University of Kent Enhances Digital Resilience and Data Availability with Hitachi Vantara Data Platform

The University of Kent, an university in the UK, has partnered with Hitachi Vantara, the storage, infrastructure and hybrid cloud management subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., and Trustmarque to deploy a modern storage architecture that enhances service continuity, strengthens cybersecurity, and supports the university’s 17,000 students and vibrant research community. With its existing storage approaching end-of-life, the University of Kent required a modern and resilient storage solution. The university delivers approximately 300 applications to support its students and faculty, in addition to specialist IT infrastructure for advanced scientific research, such as genetic sequencing. With the National Cyber Scurity Centre revealing that the UK faces four ‘nationally significant’ cyber-attacks every week, the university needed an active architecture to reduce cyber risk and ensure service continuity in the event of disaster.The University of Kent selected Hitachi Vantara’s Virtual Storage Platform One (VSP One), delivered by its long-standing partner Trustmarque, to provide robust, high-performance, scalable block storage for its key digital services. The project coincided with the university’s broader digital transformation, including the development of three modern data centers.

The deployment features Hitachi Vantara’s VSP One Block, File and Object capabilities, with Hitachi Vantara’s global-active device (GAD) providing HA and Veeam’s backup technology. This solution enables seamless data replication, immutable snapshot backups, and rapid disaster recovery to safeguard the university’s data environment.

“Working with Hitachi Vantara and Trustmarque has provided a seamless transition to our new system, which is already providing measurable results. For example, we can backup user files around 95% faster than before,” said Darren Chapman, infrastructure development manager, University of Kent. “We can now recover our production systems around 80% faster. And when we finish deploying the necessary compute at our secondary site, we’ll be able to restore our services instantly.”

The new architecture provides HA, improved backup performance, and energy-efficient operations. With 3.5PB of storage available, the organization has the headroom to create multiple immutable snapshot backups and save them to multiple backup destinations. Additionally, dynamic carbon reduction technology from Hitachi Vantara helps minimize energy consumption by switching CPUs into eco-mode during periods of low activity.

“At Hitachi Vantara, we believe high-performing infrastructure and environmental stewardship must go hand in hand,” said Jason Beckett, CTO, EMEA, Hitachi Vantara. “With the VSP One data platform powering the University of Kent, we are proud to enable not only faster recovery and resilience, but also a greener footprint. By helping institutions like Kent reduce energy use, optimize storage utilization, and meet their sustainability goals, we see technology as a force for both performance and social responsibility.”

The solution provides additional performance and resilience benefits, including:

• Stronger Cyber Resilience: Immutable snapshots and multi-site replication safeguard critical research and academic data
• Enhanced Performance: Nightly user file backups run 95% faster, providing minimal disruption to staff and students
• Zero Downtime for End Users: Migration completed in hours, with no impact to teaching or research continuity

“IT cuts across everything we do, from high-quality teaching to world-leading research,” said Daniel Knox, assistant director of IT, infrastructure and cybersecurity, University of Kent. “With Hitachi and Trustmarque, we have created a resilient and energy-efficient platform that will support our students, faculty, and researchers for years to come.”

Hitachi Vantara also represents a more sustainable storage choice, following ENERGY STAR certification and recognition of VSP One Block as the best storage solution for performance and energy efficiency in the ENERGY STAR NVSS Disk Online 4 category. This is in addition to EcoVadis Gold Medals awarded in 2024 and 2025, which place Hitachi Vantara in the top 2% of all companies measured worldwide.