Champions Corner

Hitachi Content Software for File

By Surajit Dutta posted 4 days ago
Be the first person to like this.
Today’s applications require various storage performance levels like IOPS, bandwidth, and latency, all vital storage performance metrics. As we all know, data is raining down on enterprise systems like a storm, flooding the capacity and challenging the IT infrastructure to distribute the data to the application. While optimized resource utilization ensures faster access to more and more data, ideally at a lower cost, unutilized resources mean incurring costs to IT infrastructure. While all-flash arrays (AFAs) are optimized for performance, they must also provide the cloud’s scale as well as the simplicity and shareability of network-attached storage (NAS). ...
0 comments

UCP is now an Anthos Ready Platform validated by Google Cloud

By Shih-Chieh Cheng posted 4 days ago
Be the first person to like this.
As you may have seen, our team shared some updates on our hybrid cloud journey . As part of our mission to leverage the best of cloud ecosystems, we have been exploring Google Cloud Platform's Anthos, which is Google's cloud-centric container platform for running modern apps anywhere consistently at scale.  Now, Hitachi Vantara’s United Compute Platform (UCP) offers on-prem deployment options of  Anthos on premises (a component of Google Distributed Cloud Virtual, aka GDC Virtual) , which can provide greater performance potential for modernized applications while maintaining support for orchestration tools like Kubernetes and Service Mesh in hybrid multi-cloud ...
0 comments

Gijima Powers Sustainability, Performance and Cost Savings with Hitachi Virtual Storage Platforms

By Cara Chaffey posted 11 days ago
Be the first person to like this.
Gijima is one of South Africa's leading ICT companies, providing cloud infrastructure, IT and outsourcing services.   Its state-of-the-art Tier-3 data center hosts business-critical systems for many of the company's biggest clients. When Gijima acquired the data center they inherited most of the existing infrastructure and decided that upgrading to Hitachi storage solutions could dramatically improve performance and manageability. With the new solution in place, Gijima were able to achieve: Non-disruptive migration For most of the systems, the Gijima team was able to use the nondisruptive migration feature of Hitachi software to transfer the data to ...
0 comments

Importance of Cloud Cost Management

By Sasikumar Ananthan posted 12 days ago
Be the first person to like this.
While there was a rush (and there is still some) to move to the cloud in the past 4- 5 years, we are seeing a dramatic focus on cost efficiency off late. Initially, every organization thought that moving to cloud is going to save them a lot of money (please note, we are not getting into the other benefits of elasticity and performance) The growth of the clous service providers in the past year was  AWS – 20%, Azure – 31%, GCP – 36%!! There were many drivers for the migration to cloud but the pandemic and the ESG drive helped hasten the process. Many organizations used this to score some points on reducing their carbon footprint (this again, is a ...
0 comments

Configuring Cassandra with Hitachi Virtual Storage Software (VSS) Block

By Karan Patani posted 02-16-2023
5 people like this.
Introduction In today’s world, when data is increasing at an enormous pace, companies are looking for applications and databases that can handle all types of data under one roof, including text, pictures, videos, and even sound. It isn’t easy to manage all of these under different applications owned by other companies. In addition, if the data is available locally instead of remotely, it helps with a quick turnaround for their applications. To get past this, we can use Apache Cassandra, an open-source, distributed storage system (database) used for managing vast amounts of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data globally. It uses a dynamo-style ...
0 comments

Dual SVP Failover Testing with OpenShift (HSPC)

By Vikash Taank posted 02-13-2023
6 people like this.
Table of Contents (Quick Links) Executive Summary Test Environment Configuration Test Design and Implementation Test Procedures Environment Prerequisite Test Items Test Results Summary Executive Summary Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) 5000 series storage systems provide high availability and represents the industry’s highest performing and most scalable storage solution. VSP 5000 series offers high performance, high availability, and reliability for enterprise-class data centers and features the industry's most comprehensive suite of local and remote data protection capabilities. In a high-availability ...
1 comment

Enhancements in Server Group Management in Administrator 10.9.0

By Prasenjit Chatterjee posted 12-27-2022
3 people like this.
In Ops Center Administrator v10.9.0, a new enhancement for the Server Group Management feature has been added. This enhancement allows you to use the path of an existing cluster server node to map a newly added server node to the server group. Alternatively, ports can be introduced to a server group cluster when adding a new server node. In addition, the same enhanced server group workflow removes paths and volumes when removing a server node from the server group. Simplified depiction: Adding a path for a new server This blog consists of the following sections: Enhancement advantages. Adding a server in the Server Group and attaching volumes. ...
0 comments

