Software components and features

Hitachi's In-System Replication software for VSP 5000 series ensures rapid restart-and-recovery times by combining local mirroring of full volumes with fast, space-efficient snapshots.

• High-speed, nondisruptive in-system mirroring technology of Hitachi ShadowImage® rapidly creates multiple copies of mission-critical information within the storage system in mainframe and open-systems environments. ShadowImage keeps data RAID-protected and fully recoverable, without affecting service or performance levels. Replicated data volumes can then be split from the host applications and used for system backups, application testing, and data mining applications, while business continues to run at full capacity.
• The high-speed, nondisruptive snapshot technology of Hitachi Thin Image snapshot software rapidly creates copies of mission-critical information within the storage system or virtualized storage pool without impacting host service or performance levels. Because snapshots store only the changed data, the storage capacity required for each snapshot copy is substantially less than the capacity of the source volume. As a result, Thin Image can provide significant savings over full-volume cloning methods. Thin Image snapshot copies are fully read/write compatible with other hosts and can be used for system backups, application testing, and data mining applications.

Application-consistent ShadowImage clones and Thin Image snapshots can be orchestrated using Hitachi Data Instance Director (HDID) software. HDID supports Microsoft® Exchange and SQL Server® as well as Oracle databases on Linux operating systems. These clones and snapshots can be easily created as part of a complete data protection workflow. HDID can also trigger a ShadowImage clone or Thin Image snapshot on the remote side of a distance replication pair.

Hitachi Vantara Global Services Solutions provides Implementation Services for in-system replication software. These services improve testing and application deployment operations with high-speed, problem-free data duplication. Hitachi Vantara consultants tailor the configuration and integration of the in-system replication software to meet your backup and recovery application requirements.

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• Storage Virtualization Operating System RF

  SVOS RF delivers best-in-class business continuity and data availability and simplifies storage management. Flash performance is optimized with a patented flash-aware I/O stack to further accelerate data access. Adaptive inline data reduction increases storage efficiency while enabling a balance of data efficiency and application performance. Industry-leading storage virtualization allows SVOS RF to use third-party all-flash and hybrid arrays as storage capacity, consolidating resources and extending the life of storage investments.

Hitachi's Remote Replication software for VSP 5000 series combines Hitachi TrueCopy® and Universal Replicator solutions to enable remote data protection at up to four data centers. Providing continuous, nondisruptive, host-independent data replication, Hitachi Remote Replication software ensures the highest levels of data integrity for local or metropolitan areas. Copies generated by Hitachi Remote Replication software products can be used for the rapid recovery or restart of production systems on primary or secondary (disaster recovery) systems following an outage. They can also be used for nondisruptive test and development, data warehousing, data mining, data backup, and data migration applications.

SVOS RF business continuity solutions are designed for maximum flexibility, enabling organizations to build a recovery strategy that spans multiple data centers and delivers to their specific SLAs.

• Hitachi TrueCopy® enables synchronous remote replication of mission-critical data from a primary data center to a secondary data center. TrueCopy delivers immediate zero-RPO and automated failover capabilities and is compatible with open-systems and mainframe environments.
• Universal Replicator features journal disk caching for achieving tight RPO time capabilities, even in the event of a network outage. Universal Replicator provides asynchronous remote copy, over any distance and is compatible with open-systems and mainframe environments. Deployed implementations can be configured with or without delta resync, which ensures replication consistency for the highest level of remote copy data integrity at any distance.

TrueCopy and Universal Replicator can also be automated as part of an end-to-end, unified data protection, retention, and recovery management solution within Hitachi Data Instance Director (HDID) software. HDID can also automatically trigger Thin Image snapshots and ShadowImage clones from the remote copy of the data.

From remote copy planning to advanced implementation services, Hitachi Vantara Global Services Solutions can support the successful and timely deployment of the most resilient data protection infrastructures. Services to support TrueCopy and Universal Replicator software and other business continuity and disaster recovery solutions from Hitachi Vantara are available.

