Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform
Name	Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform
Developer	Hitachi Vantara
Released	2010
Genre	Enterprise storage

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform. The Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is a family of enterprise storage systems developed by Hitachi Vantara. First introduced in 2010, these platforms are designed for mission-critical applications requiring high availability, scalability, and advanced data services. They form a core component of Hitachi's data infrastructure solutions, competing in markets served by systems from Dell EMC, IBM, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Overview

The platform emerged as a successor to the Hitachi Universal Storage Platform family, marking a shift towards fully virtualized storage architectures. It is engineered to consolidate diverse workloads, from traditional online transaction processing to modern artificial intelligence and analytics applications, within a single, unified system. These systems are often deployed in large-scale data center environments by global corporations and institutions, including those in the financial services, healthcare, and telecommunications sectors. The development and marketing of the platform have been significantly influenced by industry trends toward software-defined storage and hyper-converged infrastructure.

Architecture

The fundamental architecture is based on a scalable, active-active storage controller design that provides non-disruptive operations and data mobility. It utilizes a global cache management system across all nodes, enabling efficient input/output processing and load balancing. The physical hardware is typically organized into blade server-based nodes within a modular enclosure, interconnected via high-speed fabrics like PCI Express and InfiniBand. This design separates the front-end host interfaces from the back-end drive connectivity, allowing independent scaling of performance and capacity. The internal logical volume manager virtualizes all physical storage resources, presenting them as a single pool to connected hosts.

Features and capabilities

Key capabilities include advanced data replication services like synchronous and asynchronous mirroring for business continuity and disaster recovery. The platform supports extensive thin provisioning and automated storage tiering across various media, including solid-state drive and hard disk drive arrays. It offers robust data encryption for security, both at rest and in flight, and integrates quality of service controls to manage performance for specific applications. Other notable features include data compression and data deduplication to improve storage efficiency, as well as snapshot (computer storage) and clone (computing) functionality for data protection and testing.

Models and specifications

The product line has evolved through several generations, such as the VSP G1000, VSP G1500, and the later VSP 5000 series, each offering increased performance and density. Specifications vary by model but generally support a vast number of host connections via protocols including Fibre Channel, iSCSI, FCoE, and NVMe over Fabrics. Maximum raw capacities can scale into multiple petabytes, supported by configurations with thousands of SSD or HDD drives. Performance metrics, measured in IOPS and throughput, are often benchmarked against competitors like IBM DS8000 and Dell EMC PowerMax. Each generation typically introduces newer Intel Xeon or similar processors and increased dynamic random-access memory for cache.

Software and management

The system is managed primarily through the Hitachi Storage Virtualization Operating System, which provides the core functionality for virtualization, replication, and provisioning. The Hitachi Command Suite is a central graphical user interface for monitoring, reporting, and automation across multiple storage systems. For mainframe computer environments, specific software packages like Hitachi Mainframe Operating System support are available. Integration with broader ecosystem tools includes plugins for VMware vCenter, Microsoft System Center, and Red Hat Ansible for orchestration. The platform also supports REST APIs for programmatic control and integration into DevOps pipelines.

Integration and compatibility

The platform is designed for broad interoperability within complex IT infrastructure. It is certified for and commonly integrated with major enterprise applications from SAP, Oracle Corporation, and Microsoft SQL Server. In virtualized environments, it provides deep support for VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Red Hat Virtualization. For cloud computing strategies, it offers connectivity and data mobility services to public clouds like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and the Google Cloud Platform. Compatibility with containerization platforms such as Kubernetes is facilitated through CSI drivers, enabling persistent storage for modern, cloud-native applications.

Category:Computer storage Category:Hitachi Category:Data center infrastructure