Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform Reviews

The product is used in our company since we have implemented a proxy server for our organization from Hitachi. With Hitachi, my company has dealt with the planning, implementation, and migration of the products. The migration was done specifically from our company's site. Hitachi provided the planning and implementation plans, and the full implementation process was carried out with the help of Hitachi's partner.

The solution's most valuable feature is that it provides a secure gateway with SSL inspection. The tool also allows our company to control a user's internet access on a time-based or quota-based basis.

The complex setup phase is an area where improvements are needed.

I have been using Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform since 2016.

It is a scalable solution because our company initially implemented it for around 50,000 users, and now we plan to increase the number to around 200,000 users.

My company does plan to increase the use of the solution in the future.

The product's support might have some issues. Hitachi provides on-site support. My company deals with Hitachi's customer support and engineers, as these are the two types of people available for on-site support.

The product's initial setup phase is complex and complicated.

The solution can be deployed in six months because our company needs each and every implementation node and the report required for it. Implementing the tool takes around six months.

For the implementation process, my company first had to have a meeting with Hitachi, after which we were given a plan which was discussed in our organization's internal meeting. My company goes through the two or three types of installation proposals received from Hitachi, and then we finalize it so that the implementation process can be started. A person from Hitachi is physically available on-site during the implementation process.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model. In 2016, when my company wanted to implement Forcepoint, we found that it was available only on the on-premises version and not in the cloud.

In our company, we only pay towards the licensing charges associated with Forcepoint, as Hitachi is considered to be a third-party product for us.

Speaking about how the tool streamlined our company's data access and storage processes, I would say that previously, we were using Microsoft Project. Hitachi later approached our company with a proxy solution consisting of software and hardware components, and after having a few meetings, Hitachi explained to us the features and benefits of a proxy solution. Hitachi then took the inputs from our managers and management while taking into consideration areas like how many users would be using it and what other existing solutions are used in the company, after which our company was provided with a proper plan for implementation. For implementation, two people from Hitachi's end were appointed at our location, and they worked with four people from our company.

The product's reliability has been crucial for our company's operations.

Hitachi has been really good since it provides proper documentation, which provides proper information about the solution. Hitachi's support team is also good.

The people provided by Hitachi for on-site support are very experienced and helpful since, knowledge-wise, they are the best.

The cost-effectiveness of the use of the tool in my company stems from the fact that even though there is another product in our company that we use with Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform when it comes to Hitachi, the support personnel has deep knowledge to solve any problem on-site.

I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

I work for one of the largest commercial banks in Pakistan. We deploy Hitachi Virtual Storage in our primary data center and our remote disaster recovery site. 
It is used for all banking applications like credit and debit card transactions, reconciliation, general ledger, etc. 

The bank has thousands of users accessing more than 2,000 branches across the country. Everyone who accesses our core banking applications and online banking indirectly uses the Hitachi storage platform in our data center. 

The biggest benefit of the Hitachi platform is the 100 percent storage uptime. It's also highly cost-effective. 

Hitachi is far superior to other storage platforms I've used. The architecture is strong. The management software is more powerful and easier to use. The Hitachi platform performs well. IOPS is a commercial operation's main concern. Hitachi has good IOPS numbers. 

IOPS, latency, and availability are the essential metrics for a commercial bank with thousands of branches. We don't worry about our banking applications because Hitachi passes all the tests for performance and availability.

We've only faced some minor issues. For example, the documentation of some features isn't as detailed as we would like. 

I started using Hitachi in 2014. 

The Hitachi platform is highly stable. We've experienced minimal hardware or software failures. They promise 99.999 percent uptime, and the platform has lived up to that claim. It's essential because a commercial bank needs to operate 24/7. Downtime is unacceptable for a commercial organization. The hardware is robust, and the backend software is stable. 

It's easy to upgrade and expand the Hitachi platform. 

I rate Hitachi support nine out of 10. Hitachi has local support teams that are available 24/7. They are all highly qualified and responsive. They understand the solution they provide, and it shows.

Positive

I have been in this business for more than 20 years. Before Hitachi, I worked with storage solutions by various brands, including NetApp, EMC, and IBM. The competing solutions are also good, but they may not be suitable for all use cases. 

Deploying the Hitachi platform is simple. I have extensive experience deploying storage, so it is no big deal for me. Most storage brands have similar features.

We worked with a local partner called Synergy Computers. They have an excellent technical team, and we've worked with them on other projects besides Hitachi. 

We've gotten our money's worth from the Hitachi platform. It was supposed to be upgraded after three or four years, and we've been using it for nearly seven without any problems.

