What is our primary use case?
For the banking sector, here in Pakistan, we deploy it as primary storage.
How has it helped my organization?
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.
What is most valuable?
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.
What needs improvement?
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.
For how long have I used the solution?
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.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
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.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
How are customer service and support?
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.
How would you rate customer service and support?
How was the initial setup?
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.
What was our ROI?
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.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
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.
What other advice do I have?
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.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
