiency, Hitachi Data Systems is introducing a wide range of pioneering technologies, previously unavailable on a midrange storage platform, that deliver improved performance, connectivity, scalability, reliability and ease-of-use to midrange customers, and demonstrate Hitachi’s rich heritage of world-class storage innovation. (please refer to the attached press release on the AMS 2000 Series for more information).
Hu Yoshida, Vice President and CTO, Hitachi Data Systems, stated today at the press conference for the AMS 2000 Series launch that the amount of digital data created and stored continues to grow at an unabated pace in Asia Pacific. New regulatory and compliance requirements are driving organisations to store more data for longer periods of time and retrieval of archive data. A services oriented approach to storage provides customers the agility to align with changing business requirements by leveraging current investments.
“Consolidation, increasing utilisation, eliminating redundancies, and archiving of stale data are some of the fundamental ways to address the issue of exploding data and storage growth. Innovation in key Hitachi technologies like controller-based storage virtualisation, dynamic provisioning and active archive enables Hitachi Data Systems to offer best-in-class storage services that have tangible customer benefits like cost effectiveness, maximum utilisation of existing resources, and business agility to mention a few,” said Hu Yoshida.
Hitachi’s services oriented approach to storage built on a market-proven storage platform, when combined with Hitachi’s controller-based storage virtualisation technology, can be easily deployed to externally attached, multi-vendor storage devices. Customers gain many measurable benefits including storage consolidation, improved utilisation of assets, reduced total cost of ownership (TCO), and a lower environmental footprint, across the enterprise.
The sponsors for this year’s conference include Hitachi Asia (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, 3Com Asia Limited (Malaysia), Business Network Alliance, Springlab Distribution Sdn Bhd, CommVault, VMware and Cisco Systems (M) Sdn Bhd. Brocade, Casio and Sony Malaysia sponsored the Lucky Draw prizes.
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