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• Storage Virtualization Operating System RF

  SVOS RF delivers best-in-class business continuity and data availability and simplifies storage management. Flash performance is optimized with a patented flash-aware I/O stack to further accelerate data access. Adaptive inline data reduction increases storage efficiency while enabling a balance of data efficiency and application performance. Industry-leading storage virtualization allows SVOS RF to use third-party all-flash and hybrid arrays as storage capacity, consolidating resources and extending the life of storage investments.

Parent Topic

• Storage Virtualization Operating System RF

  SVOS RF delivers best-in-class business continuity and data availability and simplifies storage management. Flash performance is optimized with a patented flash-aware I/O stack to further accelerate data access. Adaptive inline data reduction increases storage efficiency while enabling a balance of data efficiency and application performance. Industry-leading storage virtualization allows SVOS RF to use third-party all-flash and hybrid arrays as storage capacity, consolidating resources and extending the life of storage investments.

By simplifying tiered storage management, Hitachi's Data Mobility software delivers the highest storage performance for the most frequently accessed data while at the same time lowering costs by automatically optimizing data placement.

Hitachi Data Mobility software automatically and transparently moves data across tiers of storage, maximizing business application service levels while minimizing costs. Support for a broad range of storage media, configurations, and virtualized third-party arrays facilitates seamless data migration from older to newer Hitachi storage.

• Dynamic Tiering automates data placement and access in a tiered storage environment, dynamically moving the most active data to the highest-performing storage tiers while moving less frequently accessed data to lower tiers. An additional active-flash mode moves suddenly active data to higher-performing tiers in real time. In seconds to subseconds, active flash responds to workload demands based on current I/O activity and proactively preserves flash endurance by monitoring and demoting pages that exceed thresholds for heavy write I/O.
• Nondisruptive data migration is accomplished using the global storage virtualization technology of the Hitachi VSP storage systems. Resources on the migration source storage system are virtualized on the target storage system. From the perspective of the host, I/O requests continue to be serviced by the source storage system during the migration process.

Parent Topic

• Storage Virtualization Operating System RF

  SVOS RF delivers best-in-class business continuity and data availability and simplifies storage management. Flash performance is optimized with a patented flash-aware I/O stack to further accelerate data access. Adaptive inline data reduction increases storage efficiency while enabling a balance of data efficiency and application performance. Industry-leading storage virtualization allows SVOS RF to use third-party all-flash and hybrid arrays as storage capacity, consolidating resources and extending the life of storage investments.

The Encryption License Key feature of VSP 5000 series protects your sensitive data against breaches associated with storage media (for example, loss or theft). Encryption License Key includes a controller-based encryption implementation as well as integrated key management functionality that can leverage third-party key management solutions via the OASIS Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP).

The data at-rest encryption (DARE) functionality is implemented using cryptographic chips included as part of the encryption hardware. The encryption hardware encrypts and decrypts data as it is being written to and read from the physical drives. The key management functionality controls the full key life cycle, including the generation, distribution, storage, backup/recovery, rekeying, and destruction of keys. In addition, the design of this key management functionality includes protections against key corruption (for example, integrity checks on keys) as well as key backups (both primary and secondary).

The Encryption License Key feature provides the following benefits:

• Hardware-based Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption, using 256-bit keys in the XTS mode of operation, is provided for open and mainframe systems.
• Encryption can be applied to some or all supported internal drives.
• Each encrypted internal drive is protected with a unique data encryption key.
• Encryption has negligible effects on I/O throughput and latency.
• Encryption requires little to no disruption of existing applications and infrastructure.
• Cryptographic erasure (media sanitization) of data is performed when an internal encrypted drive is removed from the storage system.

Parent Topic

• Storage Virtualization Operating System RF

  SVOS RF delivers best-in-class business continuity and data availability and simplifies storage management. Flash performance is optimized with a patented flash-aware I/O stack to further accelerate data access. Adaptive inline data reduction increases storage efficiency while enabling a balance of data efficiency and application performance. Industry-leading storage virtualization allows SVOS RF to use third-party all-flash and hybrid arrays as storage capacity, consolidating resources and extending the life of storage investments.

Advanced management tools, including CLIs and REST APIs, are available for more advanced management of your VSP 5000 series storage environment.

