Keep Up With Data Center Modernization How to enhance your data center with the latest flash storage and modern data infrastructure
Keep Up With Data Center ModernizationHow to enhance your data center with the latest flash storage and modern data infrastructure
2
With the right approach, new and growing data sources can help
you drive innovation, transform customer experience and create
new revenue streams. But all that data can also slow you down.
More data, more problems.
To keep up in a race to innovate, you need to do more with your data:
• Bring on more applications, faster.
• Provide more capacity for existing applications.
• Deliver more performance.
• Do more analysis of data to unlock insights.
• Store more data types—block, file and object—that are being
generated from more and more sources.
• Make that data accessible to more users who are running
more applications on more devices.
• And don’t forget to think about the need for more security,
more risk avoidance and more regulations to comply with.
The only way to meet these challenges is to modernize
your data center.
Unless your business is static, there’s no way that older architectures
will help you manage the ongoing, exponential growth of data.
A modern data center infrastructure will give you the capacity,
speed and intelligence needed to interpret data and innovate with it.
.
This e-book will show you how to plan your next-generation
data center with the latest systems, protection
and operations.
You have more data than ever before: more volumes, more varieties, more sources.
3
Have You Optimized Your
Digital Foundation?
To create a strong foundation for
your modern data center, you will
need to put three pillars of data
center modernization in place.
The three pillars represent the
breadth of systems, software and services needed to maximize the
efficiency and effectiveness of all IT
data center operations, both on and
off premises. Each pillar is crucial
to success, and optimization in one
area helps drive another.
Data Center Modernization
4
Three Pillars of Data Center Modernization
Agile Data Infrastructure
The combination of systems needed to
consistently deliver data at high speed for the
best possible experience. These systems should
be resilient, support a broad diverse range of use
cases and enable the business to quickly make
use of data without being constrained.
Modern Data Protection
Software and processes that ensure continuous
availability of your data – independent of
external influences – in support of the customer
experience. Modern protection also supports
adherence to compliance requirements, new
regulations and data security.
Intelligent (AI) Operations
Integrated software that leverages AI and machine
learning to analyze, predict, prescribe and execute
changes to achieve data center SLAs. This software
ensures systems are continually optimized for
peak performance, stability and cost efficiency.
This frees data center staff to focus on strategic
initiatives to implement new technologies
and accelerate innovation.
5
Get Ready to Modernize
You will need a long-term transition plan
to implement the three pillars. Without
a solid plan, you risk wasting investments
in solutions that don’t take you in the
best direction. It’s important to work
with a partner who has the expertise
to execute and navigate for the future.
Read on for the latest
modernization tips from
Hitachi Vantara’s experts.
6
Your Challenge
Just storing and retrieving data, as older architectures
do, is no longer enough. As digital transformation
puts data at the center of your business, you’ll need
to deal with data in brand-new ways. To keep up,
modern data centers require new and faster systems
as well as newly designed processes. Agility is critical
– your infrastructure needs to support a host of new,
changing development platforms and applications
and must be more agile and flexible, using the
latest technologies to meet changing business
requirements.
How To Modernize Agility
Because a one-size-fits-all approach won’t meet your
unique requirements, look for a use-case optimized
data center that includes powerful AFAs or hybrid
arrays for transactional processing, converged
or hyperconverged solutions for cloud-delivered
services, and object storage for longer-term
retention of data for both compliance and data lakes.
Note that these architectures should never operate
in silos. You need the ability to easily move data to
the system where it optimally resides and set policies
in an integrated fashion.
Agile Infrastructure for a Modern Data Center
7
Implement Next-Generation Agile
Infrastructure With Hitachi Vantara
Hitachi Vantara’s agile data infrastructure portfolio
includes a new Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP)
all-flash F series and hybrid-flash G series lineup.
From midrange to enterprise, these eight new
models are designed for modernized data centers
and include all the latest features and more:
Up to 3x IOPS improvement.
25% lower latency.
3.4x faster performance with data
reduction enabled.
Up to 2.5x greater capacity scalability,
8x more volumes and one million snapshots.
Modern workload support including plug-ins
for Dockers and Kubernetes containers.
Backed by a 7:1 total efficiency guarantee.
The refreshed VSP model lineup can be combined
with Hitachi Unified Compute Platform (UCP)
converged and hyperconverged solutions and
Hitachi Content Platform (HCP) cloud object platform
or Hitachi Network Attached Storage (HNAS) to
create the agility you need within your data center.
Learn more >
P
P
P
P
P
P
P
8
Your Challenge
You need to make copies of your critical data sets
for a number of reasons: a copy for backup and fast,
local recovery; a copy in one or two other locations
for business continuity and disaster recovery; copies
for the test and development teams; copies for
finances and legal; and so on. But all these copies
require automation for security and control or
else they can become costly and a serious liability.
Automating copy operations gets complicated
because it often requires a mix of tools, complex
scripting and manual processes.
How To Modernize Data Protection
Take automation to the next level by creating
service-level-based policy profiles. For example,
think of gold, silver and bronze services which
are selected based on your needs for a particular
application. These profiles can determine the
frequency of protection, the tier of storage to use,
user access rights, retention, etc.
Data Protection for a Modern Data Center
9
Implement Next-Generation Data Protection
With Hitachi Vantara
Everything we’ve talked about can be easily
tied into Hitachi’s approach to data center
modernization. For example, as Hitachi Automation Director (HAD) provisions the
resources needed to spin up a new application
workload, it can automatically provision the
correct tier of data protection services at the
same time. The communication between HAD
Hitachi Data Instance Director (HDID) is via a robust RESTful API.
In the near future, Hitachi Infrastructure Analytics Advisor and Hitachi Unified Compute Platform Advisor will be able
to monitor HDID and recommend opportunities
to improve copy management processes.
Learn more >
10
Your Challenge
Today’s data center operations are under constant change with
new systems, technologies and applications being added, moved
and fine-tuned. Most IT operations management (ITOM) tools have
a domain-specific view into the infrastructure that can be further
restricted by vendor-specific approaches. But, if you’re looking at
a siloed view of your data center, it can be difficult to ensure your
applications are running at peak performance across all the various
infrastructures and devices that are needed to support them.
How To Modernize Intelligent Operations
Artificial intelligence (AI) for IT operations creates a new holistic
view into IT infrastructure for improved data center monitoring,
service management and automation. AI operations start with
gathering various, large data sets of telemetry data from across
disparate systems (applications, servers, network, storage,
etc.) to be analyzed. Using machine learning (ML) algorithms,
this data is mined to gain new AI insights across these various
infrastructure systems.
In addition to monitoring, AI operations can impact other
IT operation processes, such as decreasing the time and
effort required to identify and avoid availability or performance
problems. With machine learning, AI operations can identify
interconnected resource trends and dependencies in order
to quickly analyze problems compared to manual, siloed
approaches that are typically based on trial and error.
Intelligent Operations for a Modern Data Center
11
Implement Next-Generation Intelligent Operations
With Hitachi Vantara
For intelligent operations, Hitachi Vantara has integrated and
enhanced its AI operations software portfolio to ensure the highest
return on your data center investments and to accelerate strategic
outcomes. The new integration of Hitachi Infrastructure Analytics Advisor (HIAA), Hitachi Automation Director (HAD) and Hitachi Data Instance Director (HDID) simplifies data
center management and sets the foundation for autonomous
operations across your data center.
HIAA improvements:
Predictive analytics to better forecast future resource needs.
AI-driven heuristic engine to recommend fixes and repairs
up to 4x faster.
HIAA integration with HAD to automate implementation
of HIAA recommendations.
HAD improvements:
Automated configuration of Hitachi Data Instance Director (HDID).
Automated configuration of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform
(VSP) QoS.
Integration with IT service management (ITSM) tools,
including ServiceNow, for improved tracking.
P
P
P
P
P
P
Learn more >
12
Create Agility With Hitachi Vantara’s New Flash Lineup Hitachi Vantara recently announced a major expansion
of our agile data infrastructure portfolio with a new Hitachi Virtual
Storage Platform (VSP) all-flash F series and hybrid flash G series lineup. From midrange to enterprise, the eight new models
that we introduced are designed for modernized data centers.
Their benefits include:
More IOPS/$: Get up to 3X the IOPS performance as
compared to the prior-generation models and at better
pricing for the same configurations. In addition, latencies have
been reduced by 25% for faster response times that are well
below one millisecond, even when systems are pushed to
their full performance capabilities.
Peace of mind for all: Hitachi offers most comprehensive
100% Data Availability Guarantee in the industry. All of
the VSP models carry this guarantee.
Greater value: Each of the new models comes with the
Foundation software package included in the price.
Foundation is rich with features including: our newest
operating system, Hitachi Storage Virtualization Operating
System (SVOS) RF; a universal volume manager license for
virtualizing external storage; ShadowImage, Thin Image and
Hitachi Data Instance Director (HDID) for data protection;
dynamic tiering for data mobility; and Hitachi Infrastructure
Analytics Advisor (HIAA) for powerful analytics.
Summary: Keep Up With New Enhancements to Hitachi Vantara Data Center Modernization Offerings
P
P
P
13
Improved consolidation: Massive capacity which can scale
up to 17.4PB of raw flash capacity.
Predictable ongoing costs: All of the new F- and G-series
models will have flat service pricing for up to seven years as
part of our Flash Assurance Program. The price of a support
contract won’t increase after the warranty period expires.
Selectable data reduction services: We offer the unique
feature of allowing data reduction services to be selectable
at the LUN, or volume, level, which allows you to optimize your
systems between max performance and max data reduction.
Guaranteed capacity efficiency: Reduce the amount
of flash capacity you need by up to 85% (up to 7:1) or we’ll
give you additional capacity for free.
AI operations: All new systems come packaged with Hitachi Infrastructure Analytics Advisor (HIAA), which has been
significantly upgraded to provide prescriptive resolutions
to data center problems based on machine learning for
faster time to resolution with optimized outcomes. It can
even predict future data center resource requirements
based on sophisticated trending analysis.
The newly refreshed VSP model lineup can be combined with
our UCP converged and hyperconverged solutions and our
Hitachi Content Platform or Hitachi NAS to create the agility
you need within your data center.
Originally created for the Hitachi Vantara Community
by Mark Adams. View Full Post >
P
P
P
P
P
14
Along with the upgraded line of VSP all flash and hybrid flash
arrays, Hitachi Vantara released an update to Hitachi Storage
Virtualization Operating System RF (SVOS RF).
Four Reasons Why SVOS RF Is Different From Competitive
Flash Operating Systems
Enterprise: Class uptime and zero RPO/RTO. Three data
center redundancy when teamed with the global-
active device. Supported by an industry-leading 100%
100% Availability Guarantee.
Flash-aware IO stack delivers end-to-end quality of service.
Industry-leading quality of service is enabled by preserving
the share of channel and NAND chip resources for application
workloads, should any contention occur. The benefit is that
SVOS RF QoS intelligence dynamically allocates more IOPS
to your applications during peak times by shifting those cycles
from other operations (i.e., replication). Application availability
and performance come first with SVOS RF.
SVOS RF virtualizes third-party arrays. Global 100 companies
use SVOS RF’s third-party virtualization capability and place
Dell/EMC, NetApp, and a host of third-party arrays behind
the Hitachi VSP F series. This simplifies management
and provides world-class data availability to the virtualized
storage pool. Why do they do it? Because Hitachi leads
in application availability and we spread the love by allowing
our customers to recoup their investment in competitive
arrays by virtualizing them behind the Hitachi Virtual
Storage Platform (VSP) series. Think of it as a virtual take
on “follow the leader.” This unique capability is made possible
by SVOS RF and customers use it to migrate data to and from
heterogeneous arrays.
Mainframe class 24/7 application availability. Mainframes are
still “king” in the most mission-critical financial environments.
SVOS RF allows the VSP series to deliver all-flash storage to
mainframes in the data center with the availability required
for mainframe storage. Hitachi Vantara is a leader in
mainframe flash storage and we are proud to service this
high-end, uncompromising segment.
Originally created for the Hitachi Vantara Community
by Neil Salamack. View full post >
Improve Flash Availability With SVOS RF
Learn more about SVOS RF >
1
2
3
4
15
We’ve partnered with many companies to implement challenging
transformation projects that require data center modernization.
CPFL A Brazilian electrical company,
uses our technology to support their
implementation of smart grids to better
match the generation and delivery
of electricity with its demand.
Meat & Livestock of Australia
Turned their stock into an internet
of things that generate data,
stored and analyzed on VSP.
We’d love to partner with you and help you provide a better experience for your customers, create new
data-driven services that lead to additional revenue
streams, and optimize your operations for cost reduction.
DID YOU KNOW?
Nine out of 10 of the world’s largest banks
and telecommunications companies trust
our technology and professional expertise
to modernize their virtual data centers
in today’s multicloud world.
Be Different, Be Better
Corporate Headquarters 2535 Augustine Drive Santa Clara, CA 95054 USA HitachiVantara.com community.HitachiVantara.com
Contact Information USA: 1-800-446-0744 Global: 1-858-547-4526 HitachiVantara.com/contact
Hitachi Vantara Your data is the key to new revenue, better customer experiences and lower costs. With technology and expertise, Hitachi Vantara drives data to meaningful outcomes.
HITACHI is a trademark or registered trademark of Hitachi, Ltd. Content Platform Anywhere is a trademark or registered trademark of Hitachi Vantara Corporation. All other trademarks, service marks, and company names are properties of their respective owners.Pace September 2019
Let’s get data center modernization done, together Data is your greatest asset, if you know how to use it. The key to new revenue streams, better customer experiences and lower costs is in your data. With our experience and expertise in operational and informational technology, Hitachi Vantara drives data to meaningful outcomes.
Learn more at HitachiVantara.com >