Hitachi NAS Platform Reviews

We are using Hitachi NAS Platform in conjunction with NetApp, Fujitsu, and other server and storage solutions. These solutions are deployed for our storage and software solution needs.

The Hitachi NAS Platform is sold with Hitachi SAN. It provides Network Attached Storage (NAS) protocols on top of the existing SAN infrastructure. It creates a NAS environment on top of Hitachi SAN, which facilitates customers who need NAS protocols along with their existing SAN portfolio.

I would suggest that Hitachi make a NAS box that can work independently, without relying on SAN connectivity. The current solution only suits customers who already have a Hitachi SAN environment and want to add NAS protocols like NFS and CIFS. 

It's not suitable for customers without an existing SAN, as they would first need to acquire the SAN infrastructure before adding NAS functionality.

We have been dealing with Hitachi for almost one decade.

The Hitachi storage platform is highly scalable and highly available. However, the scalability of the NAS environment is limited since it is dependent on the SAN's scalability. A NAS environment requires a conjunction of two devices: the SAN box and filers attached together. Therefore, the scalability of the NAS directly depends on the scalability of the SAN.

The pricing for the Hitachi NAS is higher compared to other NAS solutions since the NAS protocol is provided on top of the existing SAN environment, requiring an additional device for NAS functionality. This makes it very costly and sometimes not appropriate.

I recommend considering NetApp for a unified storage solution or Dell EMC for a cost-effective solution. NetApp is well-suited for SAN and NAS requirements with better features and is cost-effective. Dell EMC may be a better choice in terms of cost yet lacks some feature sets compared to NetApp.

The Hitachi NAS Platform is too complicated, not simple, and not cost-effective, sometimes being inappropriate for most situations. 

I would not recommend it, as it's a costly feature addon rather than a standalone solution. 

I would rate the Hitachi NAS functionality as five out of ten. 

NetApp is recommended for a unified solution with richer features and scalability, especially for those needing ransomware protection, data availability guarantee, and data loss protection.

We sell the Hitachi NAS Platform, and it is the best product for our customers.

I sell it to banks, telecom companies, and other enterprises at the enterprise level.

We have a cluster with Hitachi NAS Platform in a bank, and they use Global-Active Device for disaster recovery. Their RPO and RTO is basically zero, which is very important for this bank.

My experience with the Hitachi NAS Platform shows that it's the best product.

The best feature of the Hitachi NAS Platform is its scalability. The scalability is particularly valuable because for enterprise customers, when you put a short NAS, it's a problem. When they have all their data in one solution, it is simpler.

The benefit of the Hitachi NAS Platform is primarily its performance. Banks and telcos need extremely high performance, and there are no other NAS in the current market that can compete with Hitachi in terms of performance. The disaster recovery implementation we have is also very important, especially for the banks, as they are currently experiencing changes in how they provide services.

For the Hitachi NAS Platform, the tools are basic and don't provide much insight.

They can continue to improve the interface to keep it up-to-date, and maybe add some new features or better ways of controlling it, though overall, it's a very good solution.

I've been in the industry for more than 20 years.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate their support an eight. It's good support; sometimes they take a bit to answer, but normally they are quick.

Positive

The setup is straightforward. You install the hardware, go to the GUI, and connect the storage. You can set all the EVS and file systems; it's pretty straightforward with no complex steps.

Availability is also valuable, but the price is high, though it's worth the price.

My clients use the tiered storage. When there is productive data, it goes in tier one, and copy data goes in tier three or four.

Data deduplication in the Hitachi NAS Platform decreases the storage needs for our customers with a ratio of two-to-one or three-to-one.

In the new Hitachi NAS Platform, the interface shows performance metrics and all the information that was not shown before, which was the main pain point for the old NAS.

I would rate Hitachi NAS Platform a nine out of ten. In terms of performance, it's the best. There are no other NAS as strong, big, and scalable as Hitachi implementation. That flexibility is what big enterprises are looking for, and while the interface was the main problem, it is now fixed.

I am using Hitachi NAS for storage solutions.

Hitachi NAS has improved my storage operations significantly. Additionally, it enhances data accessibility, although I did not specify a particular functionality.

I rated Hitachi NAS a seven out of ten, primarily due to the interface or insufficient improvements in certain areas.

Technical support by Hitachi is adequate. I am a partner of Hitachi and not just a customer.

Neutral

I am using NetApp for more integrated cloud systems.

I did not specify any thoughts on the pricing of Hitachi NAS.

I have evaluated NetApp as it offers more integrated cloud systems.

I would recommend Hitachi NAS, although improvements in the interface could enhance my experience. 

I rate it a seven out of ten.

The primary use case of Hitachi NAS Platform is as a gateway. It is used in scenarios where customers need high-speed or performance NAS. In Indonesia, most of the use cases are for file sharing, which does not require high performance.

The reliability and scalability of Hitachi NAS Platform are valuable features. It supports NAS to NAS replication and can scale out to two, four, or eight nodes, providing more reliability and performance.

Hitachi NAS Platform needs to improve by offering a unified storage solution. Due to budget constraints in regions like Southeast Asia, customers prefer a single machine that can handle all problems, which the current platform does not provide.

I have not experienced any significant stability issues with Hitachi NAS Platform, aside from typical hardware issues like replacing drives. It is generally quite stable.

Hitachi NAS Platform is good with scalability as it can scale up to eight nodes. More nodes mean more reliability and performance.

Hitachi support is good, and I would rate it between eight and nine points.

Positive

Usually, the installation process is simple, requiring one or two people. However, due to the heavy nature of the storage devices, two people are necessary for installation.

For every additional node added to the system, an additional license needs to be purchased, which can increase costs. Licensing can become costly when scaling the system.

The product has valuable features for data migration. We can quickly migrate the data from one system to another.

Hitachi NAS Platform's pricing could be reduced. It is high compared to other competitors.

The technical support services are good.

Positive

The initial setup is easy.

It is a highly-priced product. 

I rate Hitachi NAS Platform a nine out of ten.

The product offers a complete solution.

I encounter challenges while installing the upgrades for the product. I had to back up all the old installations and configurations in the media architecture.

I have been using Hitachi NAS Platform for two years.

It is an easily scalable solution. I have two DNS servers for it. Establishing connectivity between two servers is possible if configured with the cluster.

The product’s technical support services are good.

Positive

Hitachi NAS Platform’s price is high and depends on SCSI disc capacity. I rate its pricing an eight out of ten.

The product is easy to manage and operate. It is a useful platform for backup and sharing resources. I rate it a ten out of ten.

I don't work directly with the product. I am selling it. 

Hitachi is reliable with high availability and solid performance. It performs well regardless of the workload.

Hitachi could be more flexible and have a simpler management interface. 

I have been selling Hitachi since 2015.

Hitachi has a strong engineering culture, so it's always dependable. 

Hitachi is more scalable than competing solutions. One of its strongest features is virtualization. The platform can add stable storage from third-party products.

The companies I work with tell me they've had good experiences with Hitachi support and that the support engineers are always available. 

Hitachi has a strong engineering orientation, so the products are easier to deploy than competing solutions. Hitachi has an engineering culture focused on best practices and compliance. Deployment shouldn't be an issue. 

I work as a senior IT consultant providing objective consultancy services to my customers. 

The reliability of the product is its best feature. The simplicity of the solution is also something that I appreciate.  

The solution could be improved if they would provide information on the agility of their products, and the scaling of it in order to increase the power of its capacity so you could know whether it needs different configuration. This issue exists in many products, it's not specific to Hitachi. The monitoring tool is not well developed and my guess is that the companies are not investing too much money in this area. 

An additional feature that would be helpful would be the ability to increase and decrease the size of the file system dynamically and easily. Right now that's not the case. The Hitachi snapshot technique is of course less powerful than the competition is offering in many ways, so it would be better to resolve this.

I've been using this solution for many years. 

My experience with the technical support has been good. 

I currently work with NetApp as well. It's a more flexible and more popular solution. The NAS system and technology has some basic limitations that have nothing to do with the manufacturer. 

The cost depends on your ability to negotiate and the ability to understand your needs. As a consultant assisting customers, I get them to define their needs clearly in a way that enables a comparison of solutions that allows for a comparison in price. 

You will never find a solution that fits all because every company has different requirements and every company will need to compromise. This is a good product overall.

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

We are a system integrator and this is one of the products that we implement for our customers. It is a mass storage system.

An example of one use case that has been deployed is a CIFS solution in a home directory environment. We have also implemented it as part of a media server solution.

The most valuable feature is its ability to handle a high number of users while maintaining both stability and performance. For example, with more than 100,000 users, the performance is stable. With some other NAS products, as the number of users increases, the performance decreases.

We would like to have a more economical version of this solution that is suitable for use with a mid-range scale, such as one that can handle between 35,000 and 50,000 users.

The manageability needs to be improved, as the interface for doing so is not that great.

I would like to see the inclusion of support for cloud-connectivity to providers like AWS.

We have been using Hitachi NAS for about ten years.

The stability is great.

Hitachi NAS is for enterprise-level organizations but the standard varies across the world. It is easy to scale but in Sri Lanka, you will have 10,000 or 20,000 users, maximum.

Hitachi's technical support is good.

I have used solutions by Dell EMC and they are easier to use. EMC also has cloud-connectivity built-in.

I would say that the initial setup is of medium complexity. It is not as easy as these "on the fly" solutions but it is not that much harder, either.

The length of time required for deployment depends on the customer, their requirements, and their environment. It may take a couple of days to complete.

We have an in-house team that does the implementation and deployment for our customers.

Maintenance is not done by us or the customer, but rather the partner. It involves installing updates and things like that.

This solution is not suitable for SMB because the price is more expensive. Costs are based on the features and it is a considerable amount. It really depends on the needs of the client.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this solution is to get support for the process. It's not a customer-implementable solution if you don't have a Hitachi-certified engineer.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

I am working for a reseller and this is one of the solutions that I have experience in dealing with. This is a NAS gateway solution that provides access to storage that is externally attached.

The pricing of this solution is good, which is an advantage that positions this product well.

I do not like Hitachi NAS because it's an old-school NAS solution, compared to the other, newer-type solutions such as Isilon from Dell or Qumulo. It is an old-school gateway NAS solution, so for me, it is not good.

I have been familiar with Hitachi NAS for about two years.

I have experience with several NAS solutions including those by HP, Dell, NetApp, and Hitachi.

This solution is priced well and there are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

It is not possible to improve upon this solution. Rather, they should just create a new product to completely replace this one.

Overall, this is a good product for what it is, but it is old-school. I would completely renew the product. It works nicely, but I would not recommend it for the same reason that people don't buy old-fashioned clothes.

I would rate this solution a five out of ten.