Hitachi Vantara Intros VSP 5000 To Push The Envelope On Storage Performance, Scalability, Reliability

The Virtual Storage Platform 5000 comes stocked with a full suite of data storage services as well as a new AI platform, the Hitachi Ops Center, to help simplify management and orchestration of storage on-premises and in the cloud.

Hitachi Vantara Wednesday unveiled the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform 5000 series storage arrays and threw down the gauntlet at other storage vendors by calling it the fastest, highest-capacity and most reliable storage array on the planet.

The VSP 5000, previously code-named Project Jupiter, was introduced on stage during the opening of the Hitachi Next 2019 conference, held this week in Las Vegas.

It is the fastest NVMe array on the planet, said Dan McConnell, senior vice president of product management for enterprise infrastructure at Hitachi Vantara.

[Related: HPE Steals Major Storage Market Share, Dell EMC Still On Top: IDC]

"How fast is it?" McConnell said. "An industry-leading 21 million IOPS. Capable of sub-70-microsecond latencies, the VSP 5000 can accelerate any workload."

The VSP 5000 is also the most scalable NVMe array, and can be configured from two controllers to 12 controllers and over 69 petabytes of capacity, McConnell said. "That's over eight times [that] of our competitors," he said.

It also has a strong emphasis on reliability. McConnell said the VSP 5000 can provide eight nines, or 99.999999 percent, availability.

"So if you're keeping score, that's the biggest, that's the fastest, and that's the most reliable," he said. "That's one heck of a combination."

The VSP 5000 is aimed at businesses looking to find a way to keep up with the growth of their data and data lakes but do not have the resources to deal with the growing complexity to manage that growth, McConnell said.

"We don't think you have to sacrifice choice for complexity," he said. "At Hitachi, our approach to an intelligent core is unique, and is based on being flexible to meet the demands of all workloads with no trade-offs. AI-driven to drive simplicity, efficiency and reliability. Orchestrated to intelligently manage copies and data movement, both on-prem and off. And transformative, enabling our customers to get more from their existing assets. The VSP 5000 is designed to enable our customers to leverage the technologies that they need without trade-offs."

To do so, Hitachi designed a new architecture, the Hitachi Accelerated Fabric, which McConnell said is an innovative design leveraging FPGA (field programmable gate array) acceleration for maximum performance with maximum flexibility.

"Customers can take advantage of the high-performance, low-latency NVMe technologies like flash or SCM (storage class memory), as well as taking advantage of the lowest dollar-per-Gbyte of spinning media," he said. "We know you have a variety of workloads, from bulk data to high performance, from legacy applications to cloud-native applications, and all points in between. With full support and integration in a container and virtualization environments, as well as pulling forward support for mainframes, the VSP 5000 can ensure you can consolidate any workload from mainframe to containers."

The VSP 5000 can also orchestrate copies and data mobility on-premises with what McConnell called "drag and drop simple" integrated copy data management capabilities. It is also cloud-connected, with the ability to seamlessly tier file and object workloads to the cloud, with a variety of cloud-based software integration including management integration with Amazon Web Services, he said.

Hitachi Vantara has also integrated its patented AI engine to give the VSP 5000 root cause analysis, predictive recommended remediation actions, and AI-assisted resource placement and balancing and forecasting, McConnell said.

The VSP 5000's smart dedupe optimizer provides up to 7:1 total data reduction, McConnell said.

"What's smart about it?" he said. "It looks at the data streams in real time to determine whether to leverage in-line or post-process deduplication algorithm, giving you maximum efficiency with maximum performance."

The virtualization capabilities of the VSP 5000 let customers leverage its advanced data services across existing storage infrastructure to drive higher return on existing assets to, for instance, provide an NVMe layer on existing storage or use the smart dedupe capabilities to free up capacity, McConnell said.

With the VSP 5000, Hitachi Vantara also introduced the VSP Cloud Connect Pack, which adds an HNAS 4000 file storage gateway to move data to public clouds.

Also new is the Hitachi Ops Center, which is aimed at helping customers build an autonomous data center by applying AI to infrastructure management, as well as the Hitachi Storage Virtualization Operating System, the software behind the VSP 5000 that lets customers mix NVMe and SAS flash media in the same system and bridge to the latest storage technologies including storage class memory and NVMe over Fabrics, or NVMe-oF.

The VSP 5000 is an exciting offering, said Joe Kadlec, vice president and senior partner at Consiliant Technologies, an Irvine, Calif.-based solution provider and longtime Hitachi Vantara channel partner.

"Hitachi has leap-frogged in technology on all fronts, including performance, scalability and reliability," Kadlec told CRN. "It scales from two nodes to 12 with up to 69 petabytes of capacity, while claiming eight nines of reliability and a quadruple redundant fabric. This covers every area customers are looking to address."

The focus on the VSP 5000 seems to be on ease of use, Kadlec said. For instance, customers will be able to fold their existing infrastructure under the VSP 5000 to take advantage of NVMe while continuing to leverage their previous investments.

"Now customers don't have to worry about workloads," he said. "Today, customer workloads are all over the map, but can be managed with the VSP 5000."

Hitachi Vantara impressed Kadlec with its live demonstration of the Hitachi Ops Center.

"What resonated with me was how it can automate and simplify the management," he said. "It can analyze the data, and the automation will let businesses do a lot more with their data. This takes complexity out of the market."

The VSP 5000 is currently available.

Dylan Martin contributed to this story.