MLC Flash System From HDS, 8U, Up to 77TB, for Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform

Hitachi Data Systems Corporation unveiled Hitachi Accelerated Flash storage.

This new flash module is built specifically for the most demanding enterprise workloads. It features a custom-designed, rack-optimized form factor and flash memory controller technology from Hitachi, Ltd.

These features let the module achieve higher performance, lower cost per bit and greater capacity compared to conventional SSDs.

Hitachi Accelerated Flash storage is available for enterprise solution, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP). Now customers can realize a superior return on their flash investment with lower operating expenses. Hitachi Accelerated Flash storage incorporates the recently introduced flash memory controller from Hitachi, Ltd., and this announcement marks the next phase of the HDS flash strategy and roadmap first announced in August.

"Today’s announcement is a milestone achievement in how flash technology will be used in the enterprise data center moving forward," said Roberto Basilio, VP, Infrastructure Platforms Product Management, HDS. "Hitachi Accelerated Flash storage is the first flash device that is optimized for the performance and reliability required for mission-critical applications. These applications include OLTP databases, ERP, financial data management, metadata and indexing. Because of the innovative multi-core flash controller technology from Hitachi, we are able to use MLC flash in enterprise applications by extending MLC endurance and exceeding the performance of SLC flash. The result is the lowest cost per bit of any enterprise MLC flash solution on the market today."

Flash technology has become more pervasive in the data center over the past few years. However, its widespread adoption as a mainstream storage option has been hampered by high costs, limited endurance and sub-optimal write performance. IT organizations have been forced to make tradeoffs in performance and capacity to reach the cost points that their shrinking budgets can accommodate. Hitachi Accelerated Flash storage changes this model by eliminating these tradeoffs and answering customer demands for capacity and performance at the low cost per bit. It changes the model by leveraging advanced Hitachi controller technology to increase the performance of MLC flash to levels that exceed those of more costly SLC flash. It also extends MLC flash endurance to enterprise levels.

Hitachi Accelerated Flash storage introduces several capabilities including inline write compression that speeds writes on flash and improves MLC flash memory endurance. When compared to 400GB MLC SSDs, it features 4 times better performance, improved environmental characteristics (power and space), and up to 46% lower cost per bit. To provide customers with more capacity cost savings, it is compatible with all Hitachi VSP features, including Hitachi Dynamic Tiering (HDT). This capability lets the system automatically optimize data placement by putting the most active data on Hitachi Accelerated Flash storage when the highest performance is required, and placing less-active data on cost-optimized, lower performance disk.

Hitachi Accelerated Flash storage fits into a new 8U flash chassis. Each enclosure can scale from 6.4TB up to 76.8TB of flash storage, giving it 2 times greater density than the largest MLC SSD available today. Up to 4 flash enclosures can be housed in Hitachi VSP, enabling more than 300TB of flash per system. This deployment gives existing VSP customers the flexibility to architect cost-effective, tiered storage environments with HDT that address the most demanding performance workloads. Customers can do this while maintaining the same storage management environment, external storage virtualization support, uptime and functionality they are accustomed to from VSP.

The HDS flash roadmap spans across servers, storage and appliances to enable compute acceleration, caching and high-performance storage media use cases. HDS will continue to expand its roadmap with additional flash-optimized solutions that are efficient, available and resilient. These new solutions will improve customers’ return on flash investments and lower operating expenses compared to alternative or single-purpose flash products.

Comment from Hu Yoshida, HDS VP and CTO