Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning Software
Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning software is a new thin provisioning software product that provides virtual storage capacity. Provisioning storage from a virtual pool not only reduces administration costs by cutting the time to provision new storage, but also improves application availability by reducing the downtime needed for storage provisioning.
For companies faced with ongoing operating and capital budget pressures due to rapid storage growth, Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning software greatly simplifies the storage provisioning process to directly address both budget problems. Simplified administration not only reduces manpower expense by increasing the number of terabytes one administrator can manage, but also postpones the need to purchase new storage due to increased storage utilization.
Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning software allows storage to be allocated to an application without actually being physically mapped until it is used. This "just-in-time" provisioning de-couples the provisioning of storage to an application from the physical addition of storage capacity to the storage system to achieve overall higher rates of storage utilization.
As needed, physical storage can be nondisruptively added to the storage system and placed in a central pool that is available to all thin provisioned volumes. As an application requires additional capacity, the storage system automatically allocates the needed additional physical storage to the volume from the shared virtual pool. Behind the scenes, Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning software monitors storage resources and proactively alerts administrators before more physical storage is required.
Dynamic Provisioning software also transparently spreads many individual I/O workloads across multiple physical disks. This I/O workload balancing feature directly reduces performance and capacity management expenses by eliminating I/O bottlenecks across multiple applications.
With Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning software, an organization's overall storage utilization improves while all hosted applications are performance tuned (via I/O workload balancing) for operational efficiency. Compatible with the advanced features and reliability of the best-in-class Hitachi Universal Storage Platform V and Hitachi Universal Storage Platform VM storage systems along with all Hitachi Services Oriented Storage Solutions, Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning software offers reduced capital and operating costs for improved return on storage investment.
Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning
Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning is a new thin provisioning software product that provides virtual storage capacity from a storage pool to decrease the administration costs to provision new storage while improving application availability by reducing the downtime needed for the storage provisioning process. Watch the demo and see how Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning can make thin provisioning easier for you!
Watch | Download
Features and Benefits
For customers seeking to reduce storage management operating costs Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning software offers:
- Elimination of the traditional complexity of provisioning storage volumes on a "per application" basis when more storage is needed. No longer will administrators need to install additional disks and simultaneously re-configure both the storage system and the hosts being provisioned. With Dynamic Provisioning software, the administrator simply draws from the Dynamic Provisioning pool without needing to add physical disks.
- Greatly improved storage management efficiency and the ability of one administrator to manage more terabytes of data. This results from the de-coupling of physical resource provisioning from application provisioning, and simplifies storage management, thereby reducing operating costs.
For customers seeking to reduce application outages during provisioning, Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning software offers:
- Reduced downtime (planned outages) to increase physical disk capacity and change the application server and storage system configurations. With virtual storage provisioning, less physical provisioning means less application downtime
For customers seeking to simplify storage performance management, Hitachi Dynamic provisioning software offers:
- Automatic application I/O workload balancing, by spreading many I/O workloads across multiple physical volumes.
For customers seeking to reduce storage acquisition costs and minimize expensive over-provisioning, Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning offers:
- The ability to configure all anticipated storage across multiple applications reducing the amount of physical disks that need to be purchased at the start compared to conventional provisioning techniques.
- Availability on both internal and externally virtualized storage to the Hitachi Universal Storage Platform™ V or Universal Storage Platform VM.
- Physical disks can be purchased and installed transparently as needed to minimize application service downtime for provisioning compared to conventional provisioning techniques.
- The reduction in physical disk requirements (due to increased utilization of existing disks and deferred storage purchases) can provide environmental savings in floor space, power, and cooling.
For customers concerned about the cost of replicated volumes or seeking to reduce the operating costs of storage replication, Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning offers:
- Since the desired capacity for a volume can be defined regardless of the physical disk capacity, using logical volume expansion is no longer necessary. This simplifies creating replication pairs.
- Compatibility with the following Hitachi replication products: ShadowImage®, TrueCopy®, Hitachi Universal Replicator and Copy-on-Write Snapshots.
- All operating and capital expense savings are enhanced in a replication environment because using less storage yields additional cost savings.
