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Finding security in the blanket of Hitachi VSP E990’s modern data protection, powered by Commvault

By John Mcdevitt posted 04-23-2020 20:31

  

By John McDevitt, Global Solutions Lead, Core Storage Infrastructure – Hitachi Vantara

with

Mark Bridges, Senior Director, Worldwide Alliances - Commvault

 

Working from the office, having coffee with a friend, buying toilet paper when you need it instead of when you can find it... These are good examples of ubiquity, things that are so mainstream that we no longer question their place in our lives — and are shocked when they are missing. 

We just launched the Hitachi VSP E990, a single platform capable of running the business for expanding midrange organizations requiring enterprise-grade capabilities to manage growth.

The E990 is the latest array in the VSP family and shares the SVOS heritage with the other VSP arrays.  It extends those capabilities with ultra-low latency powered by all-NVMe flash media, native AI-Ops, and third generation Adaptive Data Reduction.  With all of that, it’s easy to forget the E990’s less-flashy feature: modern data protection. But, for midrange enterprises with everything on the line and no room for waste or worry, anything less could have catastrophic outcomes. 

The rising stars of modern data protection

Here, there, and everywhere is not the same thing as comprehensive and scalable. When we talk about the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) All-Flash Portfolio’s vast list of talents, we think of legendary resiliency and performance, time-tested scalability, and proven 100% data availability. Comprehensive data protection and advanced security are inherent throughout the VSP family.

What E990 brings forth is pervasive, strategic business continuity for latency-sensitive, business-critical workloads.  This is the core requirement for the growing midrange business, chaffing from an infrastructure that doesn’t fit their needs. The E990 delivers agile and automated data center technology that helps our customers not just address future challenges, but harness whatever comes next. 

So, to home in on exactly how we deliver all this, I’ve asked Mark Bridges to join the conversation. Hitachi Vantara and Commvault share a 15-year partnership with over 1,000 joint customers. Today, we rely on Hitachi Data Protection Suite (HDPS), powered by Commvault, for complete enterprise backup, recovery and data management across any heterogenous or hybrid environment.

Thanks John, I like where you’re going with the “everywhereness” of data protection for the flourishing midrange enterprise. Specifically, I believe our joint solution shines in its unique ability to provide a single interface that simplifies and scales data management, protection and recovery. HDPS, powered by Commvault, expedites data at a fraction of the time, effort and cost required by separate, point solutions. We apply a unified consistency for locating and managing enterprise and app data. The customer gains a safeguarded, intelligent-friendly digital enterprise.  

Wrap up in a blanket of single workflow security

Hitachi Ops Center and Commvault modernize data security for just about everything, right?  We deliver improved application availability, recoverability, resiliency, risk avoidance and tangible cost-efficiencies. It’s complete data protection in a single workflow. 

Eliminating risk is the first thing that comes to mind for many midrange enterprise customers. So when we think of how to safeguard information and keep it available, the E990 delivers big. 

At the high level, we provide protection against any threat; logical, physical, local, or remote.  We have built-in AI driving end-to-end self-optimizing automation, performance, and data protection. And machine learning simplifies all the repetitive and mundane tasks that need to get done but no one has time to do. 

Or wants to do. We also leverage AI and machine learning to pinpoint sensitive data and grasp the deeper analytics. And Commvault uses an intelligent index and real-time dashboards to accelerate search and rescue ops and give customers the upper hand in gaining clarity across the data. 

I like to think of it as self-driving data protection and backup. We have these super sophisticated heuristics, like telemetry and diagnostics and rapid RCA, built-in for a continuous feedback loop to better understand data and ops, but it’s all wrapped in a straightforward, user-friendly management interface for expedited command and predictability.

From a more detailed perspective, the E990 provides High Availability metro clustering using Global-Active Device (GAD) and Disaster Recovery for regional via async replication. These provide our customers unsurpassed business continuity in the face of physical, site, and regional disasters. 

Clever. And we use the E990’s snapshot and clone technologies to provide dramatically lower RPO and RTO for business-critical app recovery from logical scenarios. Commvault goes beyond that, storing, protecting, and moving data across storage tiers and between locations.  This also includes tiering data into long term repositories like the Hitachi Content Platform (HCP).  The E990 well, the entire VSP line — uses policy-based automation to provide scalable data protection.  

I brought a graphic (see below) that gives readers an at-a-glance understanding of how data protection maps to the E990’s main pillars of “proven, powerful, and predictable.”  

             

 

Regarding ransomware attacks

The most recent focus of data protection is how to handle malcontents who want to do harm. Our failsafe security measures stop illegal access like ransomware attacks. The E990 prevents unlawful hacks and destruction of data with a hardened system using TLS 1.2 encryption and our data retention utility to lock thin image copies of operational data. These tools secure communications to the E990 and prohibit any alteration to data by malicious encryption attempts.

The key here is being able to rapidly respond to any ransomware attack and reduce the risk of losing data by continually monitoring the environment for suspicious behavior by bad actors and automating notifications if anomalies are identified.  

HDPS, powered by Commvault, together with the Hitachi VSP portfolio, offers a layered anti-malware and ransomware strategy. We deliver an end-to-end solution that improves threat and risk mitigation across all endpoints and applications; a security-focused platform designed to recover from a diverse array of malicious risks, including ransomware. Bottom line here is with our modern data protection, intelligent snapshot management, and automated recovery, we support a simpler, faster search and recovery of business-critical data and apps. Plus, you will receive alerts about potential attacks allowing you to quickly react and ensure minimal impact to the business. 

For our midrange customers intent on right-sizing their IT infrastructure to meet their growing demands, I want to end our discussion by touching on data encryption and erasure. We provide FIPS 140-2 data at rest encryption certification and support a number of KMIP key management servers. Our data erasure services guarantee that information is securely deleted in alignment with NIST and ISO standards.  

I want our joint customers to know that everything we do is designed to speed, safeguard, and simplify. The Hitachi VSP family in concert with Commvault supports scalability without constraint, access without limits, and protection without compromise. 

If our readers would like more information, please visit Hitachi Vantara - Commvault partnership or E990 video

 

 


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