HDS Introduces Software for Enterprise Storage Array Clustering

Furthering its commitment to economically superior enterprise-class storage innovation, Hitachi Data Systems Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., announced the Hitachi High Availability Manager, the industry’s first open systems storage array clustering technology that delivers 100% accessibility of business-critical data assets and offers customers future-proofing of their storage investments over time.

In the current climate of economic slowdown and capital constraint, the need for an efficiency optimized storage infrastructure has become paramount. Compounding this challenge is the significant operational risk associated with data migrations as legacy storage systems come off lease, or as a result of extended or unexpected downtime. By consolidating, increasing utilization and improving data mobility through Hitachi virtualization technologies, customers can maximize the investment return and protection of their storage assets and save money. With five years of storage virtualization innovation, customers worldwide continue to invest and rely on Hitachi to curb their most pressing efficiency and data protection pain points.

"In today’s difficult economy, IT organizations face tightening budgets but must continue to improve the protection and management of their company’s rapidly growing pools of information. One major and fast growing operational cost is the time and money that IT organizations spend to migrate data to new, more cost effective solutions," said Richard Villars, Vice President for Storage Systems and IT Strategies. "Solutions like the Hitachi High Availability Manager provide customers with instantaneous failover and recovery capabilities that can dramatically reduce data management costs while also reducing application downtime."

Breakthrough Hitachi High Availability Manager
for the Hitachi Universal Storage Platform V

• Built on the foundation of the pioneering Hitachi Universal Storage Platform V family and its unique ability to manage virtualized devices, the Hitachi High Availability Manager is the industry’s first continuous availability solution for both internal storage and externally attached heterogeneous storage – all under common and integrated management.
• Its cutting-edge architecture enables local and remote clustering for seamless, transparent movement of storage pools from one Universal Storage Platform to another system, with zero disruption to business operations.
• Coupled with advanced failover capabilities, customers gain the highest industry standard of availability to protect data assets during both planned and unplanned outages, and eliminate the potential risk of data inaccessibility from the host to primary storage.
• In conjunction with market-proven array-based replication technologies, Hitachi Universal Replicator and Hitachi TrueCopy software, the Hitachi High Availability Manager can be used to failover storage pools non-disruptively across storage systems, enabling instant data access recovery at the primary site or at a remote site, due to unexpected downtime.

Thomson Reuters is the world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals. Christopher Crowhurst, Vice President of Strategic Technology for the Professional Division of Thomson Reuters said: “As an early evaluator of the Hitachi High Availability Manager, we have experienced first-hand the potential operational resilience and efficiency benefits of this clustering technology built on the foundation of the Hitachi USP V platform. This robust solution combines continuous high-availability and disaster recovery protection in virtualized SAN environments and the ability to seamlessly migrate data between arrays, and to refresh the SAN non-disruptively. This design helps remove the impact of potential failures, reduce management costs, and simplify business operations, and was a major reason behind our adoption of the Hitachi USP V platform as our preferred SAN virtualization solution going forward.”

Claus Mikkelsen, CTO of Storage Architectures, Hitachi Data Systems said: “Application downtime, for any reason, is one of the highest priority concerns of customers that can cause billions of dollars in lost business opportunity. Clustering is a critical feature of an integrated virtualized storage strategy and Hitachi is the only storage company that is delivering this type of innovation in the market today. Hitachi is extending its leadership in providing innovative capabilities for customers, which translates into storage investment protection and the assurance that critical data assets are optimized and protected.”

Hitachi Data Systems also announced enhanced support for IBM FlashCopy technology. When leveraged in conjunction with Hitachi Universal Replicator software, this new functionality provides customers improved business continuity and disaster recovery strategies in both two data center point to point operation and three data center multi-target configurations.