HDS unveils converged infrastructure solutions

• Hitachi Unified Compute Platform (family provides cloud-ready infrastructure that can be deployed quickly
• New platform integrates servers, networking, storage and software

HITACHI Data Systems Corporation (HDS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd, has unveiled converged infrastructure solutions that combine storage, server, networking and software management in fully integrated packages designed for mission-critical workloads.
 
The new Hitachi Unified Compute Platform (UCP) family of solutions provides a comprehensive, pre-tested cloud-ready infrastructure that can be deployed quickly and managed easily, unlike custom approaches that require exhaustive testing and integration costs, the company said in a statement.
 
Eleven new Hitachi UCP offerings give customers superior flexibility and choices, based on two converged infrastructure models:

• Hitachi Unified Compute Platform Pro: Pre-configured, tightly integrated turnkey solutions built with HDS servers and storage, and industry-standard networking. The initial offering in this family of solutions is UCP Pro for VMware vSphere, which features Hitachi Unified Compute Platform Director software that provides VMware vCenter Server integrated management and orchestration.

• Hitachi Unified Compute Platform Select: A series of pre-validated reference solutions that can be configured using a selection of Hitachi storage, server and software management, for a wide range of top-tier applications. Hitachi UCP Select also offers converged solutions with Cisco Unified Computing System (Cisco UCS) servers. Hitachi UCP Select is ideal for organizations that require a flexible converged infrastructure.

All Hitachi UCP converged infrastructure solutions are thoroughly new designs to solve the reliability, availability, scalability and performance challenges that IT organizations face when using many first-generation converged infrastructure stacks, the company said.
 
“Converged infrastructure solutions have been available in the market for some time, but when enterprise organizations and cloud service providers encounter the requirements of true mission-critical workloads, these first-generation converged offerings fall short of customer needs,” claimed Saravanan Krishnan (pic), director, Platforms & Solutions Business APAC, HDS.
 
“Until today, organizations looking for a converged infrastructure solution had to choose from commodity systems that lack high reliability and availability, and have limited scalability and performance,” he said.” Or they have had to choose integrated stacks with no truly unified infrastructure management.”
 
With the range of new UCP solutions, HDS is specifically addressing the most pressing needs of CIOs when considering a converged infrastructure. These needs include accelerating business velocity, increasing staff productivity, improving IT economics for pre- and post-deployment, and meeting stringent service level agreements.
 
“The battleground over integrated compute and storage stacks is heating up with HDS coming out strong with its new converged infrastructure portfolio,” said Ashish Nadkarni, research director, Storage Systems, IDC.
 
“This market has been served by either solution providers including all components from the same vendor or by pre-configured and pre-tested packages comprised of best-of-breed components from different vendors woven together by a mandatory management framework.
 
“HDS is breaking this ‘either-or’ mold by combining the best of each approach. Hitachi UCP lets customers choose from a fully integrated stack of Hitachi servers and storage complete with orchestration software; or, from a portfolio of reference solutions featuring HDS storage that use either Hitachi or third-party servers,” he added.