Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform Reviews

For Hitachi, I provide training and mapping to existing clusters and coordinate with vendors for hardware values and upgrades. 

I've been working on Hitachi VSP models and NetApp 2750 models for the past two years.

I work with multiple products from various companies, including HPE and Hitachi. Each product has its own scalability and features. The service provided by Hitachi is good, and I get the IT support I need from the vendors.

I have been using it for six years. 

For the past two years, I haven't faced any outages with Hitachi. I've seen many issues with Dell but not with VSP. I have very few storage boxes in my current organization, but I handle over 200 Hitachi storage boxes with different products.

Scalability provides us with flexibility. For example, we can easily increase storage as needed. We also have multi-path redundancy for added reliability. For data redundancy, we create RAID levels, usually RAID 5 or the recommended RAID 6.

To ensure power availability in the data center, we have two power sources and redundant cabling. Each inverter has a backup from another inverter. I recommend customers use a backup configuration for redundancy, such as Veeam backup or Commvault. These products protect against hardware failures by backing up VMs.

I would rate the scalability a nine out of ten. 

I have over 200 customers for Hitachi storage, one or two customers on the VSP platform, and all of them are being serviced. 

I have contacted them for firmware upgrades, hardware failures, and trial replacements. I was coordinating with the vendor.

I provide support for customers. I work for a company and give support to customers.

So, the response time and the quality of the support was good. 

I work with NetApp, and I have been working with HPE, Dell, and IBM products for the past six years.

I learn new things whenever I work on products from HPE, NetApp, and other vendors. I wasn't aware of Hitachi Storage before, but I started working on it at this company. It's a little different. The way we provide and learn from the VSP models is different compared to HPE and Dell.

Not just anyone can do it. For example, I'm a storage engineer, and if I guide someone on my team, they can't necessarily do my job. 

So, the person needs a basic understanding and work experience. Sometimes, it requires specific knowledge, and people need to prepare for the tasks assigned to them. Once the person has prepared, they can do whatever is assigned.

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

It is a good product. I would recommend it. 

Our primary use case is a hybrid private cloud that includes generic server virtualization based on VMware ESXi. The second use case is workstation virtualization — virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). The third is database systems with IBM Power and IBM IX logical partitions.

Data optimization, compression, and deduplication are the most important features for us.

I would like to see Hitachi improve their management software. It's been three years since they introduced Ops Center, their management product, and it still hasn't reached at least 50 percent of the capability we require. We are using legacy software because the product Hitachi offers does not stack up in functionality.

Hitachi should increase the number of possible functions Ops Center can perform. For example, it is impossible to manage any kind of storage replication using this product. All competing solutions provide that, but you need to install a separate solution to manage replication in Hitachi arrays. It was not the case with legacy software, but the current solution doesn't have that.

We've been using Hitachi VSP for about four years.

Hitachi VSP is stable in most cases, but we've had a few hiccups with the storage firmware. 

Hitachi VSP scales pretty well, but it generally depends on storage costs. The high-end arrays have huge scalability limits. Generally, we are limited mainly by the array controllers' performance, not the array's capacity limits. 

Our environment is massive. We have approximately 15,000 users for virtual desktop solutions, about 16,000 email users, and approximately 6,000 to 7,000 servers running on VMware platforms. We also have a few hundred logical partitions on IBM Power servers.

We regularly contact Hitachi technical support. The idea of a storage array is that it's broken up into many small pieces of storage. Each piece may fail, and they do from time to time. Therefore, we typically have to open five or six cases every month for mundane tasks like replacing failed disk drives. That's typical for any customer using storage on a large scale.

Those are minor cases, but storage controller failures are more serious, and we see three or four every year. We also have two or three performance-related cases each year. 

We're a relatively large customer, so we do not perform installation ourselves. Service partners typically perform it. We have three people managing the storage, three working with the storage area network, and five handling the backups.

