Europe's leading technology research firm, Ovum, just published a comprehensive 11-page research report encompassing four case studies on customers that have deployed Hitachi's controller-based virtualization solutions to create fluid tiered storage environments. Ovum analyst Carl Greiner interviewed the First International Bank of Israel (FIBI), Alberta Justice, HDFC Bank, and EDB and prepared detailed customer case studies that highlight the business, operational, and technology benefits provided by Hitachi's solutions. Greiner said, "The acknowledged leader in heterogeneous storage virtualization is Hitachi Data Systems with its Universal Storage Platform and Network Storage Controller solutions."
Other highlights of the report include:
- "All those interviewed indicated that the business cases for the projects were all met, with the vast majority indicating that the break-even timeframe was dramatically better than projected."
- "A common theme was that all installation, migration, operational integration, including management activities, were extremely timely."
- "Moreover, each enterprise has ongoing plans to further leverage and enhance their shared virtualized storage infrastructure, and further engage the common storage services capability of the Hitachi virtualization solutions."
- "We have talked with dozens of users who are very satisfied with the flexibility and capability of externally attaching and virtualizing non-Hitachi arrays."
- "It is important to note that most Hitachi virtualization deployments targeted the total storage infrastructure versus individual or application-centric deployments, a unique and common thread within Hitachi virtualization deployments."
- ''Many of the deployments represented a technology refresh to some degree, with all targeting the creation of a client/business-desired shared, flexible, cost-effective storage environment."
The most frequently mentioned reasons for deploying the Hitachi virtualization solutions include:
- Platform for consolidation and simplification, allowing the creation of a cost-effective, virtualized tiered storage infrastructure with common storage services (including backup and recovery, disaster recovery, and high availability) and management
- Tape minimization through serial ATA (SATA) disks and Hitachi Virtual Tape Library (VTL) Solutions with exceptional storage efficiencies
- Increase storage utilization and provide more cost-effective storage solutions that match business requirements
- Consolidation, centralization, and infrastructure simplification
- Enable storage asset optimization through the ability to externally attach, virtualize, and centrally manage older arrays
- Robust partitioning capability and security
- Non-disruptive data migrations/placement with dynamic adjustment capability because of changing requirements within tiered deployments and technology refreshes
- Robust data replication, snapshot, point-in-time (PiT) copy capability, encompassing local, synchronous, and asynchronous distances
- Diverse platform support including mainframes
- Dual parity (redundant array of independent disks [RAID] 6) capability
- Additional storage efficiency through Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning (thin provisioning)
