If the whole concept of DataOps, which is an approach to data management for enterprises, sounded a little nebulous, then it was the product launches at the recent Hitachi Vantara Next conference in Las Vegas that made the concept more tangible.  

One of the major announcements to this end was the release of its Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) 5000 series along with Hitachi Ops Centre software and an updated Hitachi Storage Virtualization Operating System. Together, the company explained, the technologies can accelerate data centre workloads and deliver future-proof IT with a new, innovative architecture.  

The company elaborated that this forms the foundation for modernizing data centre, cloud and DataOps environments necessary for optimising the management of one’s data in the era of artificial intelligence.

“The Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform 5000 series is the proving ground for our customers to gain a digital advantage over their competition and achieve better business outcomes,” explained Brad Surak, the chief product and strategy officer at Hitachi Vantara. “Hitachi Vantara is delivering the foundation for modern, enterprise infrastructure innovations that our customers require, with new solutions that are engineered using future-proof technology to take on the data centre challenges of tomorrow,” he continued.

Brad Surak

But what does it do?

More specifically, the Hitachi VSP 5000 series is intended to provide the core data storage foundation for all digital business operations with the speed and scale to power existing workloads. As well, it is intended to cater to new, data-intensive workloads emerging through multicloud and AI-driven environments. 

Surak noted that it the VSP 5000 IS agile enough to store block and file data and supports workload diversity ranging from traditional mission-critical business applications to containers to mainframe. 

Equally as important, the solution has a scale-out, scale-up architecture for any workload. This means that organisations can start small and grow the offering as their business requires it, rather than laying out a vast sum of money upfront, while still being able to rely on predictable levels of service regardless of how much or how little of the product they have deployed.

Any workload welcome

As well, It has been designed to accelerate and consolidate multiple workloads of any type – traditional transactional systems, modern containerized applications, analytics and even mainframe workloads. This consolidation then translates into cost savings. 

This, it was noted throughout the conference, has become essential for IT departments who today are expected to do more and do better with less budget. It also has the byproduct of reducing the footprint of the data centre, another win for the company and the environment as well. 

The company explained that by bringing AI to infrastructure management and operations, this can improve decision making and modernize resource delivery so as to maximise a company’s return on investment. Moreover, it asserted that Ops Centre can accelerate customers toward an autonomous data centre by automating up to 70% of tasks while simultaneously offering faster, more accurate insights to diagnose system health and keep data operations running in optimum condition.

Show me the value

Another benefit highlighted by the new product is that customers can instantly add new value to their existing storage infrastructure by leveraging a VSP 5000 model to virtualize their current systems. This would then lower total cost of ownership by up to 20% according to its estimates.

What about older systems? Are they relegated to the sidelines in the VSP 5000 party? Not at all, apparently. Hitachi Vantara explained that virtualization will bring all the data services available with the VSP 5000 series to older systems.

“Increasingly, customers tell us they need to do more with less. The new Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) 5000 series sets a new bar for performance, scalability and resilience, addressing business challenges across any workload, application or infrastructure,” commented Philipp Alexander, managing director at SVA System Vertrieb Alexander GmbH. “Additionally, AI automation in the new Hitachi Ops Centre allows customers to do more with less without specialized expertise or training,” he concluded.