Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE: 6501), today announced new hyper-converged infrastructure solutions and software enhancements for VMware environments. The solutions help eliminate complexity, protect workloads and reduce operational expenses, and are particularly helpful for partners and customers who want to transform traditional data centers and embrace private and hybrid cloud environments.

The newly available Hitachi Unified Compute Platform (UCP) 1000 for VMware
EVO:RAIL™ is a simple, pre-built and fully optimized hyper-converged appliance that is
designed for rapid, low-cost deployment of remote office, test and development, virtual
desktop and similar virtualized solutions. Like the existing UCP family from Hitachi Data
Systems, UCP 1000 for VMware EVO:RAIL provides enterprise converged infrastructure
solutions that easily support core-to-edge IT workloads and simplifies increasingly
complex data centers, and now remote offices.
“Increasingly, organizations are transitioning from dedicated, separate compute,
networking and storage systems to converged and hyper-converged infrastructure
architectures to accelerate time to value and simplify data center management. We also
see growing demand for functionality, performance and reliability as organizations
deploy private and hybrid cloud,” said Ravi Chalaka, Vice President of Solutions
Marketing and Social Innovation, Hitachi Data Systems. “In collaboration with VMware,
our long-time strategic partner, we are pleased to now offer new solutions and
functionalities to enable partners and customers to meet their business objectives.”

New VMware vSphere® Virtual Volumes™ support

Hitachi also announced new VMware vSphere® Virtual Volumes™ support for the
industry-leading Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) G1000. The Hitachi
implementation of VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes allows customers to automate and
take full advantage of granular VM control and policy-based management of VM growth
and drive greater data center efficiency.
For simple, cost-effective data protection, Hitachi UCP 1000 for VMware EVO:RAIL
offers optional integration with Hitachi Data Ingestor software that allows for “bottomless
backup” on-premise with Hitachi Content Platform (HCP) or in the cloud with Hitachi
Cloud Service for Content Archiving. Hitachi UCP 1000 for VMware EVO:RAIL provides
customers with the flexibility and agility they need in remote office and other
environments at a lower cost than other solutions.
A new release of Hitachi Virtual Infrastructure Integrator 3.0, a comprehensive data
protection and management solution that is specific to VMware vSphere, simplifies data
management for file and block storage and allows scheduled and instantaneous backup,
recovery and cloning services. It also helps customers meet backup and recovery
service levels at the VM level while improving resource utilization.

“Help customers on their journey to the unified hybrid cloud”

Hitachi Data Systems is also now offering stretched storage cluster capabilities on VSP
systems using global-active device technology in conjunction with VMware vCenter™
Site Recovery Manager™, allowing customers nondisruptive application mobility and
improved recovery point objectives (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO) in the
event of disaster. Hitachi Data Systems provides highly available, active-active clusters
with automated recovery for Tier 1 business applications.
“For years, VMware and HDS have worked together to help customers on their journey
to the unified hybrid cloud by developing new, reliable solutions that are simple to use
and can support growing business needs,” said Toni Adams, Vice President, Global
Partner Marketing, VMware. “Building on that partnership, we are continuing to work
closely with HDS to help our customers accelerate time to value, with infrastructure that
can protect workloads and enable reduced operational expenses.”