Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform Reviews

I use it for data consolidation management tasks, and we'll go through the control apps. I go to the controller to do that.

Moreover, Hitachi VSP streamlined our data access and storage processes. So, it's got NFS and CIFS.  And the CFIS, too, depends on the disk type we put in,  it can format files and data for different protocols like SMB.So it's versatile in its own ways. 

We use it in conjunction with the cloud. So it's multi-tenant, making sure that it is cloud-ready. This is cloud-ready hardware and software. And, the VSPs have the capacity to integrate other third-party software and the engine is very, very powerful.

The deployment could be a bit easier, because it's a bit tricky.

I have been using it for more than a year now. 

When I look at storage, it's about uptime, disaster recovery, and all those things.

So, its reliability has been crucial to our operations. 

I haven't had any issues with the stability of the product.  

Normal issues, as we go through patch management, make sure that we do not install anything without looking at the bug scrubbing and all that stuff, and ensure that we always have a stable platform. Do our research and in the background, talk to Hitachi and not take it just by ourselves.

It's a multi-tenanted model, a monthly tenant, it's not just one organization we're hosting. But depending on the customer, we just bring on a tenant.

It's modular. So I can keep growing. But, again, every modular thing also has its limitations. For example, if I take an E590 series, it can grow so much because the engines can support and handle so much, then you gotta go up to the higher one. 

What I haven't seen is if the E590 is compatible with the next level up, if they are interoperable, or if they have to be treated as a separate cluster. I am not sure about that yet.

The customer service and support are reasonably good. The environment I work in, there always remains an element of surprise, and there are restrictions. 

But Hitachi has good technical people. The customer account manager is good and gets the thing straightaway. 

The setup is in three parts. One is the field setup, with someone coming in to do the initial configuration, which would have an IP address, and work away from it. 

Followed by the Professional Service setup, which is architecture and design. It's a very versatile box, so that setup is very tricky. We have to get it right the first time. 

If you make a mistake and don't design or architect the platform correctly, you're going to have to unwind, which can be done with the help of snapshots. 

With the vCenter, you control these things, and in this case, the controller. And you take a snapshot and put it on another box.

So it could be easier to deploy.

Architecture-wise, it's actually at a competitive price point. It is not cheap. But for the purpose-built, and one thing I've never seen, which is probably an industry thing, is that it's modular to start with, but it has to be the same model and make for it to grow.

Every business is different. Like, when I was using the Dell EMC PowerStore 1000 (not Dell 1000P), the cost analysis for that specific business is different from what I'm doing now. So, it depends on if I'm comparing apples to apples, and in this case, it's not. It's apples to oranges.

We did consider the cost when we were sizing Hitachi against another product. But ultimately, it came down to more than just the price. You need to look at the technology, the engineers available for DevOps support, and what kind of engineers you can find in the market. Are they more familiar with NetApp or Hitachi?

So, while buying the hardware and software itself might not be the most expensive part, the ongoing cost of maintenance and hiring qualified labor can be significant. If you just look at the upfront cost of hardware and software, maybe there are other products that are a bit cheaper. 

But then there might not be enough qualified engineers. And not enough certified engineers for those other products.

If we had to train people and get them up to a higher standard of certification, the time investment for the company or organization would have been much higher. So, from a one-time cost perspective, maybe there were other products that were cheaper upfront. But in this case, considering the ongoing labor costs, Hitachi ended up being a more cost-effective option.

A good part is it is scalable. It's reliable. It is both at all. But it does not work well with BusyBox. Even though it supports multiple vendors, some features do not support multiple tenants; they are not vendor-adopting. 

For example, bring in a NetApp and try to use it with Hitachi. You'll either have limitations with that application or you'll actually always have to do extra patching. Or the other tricky part that needs to happen.

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is a data management platform for SAN storage, NAS storage, and object storage. It also provides storage as a service, making it suitable for various segments.

For Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, the most valuable features are its performance, reliability, scalability, data protection, and a hundred percent data availability guarantee. Additionally, it offers storage virtualization with both internal and external options.

Hitachi should work on unified storage for the SMB market and entry-level NAS storage, similar to what HP or Dell offers. Moreover, while they currently provide ransomware protection through immutable snapshots, more integrated data protection features could be beneficial.

I have worked with Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform for the past three years.

The stability of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is excellent. I would rate it nine out of ten.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform has great scalability. I would rate it a ten out of ten.

Hitachi does not perform well in terms of support. There is latency in part replacement. Resolution time must be faster compared to the competition as customers need quick support for their critical applications.

Neutral

I have moved from Zoom to using Hitachi solutions. I am currently associated with Redington Limited.

For small scenarios with one or two storages, the initial setup is manageable. However, with five to ten storages, management becomes more complex compared to Dell or NetApp.

For NVMe storage, the pricing is reasonable compared to competitors in India. However, for entry-level SAN storage or unified storage, the pricing is relatively high, creating challenges in pitching Hitachi as a product.

Competitors to Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform include HP's primary storage, Electra storages, Dell's PowerStore and PowerMax series, and NetApp's A series. Hitachi competes well in commercials for the NVMe segment, offering no-question-asked data reduction technology.

I recommend Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform to other users.

I would rate it a seven out of ten.

I use the solution in my company as it is a good storage product.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform's GUI or interface for storage and management is a little bit difficult compared to Primera and HPE storage products.

I want to see deduplication features in the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform since it is a good storage system. The GUI interface for storage management is a bit difficult.

I have been using Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform since 2015.

I think all storage tools have facilities in them to be able to scale up and down. Scalability-wise, I have no complaints with the solution.

I don't think the product features are available for our company to contact the tool's support team. There was an incident in 2016 and 2017 when both of its controllers failed. It was very strange for me to have a storage in which both the controllers failed. We had to send it across to Japan for investigation, but I haven't received any reply from them yet.

The product's installation phase was not difficult because the vendor or its partner was involved in its setup process.

I have seen some savings in my company from the use of the product, especially since the market is becoming too competitive nowadays. The companies selling storage which are better than mechanical drives.

I find Hitachi to be cheaper by five to ten percent when compared to Dell and HP's costs, but the features in Dell are better than Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform. We have only eight terabytes of storage available on Dell, but we can manage to create partitions of about thirty terabytes, meaning it allows for a lot of compression.

From the data management point of view and for deduplication purposes, Dell storage is the best option. It gives me around a one-is-to-sixteen ratio of compression, while Primera only offers a one-is-to-three ratio. There is no deduplication in Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform because it is an old storage.

The product's performance is good.

The product is reliable.

I rate the solution a seven to eight out of ten.

VSP systems run on our core OS as our storage recovery solutions, including SVOS (Storage Virtual Operating System).

We primarily use it for data stability and various hospital operations, including RMAs, patient responses, faxes, emails, and scheduling tasks.

We use primarily mid-range storage solutions like the VSP G350 or VSP G590.

We use Hitachi VSP for data center consolidation. For VMware, we deploy shared storage solutions with VSP, which supports multiple ports. This aids in data consolidation efforts.

With VSP, we leverage a 3DC architecture, incorporating NDR and FDR for a 100% data availability guarantee. This is especially valuable for our banking customers.

The valuable features for data management include deduplication and compression without performance impact, and the ability to virtualize old storage, making migration seamless.

The main issue is the management software, which requires a separate VM for full functionality. The default web GUI is less capable. 

Unlike Dell or HP where the web GUI is much more capable. The default web GUI in Apache VSP doesn't have all the functionalities, so that's the main disadvantage, perhaps the only one.

In future releases, I would like to see enhancements in the web GUI capabilities for direct management without additional PCM. Secondly, the introduction of dynamic volume management, where volume level rate settings can be defined directly without pre-defining a RAID group.

