Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform Reviews

We are a data center located in Mexico. We use a wide array of storage solutions from different companies. Our largest storage installation is on Hitachi.

We use this solution to share storage between our cloud environments. We have a VMware Cloud in each of our data centers with two locations in Mexico City. We have a replica between these two sites. We also have another Cloud Suite for OpenStack. 

This solution is equipped with virtualization technology inside the storage box. Other companies like TMS have virtual technology outside of their storage boxes. IBM has a SAN Volume Controller that allows us to virtualize any type of storage whether it's on the same label or not. This is not the case with Hitachi. 

This solution is very stable. 

The technical support is great. 

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of nine. 

We are a solution provider and I work with a lot of different SAN products, depending on the needs of the customers. we have implemented this solution, as well as the G series, for some of our clients.

I have a project right now that involves revising and fine-tuning a storage network. This network contains two Hitatch VSP G Series units. There is not a major difference between the F Series and the G Series. Both of them are enterprise-scale and efficient for many data centers. It is used as primary storage in industries such as banking, automotive, health care, and insurance. Large companies, or companies that have an IBM mainframe.

If the solution requires a very high IO/s (Input/Output per second) with sub-millisecond response time then they should select the F Series because it has better performance.

I was attracted to this solution after finding out several of the special features that are available for storage.

• Storage Virtualization
• Global Active Device
• FMD
• Metro Clustering
• 3D Scale ( Scale-up, Scale-out, Scale-deep)

Three years later, I started to design an enterprise solution for one company, using this product has led to more stability and business owner satisfaction due to prevent unwanted downtime or service outage.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G provides the always-availablHitachi Virtual Storage Platform G provides the always-available, agile and automated foundation needed for a trusted Continuous Cloud Infrastructure. Powered with Hitachi global storage virtualization, its new software capabilities unlock IT agility and enable the lowest storage TCO. This solution helps to provide more stability and high availability in Datacenters.e, agile and automated foundation needed for a trusted Continuous Cloud Infrastructure. Powered with Hitachi global storage virtualization, its new software capabilities unlock IT agility and enable the lowest storage TCO. This soultion helps to provies more stability and high-avalbility in Datacenters.

Compared to others, Hitachi products are more complex and not user-friendly. The interface should be simplified and made easier to use. For instance, the EMC Unity series is easier to manage.

In the next release of this solution, it should support NVMe.

An important improvement for this solution is cloud integration (OpenStack), as well as integration with VVoL technologies, Docker, Kubernetes, and Red Hat OpenShift.

I have started working with HDS solutions for more than ten years ago. In my idea, the most perfect one is VSP G Series because you can find better integration with business requirments and better response to IT challenges.

This is one of the most stable, high-end solutions in this area. It has eight controllers and special features for connecting disks on the back end. It has a lot of front ports and all of the components are redundant. It is hard to find a problem with this product. It is designed for those who want less than one minute a year of downtime. It's a 24/7 product.

Based on customers need solutions should be designed. In my experience switching from previous brands to HDS VSP has led to reaching 40% better TCO and 99.9999 availability.

The installation of this solution is a little bit hard. In these kinds of products, the original companies are often interested in setting up the product in the customer's environment.

We are located in Iran, and there is a lot of tension and lack of communication because of our locale. There are restrictions in a lot of our data centers that preclude us from having special software from the original company, and because of that, we face a lot of problems when using these kinds of products.

The initial setup and configuration are usually done by the CE of the vendor, and after the initial configuration is complete, These products are sent to our data centers.

This solution is less expensive than the EMC VMAX series.

When you are looking for high-end solutions such as this, price is less important than stability and availability.

I have researched many products in the Enterprise area to find the best suits for my customers. These include high-end products by NetApp(FAS8060), EMC VMAX, the HPE XP P9500, and the HPE XP Series.

For instance, for one of my customers comparing the details of these products and my customer requirements has led to scoring each of the features. Ultimately, I chose the Hitachi VSP series. The second choice was the HPE XP P9500.

This type of comparison is not easy because there are a lot of companies and a lot of brands. However, I just wanted to find the best solution for my customer.