All the software licenses are bundled with the storage hardware. I'm not the purchasing guy, so I do not negotiate prices. When the company makes a purchasing decision, I only provide the technical requirements. The price is a question for the purchasing department.

I rate Hitachi VSP seven out of 10. Generally, I wouldn't recommend Hitachi VSP to a customer without a background in storage systems. Solid technical expertise is needed to use these storage solutions on a medium or a large scale.

The product can be made into a multi-controller system instead of just being a tool that offers a two-controller system to users since it is one of the areas where the product lacks. From a controller perspective, the tool should offer scalability. The tool should also offer better manageability options, considering that users have multiple storages in their environment and need to control them with the help of a single pane of glass. The solution does provide users with the option to opt for a single console from where everything can be managed, but it is not available for free. The manageability area can be improved if a single console is made available to users for free.

I have been using Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform for around ten years. My company has a partnership with Hitachi Vantara.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

The controllers in the product do not provide options for scalability. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) E Series is useful for medium to large-sized enterprises.

The solution's technical support is good. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

I rate the initial setup phase a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one means it is a difficult process, and ten means it is an easy process. The product's installation phase is easy.

There are boxes available under the product, and they get implemented depending on the different kinds of workloads in my company, because of which, the tool may get used in clouds, VDIs, and GPU servers for high-performance computing.

The solution can be deployed in two to three hours.

Considering the solution's price, it is very competitive compared to the other competitors in the market. I rate the product price a nine out of ten. My company purchases the licenses for the solution in a bundle, owing to which our company gets a very competitive price compared to the pricing models offered by its competitors.

The product has improved our company's data storage scalability aspect, considering that my organization uses Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) E Series. My company uses Hitachi VSP E990 All-Flash NVMe Storage Platform and Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform E1090 for production storage purposes. My company relies on All-NVMe Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform. In our organization, we never faced a performance issue with the product.

The product has improved our company's data retrieval time tremendously since we don't see any performance issues with the tool in our company. My company has not seen any issues with the tool's data retrieval time or response time.

The most valuable feature of the product for our company's data management needs stems from the fact that the tool provides multiple functionalities, like Hitachi HDD drivers. The tool offers in-built encryption, ensuring that data security is available in the solution. My company also gets a good number of compression and data efficiency ratios. My company gets to see a 1:2.5 compression ratio, allowing us to save a lot of space. From a capacity perspective, I see that the product consumption in our company is very high due to multiple workloads running on the boxes from Hitachi. The product offers more capacity than a single box. I have around three petabytes of storage, which is a huge storage capacity.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform reliability and uptime support our company's machine-critical applications since the tool offers 100 percent uptime and has never gone down in our company in the last three years.

In terms of performance and ability, the product can stand up against its competitors since the solution offers two controller systems to users. The tool also offers a good performance in comparison to the other products in the market. My company has workloads of variable block sizes. A lot of storage platforms fail when there are variable block sizes, but there is a sustenance level that Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform offers in such scenarios. Instead of considering the differences in block sizes, the product tries to offer a consistent and good performance to users.

The product's integration capabilities with the tools in our company's existing infrastructure are possible. It is very easy to use the integration features of the product. My company tested the product's integration functionalities, and we found that it worked fine in our infrastructure. I think that the product's integration capabilities are convenient and easy to use.

I recommend the product to those who plan to use it, considering that its price-to-performance ratio is very good. The product also offers a good efficiency ratio. The tool's performance is much better in comparison with the other storage platforms in the market.

I rate the product a nine out of ten.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is used for our storage area network.

Hitachi's ability to quickly impact and resolve issues is good. When we had an issue a few months back, we were contacted by Hitachi and they upgraded us free of charge automatically.

Hitachi's roadmap is important because, without it, our organization would not run properly.

We are very satisfied with our decision to purchase Hitachi products. We originally planned to buy Dell products, but they were unable to deliver them due to a chipset shortage. We are fortunate that we chose Hitachi, as their products are incredibly fast and the price was good. We have no regrets about our decision.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform's IOPS and latency are great.