The Command Control Interface (CCI) software provides powerful command-line control for VSP 5000 series. CCI enables you to configure your storage system and perform data management operations by issuing commands directly to the storage system. CCI commands can be used interactively or in scripts to automate and standardize storage administration functions, thereby simplifying storage administration tasks and reducing administration costs. CCI also provides enhanced control and functionality for SVOS RF in-system and remote replication operations, including ShadowImage, Thin Image, TrueCopy, Universal Replicator, and global-active device. For remote replication operations, CCI interfaces with the system software and high-availability (HA) software on the hosts as well as the software on the storage systems to provide failover operation commands that support mutual hot standby in conjunction with industry-standard failover products.

REST-based APIs for VSP 5000 series extend operations, enabling integration with existing toolsets and automation templates to further simplify and consolidate management tasks. For details about API integration solutions for VSP 5000 series, contact your Hitachi Vantara representative.

Parent Topic

• Storage Virtualization Operating System RF

  SVOS RF delivers best-in-class business continuity and data availability and simplifies storage management. Flash performance is optimized with a patented flash-aware I/O stack to further accelerate data access. Adaptive inline data reduction increases storage efficiency while enabling a balance of data efficiency and application performance. Industry-leading storage virtualization allows SVOS RF to use third-party all-flash and hybrid arrays as storage capacity, consolidating resources and extending the life of storage investments.

Hitachi Ops Center Administrator is a unified software management tool that reduces the complexity of managing storage systems by simplifying the setup, management, and maintenance of storage resources.

Ops Center Administrator reduces infrastructure management complexities and enables a new simplified approach to managing storage infrastructures. It provides intuitive graphical user interfaces and recommended configuration practices to streamline system configurations and storage management operations. You can leverage Ops Center Administrator to easily provision new storage capacity for business applications without requiring in-depth knowledge of the underlying infrastructure resource details. It provides centralized management while reducing the number of steps to configure, optimize, and deploy new infrastructure resources.

Some of the key Ops Center Administrator capabilities include:

• Simplified user experience for managing infrastructure resources. Visual aids enable easy viewing and interpretation of key management information, such as used and available capacity, and guide features to help quickly determine appropriate next steps for a given management task.
• Recommended system configurations to speed initial storage system setup and accelerate new infrastructure resource deployments.
• Integrated configuration workflows with Hitachi recommended practices to streamline storage provisioning and data protection tasks.
• Common, centralized management for supported storage systems.
• A REST-based API to provide full management programmability and control.
• Ops Center Administrator enables automated SAN zoning during volume attach and detach. Optional auto-zoning eliminates the need for repetitive zoning tasks to be performed on the switch.

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• Storage management software

  The Hitachi approach to software-defined solutions enables you to effectively manage your IT infrastructure to align storage resources to rapidly changing business demands, achieve superior returns on infrastructure investments, and minimize operational costs. Hitachi Ops Center, Hitachi's suite of management software for VSP 5000 series, delivers higher storage availability, mobility, and optimization for key business applications and automates storage management operations with integrated best practices to accelerate new resource deployments. Hitachi storage management software enables you to manage more storage capacity with less effort and ensure that service levels for business-critical applications are met while increasing utilization and performance of virtualized storage assets.

Hitachi Ops Center Analyzer is data center management software that monitors, reports, and correlates end-to-end performance from server to storage. With Hitachi Ops Center Analyzer, you can define and monitor storage service-level objectives (SLOs) for resource performance. You can identify and analyze historical performance trends to optimize storage system performance and plan for capacity growth. When a performance hot spot is identified or a service-level threshold is exceeded, the integrated diagnostic engine aids in diagnosing, troubleshooting, and finding the root cause of performance bottlenecks.

Using Ops Center Analyzer, you register resources (storage systems, hosts, servers, and volumes) and set service-level thresholds. You are alerted to threshold violations and possible performance problems (bottlenecks). Using analytics tools, you find which resource has a problem and analyze its cause to help solve the problem.

The following figure shows how Ops Center Analyzer ensures the performance of your storage environment based on real-time SLOs.