Day to day, everything changes in the field of IT. I have done a lot of research on products such as this, and I have learned that we are going to have a lot more data in 2020. This huge amount of data means that you need the right platform for processing data quickly. More than before, we need a platform that can process large amounts of data in less than ten milliseconds. One such platform is the Hitachi VSP, with both good performance and availability.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Our primary use case of this solution is to monitor the use of products from other vendors. Its firmware is very compatible.

The most valuable aspects of this solution are the storage system and availability.

In the next version, I would like to see more intelligence. I would like to see backup repository, and the Hitachi storage system as the main storage system without any further applications, without any further layers. I need the data protection layer to protect the data at the right time and at the right place.

The solution is stable and highly available. With Hitachi brands, customers get one hundred percent availability on the product. 

The technical support and the billing team are all winners. Dell is one brand that provides better technical support for its customers. There are many Dell customers in the U.S. and these customers have really crucial issues that need support. Whenever you call in with an issue, you can rest assured that it will be fixed.

On a scale of one to ten, I rate this solution an eight. 

My advice to others who are trying to buy all-flash storage would be to go and take a look at the core storage products. I don't mean the hardware part, I mean the software part, in other words, the data protection layer. The storage layer is a broad layer. You have the main storage, you have the data protection of storage and you have the storage networking. All these layers matter and you will need something in the background on the data protection layer to be able to get the data at the other end. 

My primary use case of this solution is for storage. I have a gateway to H-Net, which is where all my file systems are, and I have all my virtual environments on this solution. 

It is a very reliable storage solution.

I think the management should be improved, because it is not very user-friendly at all. I also think the support could be better - at least for mid-range users. I think historically Hitachi systems are made for really big organizations like banks or insurance companies. Usually those companies have dedicated personnel dealing with the storage. And because they're very valuable clients, their support contracts are much more tailored to their businesses. Since this program is more aimed towards smaller companies, they don't have support solutions for mid-range companies.

I also think that their management is not very user-friendly. If this wasn't the case, more support wouldn't be necessary. It's a very reliable system, but the whole management user interface is very unfriendly. I know they're aware of that. They have a lot of data of management solutions, but none of them yet have reached sovereignty yet.

I have been using Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F for four years now.

The primary use case of this solution is for storage in some industries such as banking, automotive, healthcare, and insurance companies. It is for large companies or companies with a large mainframe such as an IBM mainframe. Our primary use case was for core banking.

Businesses are looking for simple storage solutions that can exceed expectations and meet the challenge of delivering continuous availability and high performance while maximizing the value of physical and virtual infrastructures. Simultaneously, enterprise and mission-critical business application environments are becoming increasingly unpredictable and organizations need the ability to deliver and orchestrate automated operations.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F provides the always-available, agile and automated foundation needed for a trusted Continuous Cloud Infrastructure. Powered with Hitachi global storage virtualization, its new software capabilities unlock IT agility and enable the lowest storage TCO.

We have read in the latest newsletters that in 2020 there is going to be more data, more than four hundred zettabytes. It's a huge amount of data and you will need the right platform to process it. More than people, we will need a platform that can process that amount of data in less than a millisecond. So we are looking for a high-speed storage enterprise, such as VSP.

If you compare to other solutions, Hitachi is more complex, but the platform is improving and it's not as difficult as it used to be.

We are facing new technologies such as Container by Google. It's the new way of Application Virtualization. I think that Hitachi and other companies should follow these technologies for integration with new technologies such as container base and their products. I think that cloud integration is important with vVol technologies from VMware.

There will be many challenges, but we need more integration between F Storage and new technology for Cloud, vVol, and Container.

I would like the interface to be simplified more than it is. The interface can be improved with new technologies such as HTML5, which is being used by some storage vendors.

Hitachi interface management is not as easy as the EMC Unity series. It's better to use HTML5 for the management systems.

I have been using HDS solutions for over ten years and I have been using this solution for over five years.

This solution is stable. It is the most stable high-end solution in this area.

This product has eight controllers, it has special features for interconnecting on the backend, it has many front ports, and all of the components are redundant.

It is difficult to find issues with this product.

It was designed for those who don't want more than one minute of downtime a year. It's a 24/7 running product.

As you know, the HDS company is one of the main key players in the storage world and it always offers the most high-performance products, as these products are designed for large business environments, they have good scale-out and scale-up capabilities. For instance, the HDS claims that the latest one which it's named VSP 5500 have more than 21M IOPS only in 8U and 69PB of storage.

It depends on the circumstances. We choose different storage products based on the business needs and in my opinion, there is no solution that can meet all customer needs.

We use low-cost SAN storage for some needs, such as Archie Data, and in some other cases, like the core business software, high availability levels are very important so higher-level SAN storage is used.

The installation procedure it a bit difficult, because it is a high-end solution. With this type of product, the original company is interested in doing the setup for customers in the area, but because of sanctions we were not able to get support in our area. We faced many issued trying to learn to run this product.

The initial setup was done by the CE of the company, when that was complete the configuration was done in our data center.

This solution is cheaper than Dell EMC VMAX. When you are looking for a high-end solution, price matters, but availability and stability are more important than the price.

Companies are looking for stability and sustainability, and the price, but as I said, it's not as important as stability and sustainability.

I researched the internet for our customers to find the right solution for them, and I compared products in this category. In this comparison, I included:

• Dell EMC VMAX
• HPE 3PAR F-Class Storage

I started to research details, compare, and score each feature, until coming across the Hitachi VSP Series. The number two option was the HPE XP P6500 Series.

It was challenging, and it took five to six months to persuade our manager.  

The main functions in the G series and F series are the same, but if a customer is looking for high interoperability, then they should go for the F Series.

It's an attractive solution with several special features.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for data storage and processing.

The solution is very user-friendly in terms of maintenance and configuration. It's also possible to connect the solution to other storage management solutions.

The solution needs to offer more support in our region. It's also quite expensive.

Since we can't get support, it would be helpful if there was more documentation online to help users navigate the solution when they run into issues or have questions.

The solution is very stable. We haven't had any issues with it.

We don't have access to technical support in our region.

Previously we used IBM systems. We switched to Hitachi about 20 years ago.

The initial setup was difficult, as we don't have access to assistance. We had some issues around configuration. We needed to know things like what kind of raid is the best, or what kind of replication is ideal. We had to seek out answers online to get the information we needed.  

I would rate the solution eight out of ten.

We use the platform for virtualization purposes.

The product provides a good storage space.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform's GUI could be better.

We have been using Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform for ten years. At present, we use the latest version.

I rate the product's stability a nine out of ten. We encountered a few stability problems.

I rate the product's scalability a five out of ten.

The distributor needs more knowledgeable resources for technical support. It would be better to connect directly to the vendor in case of queries.

Negative

We have used BMC and Hewlett-Packard before.

The initial setup is difficult. I rate the process a five out of ten. It takes a few hours to a day to complete.

It is an expensive product. I rate its pricing a three out of ten.

I recommend Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform to others and rate it a seven out of ten.

Our primary use case for the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is for storing data from the Oracle database. Additionally, it is for banking and other transactions.

It's best features are its reliability and stability.

In terms of what could be improved, it could use a better, faster web console and other consoles. It is so boring waiting, waiting and waiting for it to refresh. Additionally, there could be more rate groups for it, or different rate groups. Right now there are limited options in regards to the rate group.

I have been using Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series over the course of the last year.

The version we use depends on our situation and the agreement between us and the customer. Every contract between our company and another company, like banks in Iran, is different.

In terms of numbers of users, it depends on the customer. It can be more than 1,000 or 10,000 people.

In terms of technical support, in our country, it's illegal so we try to fix our problem by ourselves. So it is hard.

It's not easy to install, but I know how to install it. Its web design and console are very weak and do not have enough speed.

It took 10 times to install.

We require about 10 people for the deployment.

In terms of cost, in our country and with our money, it is an expensive solution, but it's valuable.

My recommendation to anyone looking to use Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series is to read and read and read and learn from other people's experiences and basic knowledge. This is really important for everyone.

On a scale of one to ten, I would give Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series a nine.