HDS Enhances AMS 2000

Hitachi Data Systems Corporation announced a series of new capabilities for the Adaptable Modular Storage (AMS) 2000 family that enable customers to achieve a better return on their storage infrastructures.

The new features include SAS disks for high density trays and an expanded rack capacity to deliver high density tiered storage solutions that scale to extremely large capacities. Hitachi Data Systems also announced new storage consolidation solutions that give customers the flexibility to start small and later expand the number of host ports as their businesses and data center operations grow, as well as new multiprotocol host port options for AMS 2100 and 2300 models.

"With this latest solution enhancement Hitachi Data Systems continues our momentum to empower channel partners to reduce their customer costs while increasing asset utilization at the pace of their business," said Mike Walkey, senior vice president, Global Channels and Solutions GTM, Hitachi Data Systems. "By starting small and later expanding, this new solution gives our partners the ability to achieve energy efficiency without compromising the reliability, availability or security of their customers’ IT infrastructure."

Hitachi Data Systems provides high density storage solutions that perform at the highest levels, while enabling customers to save capital expenditures and achieve a better ROI from their storage assets. The AMS 2500 achieved better than 89,000 IOPS as measured by the Storage Performance Council’s SPC-1 benchmark. With the introduction of dense disk trays for SAS drives, along with last year’s release of dense disk trays for SATA drives, Hitachi Data Systems now provides high density tiered storage solutions that enable customers to save in the following ways:

• More Fibre Channel host ports enable customers to consolidate more servers and applications on a single AMS 2000 system to save on capital expenditures, facility costs, energy costs, service costs and operations costs.
• Dense solutions enable customers to put more capacity, nearly a full petabyte, on a floor tile to reduce consumption of expensive floor space in the data center.
• iSCSI and Fibre Channel multiprotocol solutions also enable the consolidation of storage for both of these storage networks onto a single system to protect the storage system investment for customers that are evaluating a switch between network protocols.

Details on the new high density SAS disk trays
and expanded rack capacity include:

• Up to 38 SAS disks can be installed in a highly compact 4U (6.93" or 176mm) tray.
• 47U high rack that can accommodate 10 dense trays and an AMS 2500 controller all in a single rack.
• SAS and SATA dense trays can be intermixed in the same system, enabling highly dense tiered storage solutions.
• High performance SAS storage has twice the density of the standard disk trays.

Additionally, expanded host port options for the Hitachi Adaptable Modular Storage 2100 and 2300 allow consolidation of storage for both Fibre Channel and iSCSI storage networks. They provide investment protection for customers who use iSCSI networks today but want the flexibility to transition to Fibre Channel networks in the future without replacing their storage systems. Every system will ship with a standard number of Fibre Channel host ports. Customers have the flexibility to purchase additional Fibre Channel ports to double the total port count or to purchase additional iSCSI ports for a multiprotocol solution.

"At Bank Hapoalim we strive to get the highest utilization possible from our storage assets. We use both iSCSI and fibre channel storage connections according to the performance demands of the applications. Now we can combine our storage on both types of networks with a single AMS 2000 system without using an iSCSI to fibre channel bridge. This is expected to save us money and reduce risk by eliminating a potential point of failure," said Avi Ben-Shoushan, storage section manager, Bank Hapoalim.

"Hitachi continues to bring industry leading innovation to the AMS 2000 family that leads to cost savings for our customers. These new AMS solutions enable our customers to consolidate even more servers and applications on a single AMS 2000 system. As a result, they can reduce spending on capital equipment and consumption of data center floor space, which also improves the ROI from their storage assets," said Shawn O’Grady, executive vice president, Strategy and Operations, Datalink.

"As our data storage requirements continue to escalate, finding ways to get better utilization of our data center floor space is always a challenge. The High Density Disk Expansion Trays and high capacity 2TB SATA disks from Hitachi have allowed us to stay ahead of this growth within the confines of our existing floor space. We look forward to the SAS disk High Density Expansion Trays to enable further consolidation," said Paul Pronsati, senior vice president, Operations, Taleo.