Hitachi Unified Compute Platform From HDS To Compete Against FlexPod and VSPLEX

Hitachi Data Systems Corporation unveiled a portfolio of converged infrastructure solutions that combines storage, server, networking and software management in integrated packages designed for mission-critical workloads.

The new Hitachi Unified Compute Platform (UCP) family of solutions provides a pre-tested cloud-ready infrastructure that can be deployed and managed easily, unlike custom approaches that require exhaustive testing and integration costs. Eleven new Hitachi UCP offerings give customers flexibility and choices, based on two converged infrastructure models:

• Hitachi UCP Pro: pre-configured, integrated turnkey solutions built with HDS servers and storage, and industry-standard networking. The initial offering in this family of solutions is UCP Pro for vSphere, which features Hitachi UCP director software that provides vCenter Server integrated management and orchestration.
• Hitachi UCP Select: a series of pre-validated reference solutions that can be configured using a selection of Hitachi storage, server and software management, for a range of top-tier applications. It also offers converged solutions with Cisco Systems, Inc. Unified Computing System (Cisco UCS) servers. Hitachi UCP Select is for organizations that require a flexible converged infrastructure.

All Hitachi UCP converged infrastructure solutions are designs to solve the reliability, availability, scalability and performance challenges that IT organizations face when using many first-generation converged infrastructure stacks.

HDS demonstrated the UCP solutions at VMworld 2012 Europe taking place in Barcelona, Spain from October 9 to 11, 2012.

"Converged infrastructure solutions have been available in the market for some time, but when enterprise organizations and cloud service providers encounter the requirements of true mission-critical workloads, these first-generation converged offerings fall short of customer needs," said Ravi Chalaka, VP, Solutions Marketing, HDS. "Until today, organizations looking for a converged infrastructure solution had to choose from commodity systems that lack high reliability and availability, and have limited scalability and performance. Or they have had to choose integrated stacks with no truly unified infrastructure management."

With the range of UCP solutions, the company is addressing the pressing needs of CIOs when considering a converged infrastructure. These needs include accelerating business velocity, increasing staff productivity, improving IT economics for pre- and post-deployment, and meeting SLAs.

"The battleground over integrated compute and storage stacks is heating up with HDS coming out strong with its new converged infrastructure portfolio," said Ashish Nadkarni, research director, Storage Systems, IDC. "This market has been served by either solution providers including all components from the same vendor or by pre-configured and pre-tested packages comprised of best-of-breed components from different vendors woven together by a mandatory management framework. HDS is breaking this ‘either/or’’ mold by combining the best of each approach. Hitachi UCP lets customers choose from a fully integrated stack of Hitachi servers and storage complete with orchestration software; or, from a portfolio of reference solutions featuring HDS storage that use either Hitachi or third-party servers. And by including Cisco UCS in its solutions, HDS provides its customers greater flexibility in mixing and matching these elements – all while maintaining the reliability and performance that has earned HDS the reputation of being bulletproof in the minds of many CIOs."

Hitachi UCP Pro for vSphere Delivers
Automation, Orchestration and Monitoring
of Physical Infrastructure
Within vCenter Management Software
It is an integrated solution available and comes pre-configured with the enterprise storage product, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP), and Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.‘s FC and Ethernet fabric switches, Hitachi Compute Blade 500 server, vSphere and UCP director software. This software reduces complexity and lowers cost by providing vCenter Server integration forsimplified infrastructure management. UCP Pro for VMware vSphere also provides worry-free scaling to thousands of VMs.

UCP director software has the capability of giving administrators detailed views, management and orchestration of the underlying physical infrastructure in addition to virtual servers. UCP director enables administrators to use the same familiar vCenter Server graphical user interface for orchestrating servers, networking and storage, and eliminates error prone, time-consuming manual tasks.