The system administrator uses Ops Center Analyzer to manage and monitor the IT infrastructure based on SLOs, which match the service-implementation guidelines that are negotiated under a service-level agreement (SLA) with consumers.

Ops Center Analyzer monitors the health of the IT infrastructure using performance indicators and generates alerts when SLOs are at risk.

Having data center expertise, the service administrator uses Ops Center Analyzer to assign resources, such as VMs and storage capacity from registered storage systems, to consumer applications. This manages critical SLO violations and ensures that service performance meets the SLAs.

Parent Topic

• Storage management software

  The Hitachi approach to software-defined solutions enables you to effectively manage your IT infrastructure to align storage resources to rapidly changing business demands, achieve superior returns on infrastructure investments, and minimize operational costs. Hitachi Ops Center, Hitachi's suite of management software for VSP 5000 series, delivers higher storage availability, mobility, and optimization for key business applications and automates storage management operations with integrated best practices to accelerate new resource deployments. Hitachi storage management software enables you to manage more storage capacity with less effort and ensure that service levels for business-critical applications are met while increasing utilization and performance of virtualized storage assets.

Child Topics

• Analyzer detail view
• Analyzer viewpoint

Hitachi Ops Center Automator provides tools to automate and simplify end-to-end processes, such as storage provisioning, for storage and data center administrators. The building blocks of Ops Center Automator are prepackaged automation templates that you can customize to your specific environment and processes to create services that automate complex tasks such as resource provisioning. Ops Center Automator integrates with other existing Hitachi Ops Center applications, including Hitachi Ops Center API Configuration Manager and Hitachi Ops Center Analyzer, to automate common infrastructure management tasks by using your existing infrastructure services.

The key features of Ops Center Automator include:

• Automation services for intelligent provisioning of volumes from different storage classes
• Preconfigured service templates that help you create customized automation services
• Role-based access to defined services
• Intelligent pool selection based on an algorithm that chooses the best pools in terms of performance and capacity
• Assignment of common service management attributes that can be assigned and shared across all automation services
• Application integration by using a REST API*
• Infrastructure group creation based on customer needs and environment

* To increase operational simplicity, Hitachi Ops Center deploys a REST API that applications can call to have Ops Center Automator execute tasks for them. The REST API enables third-party tools to integrate with Automator, reducing both effort and risk of errors. Automator is fully integrated with Hitachi Ops Center Analyzer to simplify the monitoring of telemetric data and the required corrections. Automation is accomplished by Analyzer using the REST API to call services created in Automator to address specific issues.

Parent Topic

• Storage management software

  The Hitachi approach to software-defined solutions enables you to effectively manage your IT infrastructure to align storage resources to rapidly changing business demands, achieve superior returns on infrastructure investments, and minimize operational costs. Hitachi Ops Center, Hitachi's suite of management software for VSP 5000 series, delivers higher storage availability, mobility, and optimization for key business applications and automates storage management operations with integrated best practices to accelerate new resource deployments. Hitachi storage management software enables you to manage more storage capacity with less effort and ensure that service levels for business-critical applications are met while increasing utilization and performance of virtualized storage assets.

The enterprise copy data management platform enabled by Hitachi Data Instance Director (HDID) provides business-defined data protection to simplify the creation and management of complex policies to meet service-level objectives for data availability, recoverability, and retention.

HDID provides an orchestration layer for remote replication supporting global-active device, TrueCopy, and Universal Replicator, local and remote snapshots and clones with Thin Image and ShadowImage, continuous data protection, and incremental-forever backup.

Parent Topic

• Storage management software

  The Hitachi approach to software-defined solutions enables you to effectively manage your IT infrastructure to align storage resources to rapidly changing business demands, achieve superior returns on infrastructure investments, and minimize operational costs. Hitachi Ops Center, Hitachi's suite of management software for VSP 5000 series, delivers higher storage availability, mobility, and optimization for key business applications and automates storage management operations with integrated best practices to accelerate new resource deployments. Hitachi storage management software enables you to manage more storage capacity with less effort and ensure that service levels for business-critical applications are met while increasing utilization and performance of virtualized storage assets.