Compared to Dell, the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is much faster. We can start 50 servers at one time on the host without seeing the dial drop.

It is important to our organization that we have flexible media options such as NVMe with the solution.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform's adaptive data reduction technology helps us reduce storage on a ratio of 1:3.

The embedded management for installation simplified the solution's ease of management.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform's embedded management is more powerful and efficient than the previous solution. It has been so easy to use that we haven't had to do anything manually in the past year.

Reliability, compression, and speed are the most valuable features.

Although the speed is good, there is always room for improvement.

I would like the fan noise to be automatically adjusted based on the drive's current workload.

I have been using the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform for 15 months.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is stable.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is scalable.

Hitachi's technical support is perfect.

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward. I completed the deployment myself, which took one week. 

The implementation was completed in-house.

I give the price of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform a nine out of ten.

I give Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform a ten out of ten.

80 percent of our employees in-house are using the solution with additional people around the world.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform notifies us if any maintenance is required.

I recommend Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is a data management platform for SAN storage, NAS storage, and object storage. It also provides storage as a service, making it suitable for various segments.

For Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, the most valuable features are its performance, reliability, scalability, data protection, and a hundred percent data availability guarantee. Additionally, it offers storage virtualization with both internal and external options.

Hitachi should work on unified storage for the SMB market and entry-level NAS storage, similar to what HP or Dell offers. Moreover, while they currently provide ransomware protection through immutable snapshots, more integrated data protection features could be beneficial.

I have worked with Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform for the past three years.

The stability of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is excellent. I would rate it nine out of ten.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform has great scalability. I would rate it a ten out of ten.

Hitachi does not perform well in terms of support. There is latency in part replacement. Resolution time must be faster compared to the competition as customers need quick support for their critical applications.

Neutral

I have moved from Zoom to using Hitachi solutions. I am currently associated with Redington Limited.

For small scenarios with one or two storages, the initial setup is manageable. However, with five to ten storages, management becomes more complex compared to Dell or NetApp.

For NVMe storage, the pricing is reasonable compared to competitors in India. However, for entry-level SAN storage or unified storage, the pricing is relatively high, creating challenges in pitching Hitachi as a product.

Competitors to Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform include HP's primary storage, Electra storages, Dell's PowerStore and PowerMax series, and NetApp's A series. Hitachi competes well in commercials for the NVMe segment, offering no-question-asked data reduction technology.

I recommend Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform to other users.

I would rate it a seven out of ten.

I use the solution in my company as it is a good storage product.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform's GUI or interface for storage and management is a little bit difficult compared to Primera and HPE storage products.

I want to see deduplication features in the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform since it is a good storage system. The GUI interface for storage management is a bit difficult.

I have been using Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform since 2015.

I think all storage tools have facilities in them to be able to scale up and down. Scalability-wise, I have no complaints with the solution.

I don't think the product features are available for our company to contact the tool's support team. There was an incident in 2016 and 2017 when both of its controllers failed. It was very strange for me to have a storage in which both the controllers failed. We had to send it across to Japan for investigation, but I haven't received any reply from them yet.

The product's installation phase was not difficult because the vendor or its partner was involved in its setup process.

I have seen some savings in my company from the use of the product, especially since the market is becoming too competitive nowadays. The companies selling storage which are better than mechanical drives.

I find Hitachi to be cheaper by five to ten percent when compared to Dell and HP's costs, but the features in Dell are better than Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform. We have only eight terabytes of storage available on Dell, but we can manage to create partitions of about thirty terabytes, meaning it allows for a lot of compression.

From the data management point of view and for deduplication purposes, Dell storage is the best option. It gives me around a one-is-to-sixteen ratio of compression, while Primera only offers a one-is-to-three ratio. There is no deduplication in Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform because it is an old storage.

The product's performance is good.

The product is reliable.

I rate the solution a seven to eight out of ten.