FC-NVMe and SCSI-FCP Reality versus Fiction

By Stephen Rice posted 12-23-2022
3 people like this.
There seems to be some confusion about the difference between SCSI-FCP and the enhancements of FC-NVMe. Let's start at the beginning for a quick recap. Both FC-NVMe and SCSI-FCP use the Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP). Fibre Channel standards are still enforced, the frame layout, and mapping of each into FCP is still the same, and the payload of a Fibre Channel frame is still a little over 2k (2112 bytes) regardless of which protocol uses FCP. So where is the difference? The difference between FC-NVMe and SCSI-FCP lies within the Fibre channel frame in the contents of the “Optional headers, Commands, and Data Payload”. However, the architecture and ...
0 comments

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform Global-active device with Kubernetes – High Availability (HA) Persistent Volumes for a Stretched Datacenter

By Arvin Jami posted 12-02-2022
2 people like this.
As more and more administrators make the switch from a legacy application model to running those very same applications within lightweight containers backed by Kubernetes clusters, disaster recovery and data protection is top of mind to guarantee business continuity and uninterrupted service delivery to end users. Hitachi has been continuously making the deployment, configuration, and management of persistent storage on Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) easier for administrators with products such as Hitachi Storage Plug-in for Containers and Hitachi Storage Plug-in for Prometheus. As of today Storage Plug-in for Containers provides automated creation ...
0 comments

Building Event Driven Microservices at the Cloud or the Edge Using Dapr

By Chandrasekar Ganapathy posted 12-01-2022
6 people like this.
Why distributed applications are difficult to build  Microservice architecture is one of the best solutions for realizing distributed application architecture.  However, despite doing microservices for the past eight years, it is still complex to build due to the following reasons:   Service invocation is still different for different platforms.   State management is still not mature and stateless services do not solve enterprise problems.     Service-to-service communication using messaging, which is much more ubiquitous, varies based on the message broker’s adoption.   Observability within the services is still subject to the ...
0 comments

Travis Perkins Transforms Finance to Boost Business Insights and Streamline Processes

By Cara Chaffey posted 11-28-2022
Be the first person to like this.
In a fast-paced and unpredictable market, organizations need rapid access to reliable data to make informed business decisions. To improve business visibility and efficiency, Travis Perkins plc has embarked on a major business improvement programme that will transform their finance processes. The company is a leading partner to the construction industry, and the UK’s largest distributor of materials to the building industry, with 1400 branches across the country. We talked to Helen Taylor-Walsh, Finance Transformation Technology Director and Jane Morrison, Director of Finance Transformation, to find out how they are revamping finance operations with the help ...
0 comments

Higher Availability with Global-Active-Device Cloud Quorum using AWS Auto Scaling

By Jonathan De La Torre posted 10-31-2022
19 people like this.
Introduction At Hitachi Vantara, we are always searching for ways to make sure that our storage products are fault tolerant and highly available. Although Amazon Web Services (AWS) availability zone outages are rare, every organization should be prepared in case an outage occurs. My team wondered what would happen to Global-Active-Device (GAD) Cloud Quorum if an availability zone went down. After running a few tests, we found that the quorum experienced a blockage on the Virtual Storage Platform (VSP), while the host I/O remained unaffected. Also, the blockage automatically resolved after the availability zone was restored. We then wondered ...
8 comments

Protecting Water Sources with IoT Analytics

By Cara Chaffey posted 10-20-2022
Be the first person to like this.
In the Southern Apennine region, the District Basin Authority governs the physical environment and protects its water resources. It is responsible for monitoring the appropriate use of these resources, forecasting the region’s water supply, and preventing natural disasters and human-made hazards, such as illegal abstraction, discharges, and spills. With Hitachi Vantara, the Authority is developing a system for sampling data from the field through specific multiparametric sensors, including video, thermographic, lidar, and others. Integrated with a GIS system and meteorological forecasts, that data flows into a big data analytics and data science system that ...
0 comments

Threat Investigation with Hitachi Ops Center Analyzer 10.8.3

By Vikash Taank posted 09-19-2022
23 people like this.
Introduction Recently, Malicious and Ransomware attacks have increased dramatically and are getting so complex that the threats are now multi-dimensional. These numerous attacks range from infrastructure disruption to data leakages. This means that every organization needs a strategy for threat detection and investigation to avoid disruptions. In this blog, we explore two features of Hitachi Ops Center Analyzer, that can assist you with threat investigation. Ops Center Analyzer provides an end-to-end intuitive UI for data performance monitoring, analysis, planning, management, operation, and troubleshooting. Ops Center Analyzer detail view collects data ...
12 comments

Hitachi Storage Plug-in for Prometheus Custom Dashboard on Grafana

By Hossein Heidarian posted 09-06-2022
2 people like this.
Overview The Kubernetes monitoring system helps administrators recognize the issues in a Kubernetes cluster and implement proactive cluster management strategies. It simplifies management of a containerized infrastructure by tracking cluster resource utilization as well as CPU, memory, and storage. In Kubernetes, cluster operators monitor the cluster and send an alarm if the necessary number of pods are not running, if resource usage is close a critical limit, or if there is a failure or configuration error that barricades a pod or node from joining the cluster. There are number of tool available to achieve this. Some of the common tools are Grafana and ...
0 comments

Intersight Cloud Orchestrator (ICO) Series - Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) Local Operational Copy Capability

By Arvin Jami posted 08-22-2022
1 person likes this.
Data protection is top of mind for every application administrator to guarantee business continuity and zero down time for end users. For many legacy administrators, creating backups comes at a cost, whether offloading to another point of contact to create restore points with unsure turn around, or investing a magnitude of time in installing, deploying, and understanding a new interface to complete data copy operations. With Cisco ICO and Hitachi VSP, administrators now have the ability to take advantage of a single tool to manage, orchestrate, and restore data protection sets across the datacenter ecosystem managed by Cisco Intersight. Along with the ...
0 comments

Reduce RTO with Global-Active Device Cloud Quorum

By Kevin Tang posted 07-05-2022
17 people like this.
Introduction What exactly does Global-active device (GAD) cloud quorum do, and who is it for? We will answer both questions by showing you a real-life customer use case where GAD cloud quorum is the perfect solution to address all the customer’s issues with their current environment. After providing an introduction to the standard GAD implementations and the issues that can arise, we’ll show you a side-by-side comparison of the customer’s implementation with and without GAD cloud quorum. If you use, or are interested in GAD, but are limited by a physical quorum disk, read about the progress of GAD quorum options and how the new options make GAD more flexible ...
11 comments

Nexway Brings Rapid Sales Performance Insight to Clients With Lumada DataOps

By Cara Chaffey posted 06-30-2022
Be the first person to like this.
With more than 700 clients and activities spanning more than 140 countries, Nexway is a leading global vendor of e-commerce solutions. Nexway specializes in enabling software publishers and software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers to build and manage online stores where they can sell subscriptions and deliver software to consumers. By seamlessly handling all the complexities of online sales, invoicing, taxation, subscription management, and multicurrency global payments, Nexway empowers its clients to focus on developing and marketing their software products and services. Reporting to clients on sales performance has always been an important element of Nexway's ...
0 comments

Hitachi Persistent Storage Solution for Kubernetes environments

By Arvin Jami posted 06-06-2022
5 people like this.
Why persistent storage? As customers move to deliver new revenue-generating services to their end customers, we see IT development teams move aggressively to cloud-native techniques, including containers as the form factor to provide these application services. These containerized application services are hosted on Kubernetes clusters, that run across edge sites and private, hybrid, and service provider clouds.   As with any application service, data eventually needs to be persisted and stored reliably. This could be a customer’s grocery order placed from a mobile app or a data stream from a drone service that AI/ML models are analyzing. The data location ...
2 comments

From hours to minutes. See how leading bank Garanti BBVA harnesses automation to make storage management easy

By Cara Chaffey posted 05-17-2022
2 people like this.
Part of the BBVA financial services group, Garanti BBVA is Turkey’s second-largest private bank. Operating in a highly regulated market, Garanti BBVA puts huge emphasis on the reliability and availability of its services. From an IT perspective, this means that outages are not an option. Over several years, the bank has built an IT architecture designed to maximize availability and provide extremely high levels of resilience against disaster, but it was not always easy to manage. Today, the bank uses Hitachi Ops Center Administrator to unify the management of all its Virtual Storage Platform systems, including the VSP 5500, VSP 5100 and VSP E590 systems, and ...
2 comments