"Hitachi Data Systems continues its innovation with the new UCP family," said Parag Patel, VP, Global Strategic Alliances, VMware. "This offering holds significance for VMware customers as it provides four distinct solutions that help provide our joint customers with predictable, reliable platforms for the migration of business-critical applications. UCP Pro for VMware vSphere, with its UCP director software, delivers a robust VM platform that can provide businesses the agility they require. This is accomplished via the solution’s powerful capabilities to manage, provision, monitor and troubleshoot the entire infrastructure – both virtual and physical – all natively from within VMware vCenter Server. UCP Select reference solutions provide flexibility in server, storage and networking components, with the assurance of pre-tested, validated architectures that have been designed to handle the most demanding workloads."

Hitachi UCP Select:
Solutions to Offer IT Organizations
Flexibility and Choice
Realizing that a gap existed in the market for converged systems capable of solving the challenges of mission-critical workloads, HDS developed a range of pre-validated reference solutions that integrate the performance and reliability of Hitachi storage systems with servers, data networking and software management. Hitachi UCP Select reference solutions are validated frameworks that speed deployment and reduce risks across data center deployments. These solutions give customers and partners the flexibility to choose from pre-tested elements of the converged system without UCP director software. Customers and partners can select from solutions based on Hitachi storage and servers and Brocade FC and Ethernet fabric switches, or Hitachi storage and Cisco UCS servers and networking.

Hitachi UCP Select for vSphere with Cisco UCS is the initial offering that combines Hitachi storage with Cisco UCS servers and networking as a Cisco Validated Design (CVD), and is pre-validated with vSphere. In addition to the technical and economic advantages, organizations benefit from a coordinated relationship among VMware, Cisco, and HDS,.

"Hitachi Data Systems and Cisco are building on our decade-long partnership to deliver the first design validated by Hitachi Data Systems and Cisco," said Rick Snyder, VP, Global and Strategic Partner Organization, Cisco. "By bringing together two industry leaders in enterprise data center solutions, HDS and Cisco have created an agile, scalable and efficient reference architecture that provides customers and channel partners with an easy-to-deploy HDS and Cisco based unified compute solution."

The portfolio of UCP Select reference solutions that are based on Hitachi storage and servers and Brocade FC and Ethernet fabric switches support major enabling software technologies such as hypervisors, databases, analytics and application environments including Citrix, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and VMware. IT professionals can select the infrastructure options that meet their needs, with the assurance of flexibility and interoperability to scale the architecture as business needs evolve.

Also provided are reference architectures and deployment guides.

Following are 9 UCP Select reference solutions:

• Hitachi UCP Select for Citrix Xen Desktop
• Hitachi UCP Select for Microsoft Exchange 2010
• Hitachi UCP Select for Microsoft Private Cloud
• Hitachi UCP Select for Microsoft SQL Server 2008
• Hitachi UCP Select for Microsoft SQL Server 2012
• Hitachi UCP Select for Oracle Database
• Hitachi UCP Select for SAP HANA
• Hitachi UCP Select for VMware View
• Hitachi UCP Select for VMware vSphere

Partner Benefits and Support
Hitachi UCP Pro and UCP Select solutions are supported by a global services organization and a network of partners to help reduce operational and capital costs. The portfolio of Hitachi UCP solutions provides the global network of HDS channel partners with competitive converged options and delivers substantial incremental services opportunities including integration, install and solutions support. These offerings coupled with the HDS Service Specialization Program (SSP) provides partners with a skill set including enablement education, tools and expertise to grow their services revenue and profitability.

Several strategic partners, including technology partners Brocade and Intel, and Hitachi TrueNorth Partners including Arrow, Avnet and ViON have endorsed Hitachi UCP solutions to deliver a range of converged infrastructure options for their customers.

"The integration of virtual to physical infrastructure management provided by Hitachi Unified Compute Platform Pro for VMware vSphere is excellent. The ability of the HDS solution to centrally monitor the health status of all the physical elements and initiate proactive operations in VMware vCenter Server to load balance workloads in the event of physical element failure is outstanding. The high level of flexibility that HDS is providing for storage, server and network configuration inside VMware vCenter Server will serve organizations extremely well," said Tom Simpson, CTO, CBTS.