Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform Reviews

In addition to being a data center, we are a cloud service provider, so our E990 is connected to our cloud systems. In the cloud itself, we provide storage as a service to the customer from the Hitachi E990 boxes.

The efficiency ratio is just as high as advertised. It's very high relative to other storage solutions as well. The compression and deduplication capabilities are also very high.

One improvement I am hoping for in the next release is unified storage. The other storage systems we use are unified, but E990 is not unified. Only block storage is available. To get the same functionality with the E990, you have to configure it through the NAS setup, which adds some additional costs. I would also like more capacity in a single box — expand the space up to 4 petabytes.

I have been using Hitachi E990 for about one year.

It's a very stable system. In the past year, we haven't had any issues with this.

Scalability is a little bit of an issue. The horizontal scalability is not there—only the vertical scalability is there. 

They're very professional and up to date. Their sales staff and support teams are quite good. The pre-sales support is also excellent.

It's simpler than earlier storage solutions. There are a lot of things that we had to do in the past, but setup and implementation are very simple here. Deployment takes about a week or so. It usually takes no longer than 15 days at most, from the site readiness stage to completion.

I would rate Hitachi an eight out of ten.

Here at Philips, we are using Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series for image history purposes, in particular, restoring high-resolution images for our customers.

What I like best about Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series is that it's a fast storage solution. It also has reliable models. The sales support is also good for this product. Even the pricing for it is good.

At the moment, I don't see any room for improvement in Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series because my experience with the product is very good. The software is okay and you can manage the storage well.

What I'd like to see in the next release of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series is for it to be a real NAS solution because right now, you need to use a Hitachi converter called HNAS which makes the process a little bit more expensive. In my opinion, Hitachi should look into the possibility of unifying the HNAS into full storage, meaning that the HNAS should be integrated into the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series.

I've been using Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series, and the first storage my company ever bought from Hitachi was in 2015. I'm still using the product.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series is a stable product.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series is easy to scale.

I'm rating the technical support team of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series a ten.

Positive

Setting up Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series was easy.

The licensing cost of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series, whether it would be high or more affordable, would depend on location. For example, here in Brazil, Hitachi charges in dollars and this means my company still needs to convert that into local currency. Sometimes, my company also needs to discuss the pricing with the Hitachi sales team and request for a discount. At the moment, pricing for Hitachi is high, but my team can have some global funding or global accounts that would help reach the price my company is aiming for.

I'm using Unity, Isilon, and Hitachi, particularly Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series, actually several different storage solutions and models.

The models of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series which I have include the G350, G370, G400, and the G600.

Around one thousand people use Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series within my company.

My advice to people looking into using Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series is to look into the product because it's a very good product. It's reliable, but you should also prepare the environment well for the hardware. You should have a good understanding of your needs and why you should go with Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series, and not compare Hitachi with other solutions that aren't comparable to the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series. You should listen well and understand what the Hitachi sales team is proposing and explaining to ensure that you're buying the product that you need.

My rating for Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series is ten out of ten.

My company is a partner of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series though it doesn't sell the hardware to end customers. What my company does is buy the hardware from Hitachi, then it offers it as hardware as a service to the customers.

I use this solution in the data center of the office of Mexico's Secretary of Education. I work with different hosts. In this case, it had to be HP-UX, Linux, and Windows. I work with the entire family of Hitachi hardware, but for this case, I work with the CBS500 and CB2500 Blade. I use all kinds of software, like Command Director and Device Manager.

For the support windows to work, maybe they have to upgrade the firmware of the VSP. They changed the hardware or the disk. I don't know if it was the port blade they changed or a VM for a memory cache. Also, replacing the old target with the processor target would be fine. The old equipment is very easy to manage, and I don't have any bad commentary.

I have worked with this equipment for the last two years. When I worked before in Hitachi Data Systems, I worked for a data architect and designed complete solutions, so I have a lot of interaction with the clients.  I handle the solutions, the capacity of the disk, configuration, initial set up, definitions of the DP pools, assigning the volumes, creating the entire SAN, etc. Also, I manage the SAN switches. I worked for Pearson, Sonic, Mobiistar, Macromer, Mynorte, and Santander. Every time, I created the whole environment— all open and the mainframe in development. For example, at Ponavid, I created the whole solution, assigned the space, performed all the troubleshooting, as well as supported all the hardware and the performance.

Yes it's very scalable. For example, in the VSP, you can scale the capacity of the disk in-tray and also in the mid-range. In the VSP, the tray is a bit bigger obviously, and I think the disk is the same. And also when you escalate the new equipment, configuration is very easy as well.

When I with work with Hitachi Vantara, I oversee the troubleshooting and support. I am the engineer who provides support, and so it's easy. Once we installed using the harddrive manager, when hardware failed.  Support created a case and assigned this to me and I am the engineer. I take the case and I have to take a solution to the client.

The setup is very easy to manage and configure. The initial setup and takes one hour more or less. And when I check the old disk and processor or the memory cache, I check the blade also. Next, I changed the disk, created the configuration, and installed the old disk. This takes maybe one hour extra. Depending on the performance of the old disk and the capacity, it could take maybe three or four hours. Sometimes, it takes eight. Then I created a SAN, a port, the host groups, the DP pools, and the dynamic provisioning. And for performance troubleshooting, I take a dump. For example, I check the read-write performance of the IO as well as the performance of the port, the workflow, the workload, and the memory cache. 

It always depends on what technology you need. Because if you need a very fast flash disk, it's going to be more expensive obviously. But if you need a backup solution, it's fine, because the technology is advanced, but it fits in some cases.

I rate Hitachi 10 out of 10.

For the banking sector, here in Pakistan, we deploy it as primary storage.

The first benefit is the system's availability. Only Hitachi offers "eight nines". Also, the compression rate can provide a financial benefit, and a further benefit is the performance. There's no performance degradation after applying the compression.

In terms of Hitachi's all-flash technology, there is a smaller footprint with more performance. The footprint is smaller because there isn't a need for many disks and this means there is a reduction in the need for power and cooling. Also, space being used in the data center on the rack is reduced.

The VSP is a machine that works 24/7 throughout the year. The most valuable feature is that it has "eight nines" availability, 99.999999 percent of the time. That is the main selling point. 

Another selling point is the IOPS of Hitachi systems; they are very high and others cannot match them.

Those are the two bullet points: Availability and performance. Hitachi is a best-of-breed storage system.

In addition, there is an effective capacity guarantee. It's a question of virtualization. There is a basic, physical, usable capacity, and effective capacity. Effective capacity is what you get after compression. Hitachi has very good compression, offering a 7:1 compression ratio in their flash boxes. But the guaranteed compression ratio is 4:1 because compression depends on the application and use case. Effectively, on average, we guarantee a compression ratio of 4:1 and there will be no performance degradation.

Also, once the solution has been completely deployed, management of it is easy.

The most common issues we face are connected to replication and parts replacement, such as when there is a disk drive failure.

Also, there is a drawback related to Hitachi's configuration flexibility. The Hitachi storage platform solution is not flexible. That means that both the Hitachi and the partner presale guys have to do a lot of work to design a solution. Once you design a solution, you can't reverse it. There is no flexibility afterward. If you are implementing a solution for a five-year plan, for example, you discuss what the customer will need in those five years. But after implementation the customer cannot then decide they need this or that changed. Customers have to decide things at the point of sale. Other solutions have better flexibility than Hitachi.

We have been working with Hitachi for more than a decade. We are both partners and integrators of Hitachi products. We are also a certified service provider, meaning we have a local team that supports and maintains the system.

Effectively, we don't have any major service activities that cause unavailability of the data or an issue that cannot be solved. That has never happened. These machines are very reliable. They are estimated to work for at least 10 years.

When it comes to business strategy, the only thing the customer wants is that the system is up and running the whole year. We make sure to talk with a customer about their plan for the life of the storage system we are selling. Do they want a three-year plan or a five-year plan or maybe more than five years? We choose the model based on their answer. To summarize our approach in one line, we try to find the best business value that addresses all of a customer's existing challenges.

It's highly scalable.

Hitachi's technical support requires improvement. They don't have a lot of support engineers who can handle all the service requests from all the customers. Other manufacturers have baked-in support. Hitachi doesn't have a support team like that, but they are improving in that regard. They are adding resources and improving the support cycle, but they don't have a very good call-logging mechanism.

If a certified partner is not involved in the support process, I would rate support at five out of 10. With a partner involved, it's a nine. Hitachi's support involves working closely with certified partners who should have a lot of engineers to support customers.

Neutral

Setting it up is not very easy but it's also not so difficult. The time it takes depends on the size of the solution. While it's not so time-consuming, you have to plan for a process that will take at least 15 days. These products are always deployed in high-end, sensitive customer environments, where we are playing with their data, so it does take at least that long.

A senior storage engineer is enough for the deployment. With the addition of a junior-level engineer, the two of them can handle the maintenance.

With Hitachi's embedded management, the initial setup is easy. Only one management software is required and it's embedded in the box. But for the centralized management, there is another product that is deployed on another server.

The embedded management is very easy compared to previous systems where we needed to install a client on the management station. But most solutions have an embedded management platform.

The overall solution might be expensive, but in the long term, the total cost of ownership is better than the TCO of any competitor.

We discuss ROI as part of the presale process. 

A drawback of Hitachi storage systems is that they are expensive. The upfront cost is very high compared to others. But when you compare the IOPS at the same price, Hitachi gives you better business value; their IOPS are always higher than the competitors', but the price may be higher.

In terms of licensing, of course, we talk with the customer about what they need. If they need this feature right now and that feature later on, we discuss that with Hitachi and the licensing model will be defined accordingly, before the sale of the product. Afterward, when the customer asks us to add a license as we had discussed, we can add the license. 

But if a customer didn't discuss with us any kind of future licensing from a feature perspective, buying that license later on, in general, will be very expensive. Before the sale, there's no problem creating a near-cost-effective solution. But getting a license later on is really costly.

In general, whether you are a partner or a customer, you need to discuss the requirements of the solution, the full scope of the work, including capacity, performance, availability, and scalability, before the sale.

Also, do not undersize your storage. That is something that will kill any solution.

And only apply compression after one or two years, not from the first day of storage. If you are out of capacity and need to buy more storage, the procurement process for extra storage will take a few months, so that is the time to apply compression.

As a partner, we have to connect with a customer after the sale as well. It's not only about the product. It's also about the partner that sold the product working with the customer to make sure they are satisfied, even when there is no problem with the product. If the collaboration and connection are not good, whenever a customer calls, the partner won't respond to their query properly. So it's not just a one-day job. The product could be really good, but if the response time and the way the customer is handled is not good, the customer will not be satisfied. Our customers are satisfied with the Hitachi storage platform.

We don't recommend a single-node implementation. It's very risky. One controller cannot provide a high-availability solution, which is a feature of every storage system these days.

I am using the latest update to the solution?

The solution is very good when it comes to performance with the data center. 

The solution is a storage Hitachi E, meaning it is an entry level enterprise solution. For mission critical issues the performance is low. 

I have been using Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform for two years, including the EF 700 and E Model, both of which I have been utilizing for a year apiece, in addition to the S Model. I use the solution to this day. 

The solution is stable. 

I have not tried the solution's scalability. 

The technical support and services are good, strong. 

The initial setup is easy.

The price per gigabyte is good and it is low when it comes to terabytes. 

We are in the process of evaluating the solution at present.

Overall, the solution is strong, easy and fast.

I would recommend the solution to others. 

I rate Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform as a nine out of ten.

This product was used to store all of our production block requirements. We are now migrating to an all-flash storage system.

The active-active option seemed to be working well and overall, it was a solid product.

It performed well and the software offerings were solid.

We had issues with support, rather than the product itself. It seemed like every time we turned around it was a statement of work and we'd have to pay for something that our previous vendors would not have billed us for. I don't think that they would have even raised an eyebrow. By contrast, these guys were looking for money every time we asked for any little thing. We didn't like that.

We had been working with the G series for about six years.

The stability is great. It's right up there with anything else that we had seen, so no issues. It was a solid product.

We did not try to scale because our models were bought at full capability on day one.

We had a lot of issues with support and I would rate them a five out of ten in that aspect.

We have experience and history with several Dell EMC products including the BNX line, BMX,  and PowerMax. However, we are moving away from this to the HP all-flash solution.