The Hitachi VSP has significantly improved data storage scalability by addressing various issues. Through their research and development efforts, they've incorporated customer feedback regarding deployment speed and performance requirements.

The tool's impact on data retrieval times is primarily seen in performance and reliability. It has proven to be more reliable. Speed in restoration varies depending on the nature of the backup or image being restored.

Its most valuable feature is the centralized consolidation portal. In terms of performance and agility, the Hitachi VSP stands out against competitors primarily due to its reliability and storage performance capabilities.

The solution is priced higher than its competitors. 

I have been using the product for two years. 

I rate the product's stability an eight out of ten. 

I would rate the tool's scalability at around seven point five on a scale of one to ten. While the storage solution is proprietary, it may not provide the same integration as some cloud-based solutions.

The initial setup of the Hitachi VSP was relatively straightforward for us. Hitachi deployed an engineer who handled the configuration and initial setup process. Subsequently, they provided training and guidance on managing and monitoring the system and providing storage for various needs, such as integrating with other cloud platforms like AWS.

The deployment duration can vary depending on the size and complexity of the setup. In our case, as it was for a tier-two data center, the deployment process took approximately two months. This included around one month for preparation and approval processes, followed by another month for delivery and configuration of the storage components.

I would rate the solution's pricing at around eight or nine on a scale of one to ten. While the solution may be priced higher than some competitors, we prioritize the quality and durability of the storage.

Enterprise customers mostly use the tool. I would recommend Hitachi VSP to others. It excels in terms of quality and performance and adheres to industry standards. I rate it an eight out of ten. 

We primarily use the solution for storage for our customers. 

My customer still has previous storage still running. There was nothing wrong with that. However, they wanted to migrate some services and in the meantime are considering new storage, which is why we are using this new solution. 

We've dealt recently with virtual storage. We use the 500-series.

The main benefit of the solution is its reliability.

The solution has a pretty long history of working with different industries. It's easy to coordinate experience. When my customers brought up potential issues with the Hitachi consultant, they seemed to always be able to find a solution to the problem or questions.

The Hitachi roadmap, in terms of adopting new technologies, is very strong. Its roadmap is important to our organization's strategy. 

We are extremely satisfied with the solution. We've been working with them for more than 20 years.

We'd be very likely to recommend the solution to others. I'd give it a ten out of ten in terms of the likelihood of recommending it to others.

The IOPS and latency are okay, however, they aren't the best. There are others on the market that handle it better. They are pretty good with their approach, however. The customer won't complain too much. We have SQL, for example, and it works quite well.

The deployment for small and medium organizations is still possible. Their needs aren't as large as traditional market share, however, we'd like, in the future, for Hitachi to ensure that they can handle companies of all sizes.

The adoption of the newest technologies must always be prioritized. New areas of technology must be adopted by the solution to keep it relevant.

The storage can be improved. You need an operating system to run a computer. If they had a certain approach to layered storage, it would be better. For example, adaption to the browser, or having a centralized console.

We've been using the solution for many years.

So far, we are pretty satisfied with stability.

The solution provides excellent scalability.

I've seen the demos for Hitachi's effective capacity guarantee, however, we don't get close to the capacity, so we haven't had a chance to test capacity and how it works. We've never touched the boundaries. It's straightforward to understand, however.

I've been pretty satisfied with the support overall. 

Positive

I did not use embedded management for the installation process. 

We have more than one Hitachi supplier working with us, depending on the project.

Hitachi solutions are a little more expensive. However, they are still in the realm of the competition.

As long-time users, I'd advise other users to spend more time with the Hitachi consultant. Some licensing needs to be considered in order to find ways to save money. You can do different things to achieve your goals without purchasing a license. Experts will give you many different ideas of how to achieve your goals. 

We're consulting partners. We work with many different Hitachi customers and partners. We work with design and implementation. 

The adaptive data and reduction technology has not helped us reduce our storage footprint, as I am still in the process of understanding the scenarios around that aspect of the product.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten.