Hitachi's virtual reality for EMC
Hitachi's virtual reality for EMC
Jan 25, 2005: Hitachi Data Systems has made storage virtualisation a reality for EMC hardware users through the addition of virtualisation support for EMC's DMX, Symmetrix and Clariion storage systems to its TagmaStore Universal Storage Platform.
Support is available now for EMC's Symmetrix DMX 800, 1000, 2000, 3000 and Symmetrix 3000, 5000 and 8000 series storage systems, with support for EMC's Clariion CX series to be made available by the end of January.
The move offers EMC customers functionality that was previously unavailable to them, including asynchronous remote copy and logical partitioning, by leveraging the virtualisation layer within the Universal Storage Platform, which essentially 'maps' new functionality to all externally attached storage systems.
"This means you can take a Clariion, virtualise it, and enable it to store mainframe data on SATA disks; you can take a DMX attach it to a Universal Storage Platform and virtualise it as part of a logical partition, assigning dedicated resources to an individual application; you can move data from Clariion's to Symmetrixes and back, enabling true ILM," said Yoshinori Okami, general manager of Storage Systems Development, Hitachi.
The Universal Storage Platform can provide large-scale virtualisation, with safe multi-tenancy for thousands of host connections, and logical partitioning of storage resources. It supports up to 32 Petabytes of internal and external storage, which can be aggregated into one common storage pool and managed by a single set of software tools. The platform also supports up to 192 Fibre Channel ports that can be virtualised to support over 30,000 virtual ports for open systems connectivity, each with its own secure storage domain providing safe multi-tenancy. In addition, it supports ESCON and FICON for mainframe connectivity, and NAS for file serving.
Since the announcement of the Universal Storage Platform in September 2004, Hitachi Data Systems has completed virtualisation testing for numerous HP, IBM, Sun, and EMC storage systems. Two key elements in its success, according to industry observers, are its cost effectiveness and its relative simplicity.
"ESG believes that storage virtualisation will re-invent storage networking based on the tremendous value it brings by significantly reducing cost and complexity," said Tony Asaro senior analyst for Enterprise Strategy Group.
"In today's complex, heterogeneous storage environments, virtualisation is the critical element in delivering simplified storage management," said John McArthur, group vice president and general manager, Information Infrastructure and Enabling Technologies, IDC. "CIOs who want substantial, measurable improvement in the operational efficiency of their storage infrastructure must take a very different approach to managing their storage resources. A new category of products, which IDC calls Network Storage Controllers and includes solutions such as the TagmaStore Universal Storage Platform, will play a pivotal role in delivering virtualisation to heterogeneous environments."
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