I am not involved in purchasing, but my impression is that the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is cost-effective. 

I rate Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform a nine out of ten. I highly recommend Hitachi to anyone looking for this kind of storage. If you've worked with any other storage vendors, you will see the difference in performance and technical specifications. The management platform is user-friendly, and the architecture is advanced. 

Hitachi is always improving by adding the latest technologies like artificial intelligence. Their technology is far superior to that of competing solutions. Hitachi's research team is doing an excellent job. 

For Hitachi, I provide training and mapping to existing clusters and coordinate with vendors for hardware values and upgrades. 

I've been working on Hitachi VSP models and NetApp 2750 models for the past two years.

I work with multiple products from various companies, including HPE and Hitachi. Each product has its own scalability and features. The service provided by Hitachi is good, and I get the IT support I need from the vendors.

I have been using it for six years. 

For the past two years, I haven't faced any outages with Hitachi. I've seen many issues with Dell but not with VSP. I have very few storage boxes in my current organization, but I handle over 200 Hitachi storage boxes with different products.

Scalability provides us with flexibility. For example, we can easily increase storage as needed. We also have multi-path redundancy for added reliability. For data redundancy, we create RAID levels, usually RAID 5 or the recommended RAID 6.

To ensure power availability in the data center, we have two power sources and redundant cabling. Each inverter has a backup from another inverter. I recommend customers use a backup configuration for redundancy, such as Veeam backup or Commvault. These products protect against hardware failures by backing up VMs.

I would rate the scalability a nine out of ten. 

I have over 200 customers for Hitachi storage, one or two customers on the VSP platform, and all of them are being serviced. 

I have contacted them for firmware upgrades, hardware failures, and trial replacements. I was coordinating with the vendor.

I provide support for customers. I work for a company and give support to customers.

So, the response time and the quality of the support was good. 

I work with NetApp, and I have been working with HPE, Dell, and IBM products for the past six years.

I learn new things whenever I work on products from HPE, NetApp, and other vendors. I wasn't aware of Hitachi Storage before, but I started working on it at this company. It's a little different. The way we provide and learn from the VSP models is different compared to HPE and Dell.

Not just anyone can do it. For example, I'm a storage engineer, and if I guide someone on my team, they can't necessarily do my job. 

So, the person needs a basic understanding and work experience. Sometimes, it requires specific knowledge, and people need to prepare for the tasks assigned to them. Once the person has prepared, they can do whatever is assigned.

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

It is a good product. I would recommend it. 

The product can be made into a multi-controller system instead of just being a tool that offers a two-controller system to users since it is one of the areas where the product lacks. From a controller perspective, the tool should offer scalability. The tool should also offer better manageability options, considering that users have multiple storages in their environment and need to control them with the help of a single pane of glass. The solution does provide users with the option to opt for a single console from where everything can be managed, but it is not available for free. The manageability area can be improved if a single console is made available to users for free.

I have been using Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform for around ten years. My company has a partnership with Hitachi Vantara.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

The controllers in the product do not provide options for scalability. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) E Series is useful for medium to large-sized enterprises.

The solution's technical support is good. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

I rate the initial setup phase a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one means it is a difficult process, and ten means it is an easy process. The product's installation phase is easy.

There are boxes available under the product, and they get implemented depending on the different kinds of workloads in my company, because of which, the tool may get used in clouds, VDIs, and GPU servers for high-performance computing.

The solution can be deployed in two to three hours.

Considering the solution's price, it is very competitive compared to the other competitors in the market. I rate the product price a nine out of ten. My company purchases the licenses for the solution in a bundle, owing to which our company gets a very competitive price compared to the pricing models offered by its competitors.

The product has improved our company's data storage scalability aspect, considering that my organization uses Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) E Series. My company uses Hitachi VSP E990 All-Flash NVMe Storage Platform and Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform E1090 for production storage purposes. My company relies on All-NVMe Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform. In our organization, we never faced a performance issue with the product.

The product has improved our company's data retrieval time tremendously since we don't see any performance issues with the tool in our company. My company has not seen any issues with the tool's data retrieval time or response time.

The most valuable feature of the product for our company's data management needs stems from the fact that the tool provides multiple functionalities, like Hitachi HDD drivers. The tool offers in-built encryption, ensuring that data security is available in the solution. My company also gets a good number of compression and data efficiency ratios. My company gets to see a 1:2.5 compression ratio, allowing us to save a lot of space. From a capacity perspective, I see that the product consumption in our company is very high due to multiple workloads running on the boxes from Hitachi. The product offers more capacity than a single box. I have around three petabytes of storage, which is a huge storage capacity.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform reliability and uptime support our company's machine-critical applications since the tool offers 100 percent uptime and has never gone down in our company in the last three years.

In terms of performance and ability, the product can stand up against its competitors since the solution offers two controller systems to users. The tool also offers a good performance in comparison to the other products in the market. My company has workloads of variable block sizes. A lot of storage platforms fail when there are variable block sizes, but there is a sustenance level that Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform offers in such scenarios. Instead of considering the differences in block sizes, the product tries to offer a consistent and good performance to users.

The product's integration capabilities with the tools in our company's existing infrastructure are possible. It is very easy to use the integration features of the product. My company tested the product's integration functionalities, and we found that it worked fine in our infrastructure. I think that the product's integration capabilities are convenient and easy to use.

I recommend the product to those who plan to use it, considering that its price-to-performance ratio is very good. The product also offers a good efficiency ratio. The tool's performance is much better in comparison with the other storage platforms in the market.

I rate the product a nine out of ten.

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. 

The Hitachi VSP has significantly improved data storage scalability by addressing various issues. Through their research and development efforts, they've incorporated customer feedback regarding deployment speed and performance requirements.

The tool's impact on data retrieval times is primarily seen in performance and reliability. It has proven to be more reliable. Speed in restoration varies depending on the nature of the backup or image being restored.

Its most valuable feature is the centralized consolidation portal. In terms of performance and agility, the Hitachi VSP stands out against competitors primarily due to its reliability and storage performance capabilities.

The solution is priced higher than its competitors. 

I have been using the product for two years. 

I rate the product's stability an eight out of ten. 

I would rate the tool's scalability at around seven point five on a scale of one to ten. While the storage solution is proprietary, it may not provide the same integration as some cloud-based solutions.

The initial setup of the Hitachi VSP was relatively straightforward for us. Hitachi deployed an engineer who handled the configuration and initial setup process. Subsequently, they provided training and guidance on managing and monitoring the system and providing storage for various needs, such as integrating with other cloud platforms like AWS.

The deployment duration can vary depending on the size and complexity of the setup. In our case, as it was for a tier-two data center, the deployment process took approximately two months. This included around one month for preparation and approval processes, followed by another month for delivery and configuration of the storage components.

I would rate the solution's pricing at around eight or nine on a scale of one to ten. While the solution may be priced higher than some competitors, we prioritize the quality and durability of the storage.

Enterprise customers mostly use the tool. I would recommend Hitachi VSP to others. It excels in terms of quality and performance and adheres to industry standards. I rate it an eight out of ten. 

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.

I use Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform for different applications in my company to ensure their good performance. I also use the tool for replication.

I cannot give my opinion or suggestions on what needs improvement in the product since I need to better understand it.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform needs to improve its scalability options where there are a few shortcomings.

I have been using Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform for a year. I use the solution's latest version.

The product offers high stability. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

I think that since Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform has been a long-standing solution in the market compared to all the other solutions I have seen over the years. I don't know about the scalability part of the tool, but I know that I am into the product. In some situations, my company may need to go to the next high-end model of the solution, meaning that we may not always be able to continue with the existing models of the solution in our company, and there may arise a need to go to different kinds of models or other models in the market.

I am just an engineer in my company, but I don't use the solution much since I am mostly involved with it as an administrator.

I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

Positive

I worked on different solutions but not with the customers I deal with currently. I have worked with different companies, older versions, and models of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform and other storage tools. Everything depends upon the customers' needs.

The product's initial setup phase is not very difficult since it doesn't take much time to do. In my company, we work with an IT technician and Hitachi's field engineer during the deployment phase of the product, but I don't know how the setup is done.

The solution is deployed on the cloud. It currently works on an integrated setup or is better described as a hybrid integrated setup. The tool is integrated with multiple cloud technologies, but I am not sure how it was done or works.

The solution can be deployed in a few days or around a week.

I have seen a higher return on investment from the use of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform in my company. I can see the profits made by my company, but I don't know how much it is exactly, so I feel that the product's use definitely fetches returns.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is a very expensive product. The cost of the product depends upon the company's customers' requirements, so if they require higher redundancy, then the product will become more cost-effective for them.

I use Hitachi Command Suite for provisioning. In general, I use products from Hitachi to deal with the different kinds of approaches with my company's customers, which usually includes giving better solutions to customers.

For a single solution, two people or three people, we can maintain it, but it depends. One person cannot look into the maintenance part of the tool for an entire day. The product's maintenance phase depends upon how big the infrastructure is and how many services from the solution are required by a user.

It is an okay solution that is not bad.

I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.