We have been using it for around ten years.  

So far, it's been very reliable. We haven't had a single instance where we've lost data or experienced platform downtime. 

It's highly stable and available. In fact, according to a Gartner report, it boasts exceptional availability, scalability, and something else related to those aspects.

It's highly scalable.

Whenever we need to add more capacity due to customer demands, it's like plugging in a new DDA or enclosure. It's a seamless experience for the customer.

The customer service and support are satisfactory.

Positive

I have used Dell and VMware.

One key feature is storage utilization. Hitachi VSP can utilize storage from any vendor, unlike Dell or HPE.

For example, if I have old Dell storage that needs migration,  Hitachi can virtualize it seamlessly. Other vendors might require third-party tools for such migrations.

The initial setup was easy. Integration is straightforward, with options for Fibre Channel or iSCSI connections. We typically choose Fibre Channel for its efficiency.

The installation and configuration process took approximately three days. It's fairly easy to maintain. The process is well documented.

There is around 30% to 40% ROI, mainly in terms of managing the money.

The pricing is very competitive compared to other vendors. It really depends on the type of media we're using, like SaaS, SSP, or NVMe.

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

We use Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform's 5500 series.

Hitachi's support helps us to quickly and effectively resolve any issues we may have.

Hitachi's roadmap is good. They maintain consistent performance levels with each new version and a robust platform. While we don't anticipate significant innovations in storage, the current storage capabilities are commendable.

I am satisfied with the decision to purchase Hitachi products because they provide a storage solution with good performance and quality, which is exactly what we need.

The solution's performance, specifically IOPS, is good. Since we have a complex business, knowing that the system's performance is reliable provides us with peace of mind.

The flexible media option, which helps consolidate multiple use cases within the same platform, is very important because it provides a significant performance boost. 

Storage is the most valuable feature.

The embedded management for installation feature has neither simplified nor complicated the management process, therefore, there is room for improvement.

I have been using Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform for over 15 years.

The customer service is good.

Positive

The price is good enough considering the performance, and we are satisfied.

I would rate the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform an eight out of ten.

We have independent consultants who conduct market research for us. On the other hand, when we pay for upgrades or renewals, we typically engage two different vendors in the solution: IBM and another vendor.

Our solution provider is Hitachi itself. They own the technology and provide us with assessments. They are a good partner to work with.

I am likely to recommend Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform to others.

For the banking sector, here in Pakistan, we deploy it as primary storage.

The first benefit is the system's availability. Only Hitachi offers "eight nines". Also, the compression rate can provide a financial benefit, and a further benefit is the performance. There's no performance degradation after applying the compression.

In terms of Hitachi's all-flash technology, there is a smaller footprint with more performance. The footprint is smaller because there isn't a need for many disks and this means there is a reduction in the need for power and cooling. Also, space being used in the data center on the rack is reduced.

The VSP is a machine that works 24/7 throughout the year. The most valuable feature is that it has "eight nines" availability, 99.999999 percent of the time. That is the main selling point. 

Another selling point is the IOPS of Hitachi systems; they are very high and others cannot match them.

Those are the two bullet points: Availability and performance. Hitachi is a best-of-breed storage system.

In addition, there is an effective capacity guarantee. It's a question of virtualization. There is a basic, physical, usable capacity, and effective capacity. Effective capacity is what you get after compression. Hitachi has very good compression, offering a 7:1 compression ratio in their flash boxes. But the guaranteed compression ratio is 4:1 because compression depends on the application and use case. Effectively, on average, we guarantee a compression ratio of 4:1 and there will be no performance degradation.

Also, once the solution has been completely deployed, management of it is easy.

The most common issues we face are connected to replication and parts replacement, such as when there is a disk drive failure.

Also, there is a drawback related to Hitachi's configuration flexibility. The Hitachi storage platform solution is not flexible. That means that both the Hitachi and the partner presale guys have to do a lot of work to design a solution. Once you design a solution, you can't reverse it. There is no flexibility afterward. If you are implementing a solution for a five-year plan, for example, you discuss what the customer will need in those five years. But after implementation the customer cannot then decide they need this or that changed. Customers have to decide things at the point of sale. Other solutions have better flexibility than Hitachi.

We have been working with Hitachi for more than a decade. We are both partners and integrators of Hitachi products. We are also a certified service provider, meaning we have a local team that supports and maintains the system.

Effectively, we don't have any major service activities that cause unavailability of the data or an issue that cannot be solved. That has never happened. These machines are very reliable. They are estimated to work for at least 10 years.

When it comes to business strategy, the only thing the customer wants is that the system is up and running the whole year. We make sure to talk with a customer about their plan for the life of the storage system we are selling. Do they want a three-year plan or a five-year plan or maybe more than five years? We choose the model based on their answer. To summarize our approach in one line, we try to find the best business value that addresses all of a customer's existing challenges.

It's highly scalable.

Hitachi's technical support requires improvement. They don't have a lot of support engineers who can handle all the service requests from all the customers. Other manufacturers have baked-in support. Hitachi doesn't have a support team like that, but they are improving in that regard. They are adding resources and improving the support cycle, but they don't have a very good call-logging mechanism.

If a certified partner is not involved in the support process, I would rate support at five out of 10. With a partner involved, it's a nine. Hitachi's support involves working closely with certified partners who should have a lot of engineers to support customers.

Neutral

Setting it up is not very easy but it's also not so difficult. The time it takes depends on the size of the solution. While it's not so time-consuming, you have to plan for a process that will take at least 15 days. These products are always deployed in high-end, sensitive customer environments, where we are playing with their data, so it does take at least that long.

A senior storage engineer is enough for the deployment. With the addition of a junior-level engineer, the two of them can handle the maintenance.

With Hitachi's embedded management, the initial setup is easy. Only one management software is required and it's embedded in the box. But for the centralized management, there is another product that is deployed on another server.

The embedded management is very easy compared to previous systems where we needed to install a client on the management station. But most solutions have an embedded management platform.

The overall solution might be expensive, but in the long term, the total cost of ownership is better than the TCO of any competitor.

We discuss ROI as part of the presale process. 

A drawback of Hitachi storage systems is that they are expensive. The upfront cost is very high compared to others. But when you compare the IOPS at the same price, Hitachi gives you better business value; their IOPS are always higher than the competitors', but the price may be higher.

In terms of licensing, of course, we talk with the customer about what they need. If they need this feature right now and that feature later on, we discuss that with Hitachi and the licensing model will be defined accordingly, before the sale of the product. Afterward, when the customer asks us to add a license as we had discussed, we can add the license. 

But if a customer didn't discuss with us any kind of future licensing from a feature perspective, buying that license later on, in general, will be very expensive. Before the sale, there's no problem creating a near-cost-effective solution. But getting a license later on is really costly.

In general, whether you are a partner or a customer, you need to discuss the requirements of the solution, the full scope of the work, including capacity, performance, availability, and scalability, before the sale.

Also, do not undersize your storage. That is something that will kill any solution.

And only apply compression after one or two years, not from the first day of storage. If you are out of capacity and need to buy more storage, the procurement process for extra storage will take a few months, so that is the time to apply compression.

As a partner, we have to connect with a customer after the sale as well. It's not only about the product. It's also about the partner that sold the product working with the customer to make sure they are satisfied, even when there is no problem with the product. If the collaboration and connection are not good, whenever a customer calls, the partner won't respond to their query properly. So it's not just a one-day job. The product could be really good, but if the response time and the way the customer is handled is not good, the customer will not be satisfied. Our customers are satisfied with the Hitachi storage platform.

We don't recommend a single-node implementation. It's very risky. One controller cannot provide a high-availability solution, which is a feature of every storage system these days.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is used for our storage area network.

Hitachi's ability to quickly impact and resolve issues is good. When we had an issue a few months back, we were contacted by Hitachi and they upgraded us free of charge automatically.

Hitachi's roadmap is important because, without it, our organization would not run properly.

We are very satisfied with our decision to purchase Hitachi products. We originally planned to buy Dell products, but they were unable to deliver them due to a chipset shortage. We are fortunate that we chose Hitachi, as their products are incredibly fast and the price was good. We have no regrets about our decision.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform's IOPS and latency are great.

Compared to Dell, the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is much faster. We can start 50 servers at one time on the host without seeing the dial drop.

It is important to our organization that we have flexible media options such as NVMe with the solution.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform's adaptive data reduction technology helps us reduce storage on a ratio of 1:3.

The embedded management for installation simplified the solution's ease of management.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform's embedded management is more powerful and efficient than the previous solution. It has been so easy to use that we haven't had to do anything manually in the past year.

Reliability, compression, and speed are the most valuable features.

Although the speed is good, there is always room for improvement.

I would like the fan noise to be automatically adjusted based on the drive's current workload.

I have been using the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform for 15 months.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is stable.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is scalable.

Hitachi's technical support is perfect.

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward. I completed the deployment myself, which took one week. 

The implementation was completed in-house.

I give the price of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform a nine out of ten.

I give Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform a ten out of ten.

80 percent of our employees in-house are using the solution with additional people around the world.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform notifies us if any maintenance is required.

I recommend Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform.

We primarily use the solution for storage for our customers. 

My customer still has previous storage running. There was nothing wrong with that. However, they wanted to migrate some services and in the meantime are considering new storage, which is why we are using this new solution. 

We've dealt recently with virtual storage. We use the 500-series.

The main benefit of the solution is its reliability.

The solution has a pretty long history of working with different industries. It's easy to coordinate experience. When my customers brought up potential issues with the Hitachi consultant, they seemed to always be able to find a solution to the problem or questions.

The Hitachi roadmap, in terms of adopting new technologies, is very strong. Its roadmap is important to our organization's strategy. 

We are extremely satisfied with the solution. We've been working with them for more than 20 years.

We'd be very likely to recommend the solution to others. I'd give it a ten out of ten in terms of the likelihood of recommending it to others.

The IOPS and latency are okay, however, they aren't the best. There are others on the market that handle it better. They are pretty good with their approach, however. The customer won't complain too much. We have SQL, for example, and it works quite well.

The deployment for small and medium organizations is still possible. Their needs aren't as large as traditional market share, however, we'd like, in the future, for Hitachi to ensure that they can handle companies of all sizes.

The adoption of the newest technologies must always be prioritized. New areas of technology must be adopted by the solution to keep it relevant.

The storage can be improved. You need an operating system to run a computer. If they had a certain approach to layered storage, it would be better. For example, adaption to the browser, or having a centralized console.

We've been using the solution for many years.

So far, we are pretty satisfied with stability.

The solution provides excellent scalability.

I've seen the demos for Hitachi's effective capacity guarantee, however, we don't get close to the capacity, so we haven't had a chance to test capacity and how it works. We've never touched the boundaries. It's straightforward to understand, however.

I've been pretty satisfied with the support overall. 

Positive

I did not use embedded management for the installation process. 

We have more than one Hitachi supplier working with us, depending on the project.

Hitachi solutions are a little more expensive. However, they are still in the realm of the competition.

As long-time users, I'd advise other users to spend more time with the Hitachi consultant. Some licensing needs to be considered in order to find ways to save money. You can do different things to achieve your goals without purchasing a license. Experts will give you many different ideas of how to achieve your goals. 

We're consulting partners. We work with many different Hitachi customers and partners. We work with design and implementation. 

The adaptive data and reduction technology has not helped us reduce our storage footprint, as I am still in the process of understanding the scenarios around that aspect of the product.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten.