The impact of the COVID pandemic is being felt in all areas of our lives. The fact that we now have restrictions and/or guidance regarding where we can go and when redefines what it means to "go to work." At first glance, one may say that with different levels of "shut down," the world has slowed if not stopped. In some aspects, yes, this is the case. At the same time, more demands are being placed on information technology infrastructure than at any other time in its short history. This means that the custodial responsibilities around IT are expanding at an accelerated rate."Organizations that can expect increased demand during a pandemic, like e-commerce vendors, must be able to scale up capability to handle exponential workload increases in a relatively short time."The question is, how do we achieve the “capabilities to handle exponential workload increases”? First, there has to come a change in how we approach managing our IT infrastructure. “Working remotely” has to become part of the “standard operating procedure.” The tools employed historically may not deliver all that is required to support this expanded approach. The tools have to include the “remote worker” needs because that is now a core business need.“In a recent webinar snap poll, 91% of attending HR leaders (all in Asia/Pacific) indicated that they have implemented ‘work from home’ arrangements since the outbreak, but the biggest challenge stems from the lack of technology infrastructure and lack of comfort with new ways of working.”This is especially true for organizations utilizing private and public clouds, edge to cloud devices, and multi-campus environments. The ability to use cloud-based management to automate and control infrastructure components inside and outside the data center is a safe investment. Cisco Intersight is a SaaS Systems Management Platform Bridging the gap between infrastructure and applications. It addresses the 21st Century challenges by providing centralized IT management and remote access. It enables teams to set and maintain policies that simplify deployments so that no one is waiting on crucial IT personnel who has also added responsibilities at home! We at Hitachi are proud to announce our intention to integrate the world’s most dependable and agile storage systems with Cisco’s Intersight SaaS management. The following Hitachi storage models can then be managed within Cisco’s cloud-based management platform. VSP Model | VSP G130 | VSP G & F 350 | VSP G & F 370 | VSP G & F 700 | VSP G & F 900 | VSP E990 | VSP G 1000 | VSP G & F 1500 | VSP 5000 Series |
Storage Class | Midrange Storage | Enterprise Storage |
It’s aimed at enhancing the administration of Hitachi storage within a Cisco environment. Hitachi is developing a multitude of routine storage-related tasks and workflows to streamline VMware administration and enable a self-service portal that will not require frequent updates or security patching, due to Intersight’s cloud-based nature. Hitachi and Cisco are currently in development of the Cisco Intersight for Hitachi storage, and the planned release is late this calendar year or the first half of 2021. Before this date, Hitachi and Cisco will open our Intersight connector for Hitachi storage to interested customers and partners, to invite input on our connector via the Cisco Technical Preview Program. To join this preview, we encourage anyone interested to email the following distribution list and request to be added to the growing list of Technical Preview participants.adaptive.solution.questions@hitachivantara.comAs part of this program, our customers and partners will be able to test currently developed features (shown below), as well as influence ongoing roadmap tasks and workflows to automate administrative tasks for Hitachi storage layers.Intersight Features | Tasks | Workflows |
Inventory of : - Storage array
- Hosts Groups
Volumes - Pools
- Parity Groups
- Controllers
- Drives
- Ports
| - New Hitachi Storage Volume
- Expand Hitachi Storage Volume
- Copy Hitachi Storage Volume
- Remove Hitachi Storage Volume
- Connect / Disconnect Volume to Hitachi Hosts Group
- New Hitachi Storage Host Group
- Remove Hitachi Storage Host Group
- Connect / Disconnect WWNs or IQNs to Hitachi Storage Host Group
| - Automation of Hitachi Storage Volume and VMware Datastore
- Expansion of VMware Datastore and Hitachi Storage
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Stay tuned for further Cisco Intersight developments with Hitachi storage integration. This blog series will cover onboarding your Hitachi Systems, simplifying Storage administration, setting policies to automate the separation of duties, and workflows all within Cisco’s Intersight platform. In addition to this blog I highly encourage you to check out the following link by Bill Shields at Cisco!
https://blogs.cisco.com/datacenter/cisco-intersight-hitachi-storage-now-integrated-for-better-orchestration-of-storage-and-virtual-environments
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