Hitachi NAS Platform Reviews

I am working for a reseller and this is one of the solutions that I have experience in dealing with. This is a NAS gateway solution that provides access to storage that is externally attached.

The pricing of this solution is good, which is an advantage that positions this product well.

I do not like Hitachi NAS because it's an old-school NAS solution, compared to the other, newer-type solutions such as Isilon from Dell or Qumulo. It is an old-school gateway NAS solution, so for me, it is not good.

I have been familiar with Hitachi NAS for about two years.

I have experience with several NAS solutions including those by HP, Dell, NetApp, and Hitachi.

This solution is priced well and there are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

It is not possible to improve upon this solution. Rather, they should just create a new product to completely replace this one.

Overall, this is a good product for what it is, but it is old-school. I would completely renew the product. It works nicely, but I would not recommend it for the same reason that people don't buy old-fashioned clothes.

I would rate this solution a five out of ten.

• Performance
• Replication
• You can use any type of storage as a backend
• Mixed NFS/CIFS file services

• Higher performance
• File-server consolidation
• Ability to create a mixed NFS/CIFS (Samba style) file services solution

• Better QA
• Reporting
• Better quota management
• Ability to backup with all snapshots included.
• Ability to snapshot a file system in the DR site while replicating with JetMirror
• Better documentation
• Better community

I've used it for two to three years.

It had some ridiculous bugs during deployment.

We have had two stability issues:

• We had a bad software version that used to randomly crash both nodes in a cluster
• File system corruption after activating in DR site

No issues yet.

It's at a fair level but has bad documentation.

It's fair.

I previously used Netapp's solution, but this was for a different customer.

It’s relatively easy to setup and install.

We used a mix of a vendor team along with an in-house team. The vendor team was good.

We got the equipment via a large storage accusation for almost free so no ROI was needed.

No, not for this particular customer.

Some bugs cause issues but I love the ASIC architecture behind it. I actually uncovered some hidden ASICs in the hardware. Version 8 features didn’t include in-line de-duplication (it uses an ASIC) which was later uncovered in version 10 or so. It’s nice to find out about added functionality with version upgrades at no extra cost with as little to no performance degradation using this ASIC.

We are using Hitachi NAS Platform in conjunction with NetApp, Fujitsu, and other server and storage solutions. These solutions are deployed for our storage and software solution needs.

The Hitachi NAS Platform is sold with Hitachi SAN. It provides Network Attached Storage (NAS) protocols on top of the existing SAN infrastructure. It creates a NAS environment on top of Hitachi SAN, which facilitates customers who need NAS protocols along with their existing SAN portfolio.

I would suggest that Hitachi make a NAS box that can work independently, without relying on SAN connectivity. The current solution only suits customers who already have a Hitachi SAN environment and want to add NAS protocols like NFS and CIFS. 

It's not suitable for customers without an existing SAN, as they would first need to acquire the SAN infrastructure before adding NAS functionality.

We have been dealing with Hitachi for almost one decade.

The Hitachi storage platform is highly scalable and highly available. However, the scalability of the NAS environment is limited since it is dependent on the SAN's scalability. A NAS environment requires a conjunction of two devices: the SAN box and filers attached together. Therefore, the scalability of the NAS directly depends on the scalability of the SAN.

The pricing for the Hitachi NAS is higher compared to other NAS solutions since the NAS protocol is provided on top of the existing SAN environment, requiring an additional device for NAS functionality. This makes it very costly and sometimes not appropriate.

I recommend considering NetApp for a unified storage solution or Dell EMC for a cost-effective solution. NetApp is well-suited for SAN and NAS requirements with better features and is cost-effective. Dell EMC may be a better choice in terms of cost yet lacks some feature sets compared to NetApp.

The Hitachi NAS Platform is too complicated, not simple, and not cost-effective, sometimes being inappropriate for most situations. 

I would not recommend it, as it's a costly feature addon rather than a standalone solution. 

I would rate the Hitachi NAS functionality as five out of ten. 

NetApp is recommended for a unified solution with richer features and scalability, especially for those needing ransomware protection, data availability guarantee, and data loss protection.