HDS With New Converged Data Center Solutions

Hitachi Data Systems Corporation announced the first in a portfolio of converged data centre solutions to automate, accelerate and simplify cloud adoption.

                                                Unified Compute Platform

Hitachi converged data centre solutions combine and optimise enterprise class storage systems and compute blades from Hitachi as well as standard network infrastructure components for a range of applications and cloud environments. Through quicker deployment, automation and scalability, the new solutions help organisations adopt cloud at their own pace and see predictable results with faster time to value.
 
Hitachi converged data centre solutions enable the creation of a cloud foundation – or infrastructure cloud – using integrated, shared components including storage, compute and data networking. Many organisations want private cloud benefits but aren’t sure how to begin because of few standards, integrations and certifications for cloud deployments that bring predictable and reliable results. The convergence of storage, compute and network elements offered by Hitachi converged data centre solutions delivers advantages in enterprise class reliability, deployment speed, performance and management compared to loosely coupled solutions that have not been optimised for integration. The Hitachi solutions also give organisations answers to many cloud unknowns, simplify the order and deployment process, and produce quantifiable results.
 
"Hitachi Data Systems is keenly focused on simplifying and accelerating our customers’ cloud environments while protecting their IT investments," said John Mansfield, senior vice president, Global Solutions Strategy and Development, Hitachi Data Systems. "Our new integrated Hitachi converged solutions take that commitment one step further by extending the heritage of reliability and expertise in our Hitachi storage technologies to now include compute resources. This will help our customers to build an infrastructure cloud easily, cost effectively and reliably. It enables them to transition to a cloud delivery model at a pace they are comfortable with and that makes the most sense for their business. Ultimately, these solutions help transform customers’ data centres into automated information centres that closely align business objectives with infrastructure performance to optimise return on assets."
 
"In today’s fast evolving and economically challenging business world, IT organisations must spend less time configuring and managing individual devices or applications and dedicate more time developing, delivering, and enhancing new services," said Richard Villars, vice president of storage and IT executive strategies, IDC. "Companies like HDS that are providing converged data centre solutions built on a scalable, reliable, and flexible storage foundation will play a critical role in organisations’ data centre transformation efforts."
 
Hitachi Converged Data Centre Solutions Components
Hitachi converged data centre solutions combine storage, compute and networking with software management, automation and optimisation. This enables resource self-provisioning and usage tracking, delivers optimisation at the application, platform, and hypervisor levels and provides flexibility to consume technology as needed.

The initial set of converged solutions will include:

• Hitachi solutions built on Microsoft Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track: A combination of Hitachi storage and compute with networking and Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V and System Centre for private cloud infrastructures and an avenue for further automation and orchestration.
• Hitachi Converged Platform for Microsoft Exchange 2010: The first in a portfolio of pre-tested application-specific converged solutions. Engineered for rapid deployment and integrated with Exchange 2010’s new features for resilience, predictable performance and seamless scalability. Supported by Hitachi global services and delivered in an easy to order package.
• Hitachi Unified Compute Platform (UCP): Orchestration across Technology Boundaries. A critical element of the HDS converged data centre strategy, UCP provides orchestration and management within the portfolio of Hitachi converged solutions. With orchestrated software, UCP centralises and orchestrates the management of servers, storage and networking as business resource pools from a simple yet comprehensive interface. Through built in intelligence across technology boundaries, it offers large scale compute environments the advantages of IT agility aligned to business goals and the reduction of cost and risk by creating an infrastructure that is robust, automated, cohesive and flexible.
• Hitachi Compute Blade: Cloud-enabling Engines for Configuration Flexibility. Hitachi has been in the compute business for more than 50 years through its mainframe heritage, and Hitachi Compute Blade products have been available in the Japan market since 2004. Hitachi Data Systems compute strategy leverages its compute blade heritage to integrate this functionality with its converged data centre solutions, bringing enterprise class reliability and performance to customers. Integrated with Hitachi storage, Hitachi Compute Blade provides the compute capability to enable HDS cloud infrastructure and converged data centre environments.   

HDS offers two distinct cloud-enabling compute engines that deliver configuration flexibility to customers. Hitachi Compute Blade 2000 and Hitachi Compute Blade 320, with logical partitions (LPAR) technology, are X86 enterprise class blade servers to offer mainframe functionality. HDS LPAR technology is an embedded virtualisation feature that builds virtualisation right into a blade server’s hardware. Because it is hardware-based virtualisation, LPAR technology provides a greater level of security through physical partitioning and can be used in conjunction with other software-based virtualisation technologies. It enables customers to decrease overhead costs while increasing manageability, reliability and performance. Hitachi Compute Blade 2000 with LPAR includes blade SMP interconnect technology that improves scalability by allowing users to configure multiple blades to work as a single system.
 
Hitachi Compute Blade enables customers to have selected blades running LPARs next to other blades, Microsoft Hyper-V or VMware, all in the same chassis.
 
Customer Benefits
of Hitachi Converged Data Centre Solutions

• Predictable, repeatable, reliable results: Pre-validated reference architectures, pre-packed solutions with enterprise components in the whole stack, and targeted pre-configuration ensure consistent, predictable results as organisations build their infrastructure cloud. Guidance, templates and built-in automation further extend the ability to replicate process and results.
• Faster time to value: Quicker, simpler deployment offered from a single source for ordering and for providing services for planning and implementation. For particular converged solutions, pre-configuration of key components drastically reduces onsite deployment time. Intelligent automation of complex tasks enables provisioning of resources with the assurance that the appropriate underlying infrastructure components are in place.
• Cloud at your own pace: Customers can implement their infrastructure cloud now, build it over time, and combine different solutions and even extend solutions to current IT infrastructure. Optimised solutions for generic workloads, business critical workloads and specific application and hypervisor environments have a varied level of convergence based on customer need, ranging from reference architectures to more convergence.

"Avanade is excited to work with Hitachi Data Systems on its Microsoft Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track solution. We see the Hitachi solution supporting some key requirements that enterprises demand of their computing platforms, namely high availability and high performance. By providing customised services for Hitachi solutions built on Microsoft Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track, together we enable businesses to take advantage of pre-validated solutions that are tailored to their specific needs. We have begun hosting customer workloads and our customers are delighted with the performance and reliability they’re seeing", said Patrick Cimprich, vice president and chief architect, Global Technologies and Solutions, Avanade, Inc.

"Brocade is enabling customers to build fabric-based networks, which are a fundamental requirement in supporting highly virtualised data centres and cloud environments. Hitachi converged data centre solutions address our mutual customers’ needs to optimise infrastructure for various application and cloud environments – providing solutions with unmatched simplicity and complete investment protection", said Jason Nolet, vice president, Data Centre and Enterprise Networking, Brocade.

"Jafra’s 500,000 global resellers and cosmetic customers require our business operations to be ‘always on’. To provide the best possible customer experience, we trust in HDS as our IT advisor and solution provider. The end to end flexibility, logical partitions and scalability provided by Hitachi Compute Blade, with world class HDS customer service and support, enables us to deliver a reliable IT environment and improved SLAs for our global operations", said Fernando Merodio, global IT manager, Jafra.

"Microsoft is committed to delivering private cloud solutions with support from industry-leading partners. Technologies such as Hitachi converged data centre solutions that build on Microsoft System Centre, Hyper-V and Exchange provide a solid starting point for customers who need some level of customisation and also want to reduce risk and speed deployment", said Mike Schutz, senior director, Windows Server and Virtualisation Product Management, Microsoft Corp.