Featured Expert
Got a question about how to solve your storage challenges? Go directly to the source - the people at Hitachi who have researched the market, listened to small and medium businesses, and developed solutions with those specific needs and requirements in mind.
Patrick Allaire is Senior Product Marketing Manager, whose expertise centers around storage and server management solutions, storage area networks, network attached storage, virtualization technologies, enterprise server and utility pricing.
Q: Is Hitachi Simple Modular Storage 100 really customer installable?
A: Yes, it truly is. W e designed the Simple Modular Storage 100 for the small and medium business that has never implemented a Storage Area Network (SAN).
The out-of-the-box set-up experience is similar to setting up a new laptop computer or a home network router. A few quick steps are all that is needed to get the system up and running. The Hitachi Storage Navigator Modular 2 management software is also customer installable on any Microsoft Windows PC or server. Once the GUI-based Storage Navigator Modular software is installed, an easy-to-use, wizard based interface guides the administrator and streamlines the initial configuration.
We even put our customer installable claims to the test by having Hitachi senior managers set up these systems. The verdict? Simple Modular Storage 100 can be installed in less than 30 minutes, making it the only true plug-and-play system on the market and the only product that does not require storage expertise.
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Other Recent Questions
Q: How can I grow my storage capacity with Simple Modular Storage?
A: Hitachi Simple Modular Storage has been designed as a pre-configured system to scale with your growing data needs; in addition, we will offer upgrades in the first half of 2008.
Q: What will an upgrade cost?
A: In net dollars, it is equivalent to pricing for the value of the add-on plus shipping and handling. That means that a customer can initially start with a six- or eight-hard disk drive (HDD) configuration with one controller and upgrade later to two controllers and/or a 12-HDD system later. The same process is used if a customer wants to upgrade the HDD technology from SATA II to SAS drive.
Q: Why did Hitachi choose a pre-configured system design as opposed to open enclosure?
A: The supposed flexibility of the open enclosure design that our competitors use carries a significant cost: increased risk for data loss and increased time for upgrades and migrations.
Our research shows that data availability interruptions are often caused by human error, not hardware failure. In fact, industry consultants suggest human error is the culprit at least 40% of the time. We looked at the root cause of many of these errors and learned that any task involving adding, removing or swapping of a drive was a frequent cause. Rebuilding a RAID group, particularly when performed by an inexperienced operator inserting and swapping drives from one bay to another, only increases data vulnerability, as task sequencing can be tricky. The rebuild process can take several days, exposing your data to unnecessary risk during that time. That is why we built a system that customers with limited storage expertise could maintain, upgrade, and even repair easily - without putting their data at risk. In fact, Hitachi Simple Modular Storage has the lowest five-year total cost of ownership of any product on the market.
Q: What software features differentiate Hitachi Simple Modular Storage from the competition?
A: Simple Modular Storage comes with a complete suite of free software: Copy-on-Write SnapShot, Storage Navigator Manager 2 software, Data Shredding, and Microsoft VDS/VSS, to name a few.
Software options include full copy software through ShadowImage software, which provides for full copies, thereby eliminating the need to back up to tape and protecting against data corruption caused by application failure.
The optional simple disaster recovery software uses the proven TrueCopy Extended software to asynchronously mirror data to a remote sitethe first for an SMB-class system. The remote mirroring only transmits data blocks with write changes into the system, thus greatly reducing the bandwidth required to mirror the data. And unlike Wide Area File Systems (WAFS), which do not allow for continued remote operation while the network is down, simple disaster recovery allows remote office to work continuously while new write changes are stored on disk. When the network is restored, the systems resynchronize automatically.
Q: Why iSCSI connectivity?
A: Our research indicates that most small and medium business customers rely primarily on a TCP/IP network, have fewer than 500 employees, and run fewer than 25 servers. For a customer who has already invested in a Gigabit Ethernet backbone, iSCSI is a suitable, cost effective option, particularly given the built-in default name server functionality, which provides for ease of installation and configuration.
Consider the following Fibre Channel vs. iSCSI cost comparison:
|
Fibre Channel |
iSCSI* |
Host Based Adapter (each) |
$800 |
Free Microsoft initiator available for download |
Cables (each) |
$150 |
$15 |
Switch (cost per port) |
$500** |
$80 |
One extra Gigabit Ethernet server card for full redundancy (iSCSI only) |
|
$100 |
Cost to connect each server |
$2900 |
<$250 |
* Assumes Microsoft Windows environment with an existing Gigabit Ethernet infrastructure
** Cost per port on Fibre Channel Director class switches is typically higher and in some cases double the cost stated
