FOMO Mitigated: For Mid-size Businesses Needing Enterprise Capabilities, Hitachi VSP E990 Alleviates the Fear of Missing Out
By Tim Durant | Senior Director, Global Strategic Alliances at Hitachi Vantara
With Mike Walkey, Channel and Alliances Chief at Veritas
Scientists describe the fear of missing out (FOMO) as a pervasive worry of forfeiting opportunities others are having because you weren’t in the room or in the know. For mid-size organizations requiring enterprise-grade technologies to manage and protect business growth, FOMO is a real thing.
Fear of missing out on the best ways to automate and accelerate latency-sensitive workloads. On the skills to ensure continuous operations and optimized resources for mission-critical apps. On affording the best business continuity and data protection technologies to defend data ecosystems.
Missing out on proven, powerful, predictable enterprise proficiencies can widen the chasm between effectively amplifying and protecting the business — and not. And don’t we all want the rewarding experience of uninterrupted data access and confidence in the technologies that deliver it?
Sure, mushrooming mid-sized businesses can usher together a smarter mix of systems and tools to move the needle. You could learn to do without. Or, we could take a closer look at how Hitachi VSP E990 makes enterprise-class features and benefits accessible to mid-size customers who are outgrowing their existing infrastructure.
Feel the Fear and Grow it Anyway
FOMO quickly gives way to focusing on opportunities when we consider that the new E990 shares the Hitachi All-Flash Portfolio’s pedigree of rock-solid reliability, 100% uptime and unwavering design precision. E990 builds on its family legacy but uniquely masters the all-flash, latency-sensitive demands of growing mid-size enterprise consumers — in a single system capable of running the business.
The E990 delivers proven Hitachi capabilities (like ultra-low microsecond latency NVMe and ADR guarantees), powerful AI/ML-centric operations (Ops Center and SVOS) and predictable cost-usage efficiencies and performance. It’s highly responsive, super-fast, and won’t puncture the budget.
What I like about Hitachi Ops Center here in the E990 is its seamless automation, end-to-end analytics and unified user experience — ideal for growing mid-size businesses. Sophisticated AI and ML algorithms are tucked behind front-end simplicity to wield better management, insights and data protection. The entire VSP line is piped with our common operating system (SVOS), for 24/7 app availability, NVMe performance and flash optimization, and IO traffic offload as you scale. Operational efficiency at its best.
Everything you need, nothing missing.
VOMO – Veritas on Mid-size Operations
One FOMO all enterprises want to forgo is data risk, wondering what will happen if there’s a data breach or performance blip. No one wants a front-page outage or compliance snag. So, I’ve asked Mike Walkey, my counterpart at our Alliance Partner, Veritas, to join the conversation. One of the reasons we’ve partnered with Veritas is to extend the value and resilience of VSP E990 data protection for safeguarding modern and legacy workloads. We will highlight some unique synergies our partnership solves for the growing mid-size enterprise desiring less risk, more reward. Welcome.
Mike Walkey: Thanks Tim. I’m excited to share the ways we collaboratively improve data protection and security to guarantee availability, lock down risks and meet on-prem and remote requirements. Our mid-size and enterprise customers are laser-focused on protecting data and their company reputation. For every 1 TB of primary storage, customers usually have 5-to-7 TBs of data protection storage. Predictable performance, encrypted data storage, and breach-free operations are key to protecting what matters.
Veritas NetBackup combined with the Hitachi VSP E990 provides comprehensive data protection for applications and modern workloads that may be on-premises, in the cloud or both. Leveraging our combined REST API toolkits, we can provide seamless data movement, protection and the ability to restore as part of a fully automated process. In addition, the E990 delivers immense scale for mid-sized enterprise customers with all-flash NVMe, and only Veritas has data protection technology with a proven track record of scale to take advantage of this.
Our joint customers trust us with their most important asset – data. The “better together” story of our partnership really revolves around our joint data protection capabilities.
POMO - Peace of Mind Optimized
Tim: Think there’s nothing sexy about data protection? Think again. Beyond Hitachi’s legendary resiliency and data availability guarantees lie our application-aware recovery, 3DC availability with long-distance DR (asynchronous) and metro clustering (via GAD) — all primed to deliver optimal peace of mind to mid-size customers straddling enterprise requirements.
How we safeguard information comes down to two vital aspects: eliminating risk and stopping illegal access. The VSP E990 does a great job of eliminating risk of downtime or data loss for our mid-size enterprises with data-driven ops and no wish to overspend (See figure).
Our 3DC availability means protection against downtime and data loss because we ensure cross-site paths. This means if one VSP E990 is a GAD pair (up to 150km/93 miles apart) is offline, both nodes will continue to access the remaining node for high-speed data access. For GAD up to 500 km/310 miles, the server node local to the E990 will have data access. If both GAD systems were to fail, there is always a third copy.
Mike: Eliminating risks also requires comprehensive data protection strategies. Veritas NetBackup protects petabyte-scale deployments and enshrines 24x7 app availability. We use integrated snapshots and backup tasks that support no-worry operations for always-on apps. When IT can expedite and free up stored data, it brings fast, positive impact to the budget.
Tim: When we talk about the other factor in data protection, our joint technologies really mesh well to ensure system security and halt illegal access. First, Hitachi Vantara and Veritas use FIPS 140-2 encryption and industry-leading physical data erasure to protect against theft and accidental exposure. FIPS 140-2 certifies that we have encrypted data, and the physical data erasure guarantees that information is disposed of according to policy.
Mike: Secondly, let’s talk about simplifying ongoing security compliance with KMIP agility. For readers not familiar with this, KMIP simplifies how companies can manage cryptographic keys, streamline the key lifecycle and how crypto-enabled apps communicate with key management systems.
I know Hitachi SVOS RF uses “adjustable KMIP” to allow customers the flexibility to standardize on the version of KMIP they use, whatever it is, to protect VSP data. Veritas has extensive security deployment models, including workgroups, single and multiple data centers, and uses KMIP (and other critical) compliance protocols.
We’re really keying in on agile best practices that secure our customers’ data, both at-rest and in-flight. NetBackup Access Control, which bolsters authentication and authorization control, is one of the ways we help extend the reach of existing Hitachi Vantara technologies. Collectively, we want to prevent any and all unwanted access issues.
Tim: Exactly. And hardening system access and ensuring recovery from any ransomware attacks are tightly woven into a unified business continuity strategy. Ransomware attacks are a nasty business and being able to guarantee recovery of locked copies is critical. The Ops Center Protector orchestrates a data retention utility to lock thin image snaps of operational data so it can’t be altered, period.
Both Hitachi Vantara and Veritas do a superb job of deflecting illegal hacking with advanced security, including TLS 1.3 for secure communications to the VSP E990, to prevent bad actors from making changes that could destroy data or provide improper access by other systems on the fabric.
As our mid-size enterprise customers consider best ways to manage, grow and protect data from the unforeseen, we want to underscore the business value that E990 brings forward:
· Accelerated innovation for faster-to-market agility
· Lower IT costs with sweeping AI-based efficiencies and flexible consumption options to pay-as-you-grow/scale
· Failsafe security tactics and partnerships to protect your data ecosystem now and for whatever comes next
If our readers would like more information on the Hitachi Vantara Virtual Storage Platform E990 watch our E990 video .
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