The only reason we changed from the Hitachi Platform G is that it was getting long in the tooth, and we wanted to get into the flash environment. 

The initial setup was straightforward and we didn't have any issues.

The costs were primarily in line with every other vendor at the time. Year six and year seven maintenance took a drastic jump, which didn't sit well with us. However, at the time, it seemed to be what most of the vendors were doing. But by the end, Hitachi had sort of balanced it out, so it wasn't a huge jump in years six and seven. It was certainly an issue for us in the beginning.

We went through an RFP-type process to select a flash vendor, and we're just in the process of implementing that storage today. It was this same sort of process six years ago when we replaced our existing Dell EMC solution with the Hitachi product. Hitachi had a better offering.

I can't say anything about the product itself that was in need of improvement. The areas where we had issues were more along the lines with support and HDS management. For anybody who is interested in this solution, I would say that from a product standpoint, it is fine. The only problem is the support. Anytime we needed support, it was delayed. I'm not sure of the reason for this, but it just seemed like it took a long time to get things resolved.

At the time we did our RFP, HDS did not have an all-flash offering. They do now, but I haven't had the opportunity to look at their all-flash products. Hopefully, it is not just all-flash thrown into a G 1500 Series because you want to build flash from the ground up.

What we found during our recent RFP was that the pricing is pretty close between all-flash and HDD, so while not everybody needs the performance, if you're getting it for the same price then why wouldn't you take advantage of it?

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We use Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series for core products. We get new machines and move the data to new machines. In our organization, we have over 5,000 users.

it is help us to increase performance and ensure business continuity.

It is robust. It doesn't need too much troubleshooting. It is a good device.

The snapshot and clone operation functions can be made easier.

I have been using Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series for about six years.

It is highly stable. 

It has good scalability.

We have contacted them for a technical issue. Their technical support is good.

Positive

We have an older version of Hitachi, which is also a virtual storage platform but not the G Series. Also EMC VMAX 

The initial setup was straightforward. Deployment took about a week.

Our vendor deployed it.

Dell EMC VMAX

I would recommend this solution. 

I would rate Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series a ten out of ten. It is a good product.

For Hitachi, I provide training and mapping to existing clusters and coordinate with vendors for hardware values and upgrades. 

I've been working on Hitachi VSP models and NetApp 2750 models for the past two years.

I work with multiple products from various companies, including HPE and Hitachi. Each product has its own scalability and features. The service provided by Hitachi is good, and I get the IT support I need from the vendors.

I have been using it for six years. 

For the past two years, I haven't faced any outages with Hitachi. I've seen many issues with Dell but not with VSP. I have very few storage boxes in my current organization, but I handle over 200 Hitachi storage boxes with different products.

Scalability provides us with flexibility. For example, we can easily increase storage as needed. We also have multi-path redundancy for added reliability. For data redundancy, we create RAID levels, usually RAID 5 or the recommended RAID 6.

To ensure power availability in the data center, we have two power sources and redundant cabling. Each inverter has a backup from another inverter. I recommend customers use a backup configuration for redundancy, such as Veeam backup or Commvault. These products protect against hardware failures by backing up VMs.

I would rate the scalability a nine out of ten. 

I have over 200 customers for Hitachi storage, one or two customers on the VSP platform, and all of them are being serviced. 

I have contacted them for firmware upgrades, hardware failures, and trial replacements. I was coordinating with the vendor.

I provide support for customers. I work for a company and give support to customers.

So, the response time and the quality of the support was good. 

I work with NetApp, and I have been working with HPE, Dell, and IBM products for the past six years.

I learn new things whenever I work on products from HPE, NetApp, and other vendors. I wasn't aware of Hitachi Storage before, but I started working on it at this company. It's a little different. The way we provide and learn from the VSP models is different compared to HPE and Dell.

Not just anyone can do it. For example, I'm a storage engineer, and if I guide someone on my team, they can't necessarily do my job. 

So, the person needs a basic understanding and work experience. Sometimes, it requires specific knowledge, and people need to prepare for the tasks assigned to them. Once the person has prepared, they can do whatever is assigned.

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

It is a good product. I would recommend it.