Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform Reviews

In my experience, I've encountered several limitations, particularly in the operational tasks, when dealing with unified storage. I've faced significant performance issues, especially when extending block capacities. The operational challenges, such as the console getting blocked and preventing any activity, have been a recurring issue.

For instance, extending a replicated volume from one site to another involves breaking the mirror application, adding unnecessary complexities. Unlike other products, like Dell, where extending volumes is straightforward, this process on this platform requires multiple steps, including breaking and reestablishing the application, making it time-consuming and not straightforward. 

The Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform faces challenges when it comes to features like deduplication and compression. Enabling these features can lead to processor overload, resulting in performance degradation, especially under high loads.

It faces limitations, particularly during code upgrades. If the CPU utilization exceeds 65 percent, the standard procedures for firmware or code upgrades are restricted.

I have been working with the product for four years. 

I rate the product’s stability a five out of ten. 

There are no significant challenges in terms of scalability, and it can accommodate larger storage capacities compared to other storage solutions.

The support experience with Hitachi VSP is characterized by a lengthy process for issue resolution. For a simple problem, the support team typically requests logs, which take about 30 minutes to generate. Uploading the logs adds another 30 minutes, and the engineer's review of the logs requires an additional hour. Consequently, the entire process takes two hours, leaving the system in a critical state without a resolution during that time.

Negative

I rate the product’s deployment one out of ten. The deployment process lasted for three months.The initial deployment encountered numerous performance issues, leading to instability and frequent disruptions in production. The on-site engineering team was actively engaged for almost three months to address and resolve these challenges.

The integration process of Hitachi VSP into the existing IT infrastructure is not straightforward and is a bit complex.

The initial deployment was initially attempted by a third party, but they were unsuccessful in resolving the issues. Subsequently, Hitachi engineers were directly engaged and worked on-site for nearly three months, facing challenges throughout the process.

The solution is expensive. 

I rate the overall product a four out of ten. 

We used the G Series as our primary shared storage, SAN storage. It hosted all of the critical applications and databases.

The G Series may not have improved our organization, but it basically met the status quo of what we had been doing.

The performance was decent. 

We moved away from this product because we were looking for an all-flash solution, and with our G1500 at the time, perhaps two years ago, they were just proposing more of the same technology. What we wanted was a flash solution that was developed from the ground-up. I think that since then, HDS has come out with an updated product, newer than the G1500 that we had.

For us, continuing to use products from this vendor would have required having a solution that was revamped as flash storage from the ground-up, as opposed to a historical frame that's just evolved over the years.

We used the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series for approximately seven years and have just moved away from using it.

This product was stable and there were certainly no issues that I remember.

When we purchased it, we bought the full capacity of the frame. With it fully-populated on day one, there was no need for us to scale.

This was our main storage device, so 90% of applications and 90% of our users were situated on it.

The technical support was good. There is always room for improvement but I have no specifics with regards to their support.

Over the past seven years, we used three different versions. We started with the VSP, then upgraded to the G1000, and then the G1500 was the most recent one.

We used the Dell EMC DMX series, as well. All the software products that we had, we were comfortable with when we were on the EMC DMX series. So, after switches, it was all the same kind of software and functionality that we were used to. It wasn't really over and above what we had with EMC at the time, but rather just more of the same.

The reason we switched is that after putting out an RFP, we evaluated options based on the technology and pricing. Hitachi was the winner.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward.

My advice is that everybody has to do their own due diligence. The G Series is a good product but it isn't meet our requirements 

In summary, this is a very good product but there's always room for improvement. It certainly served our purposes at the time.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

One of the tasks that I have been working on is the consolidation of storage.

This product is one that we have used to consolidate our legacy systems, all formerly residing on older storage. We have it configured for 150 terabytes in size, which is sufficient for all of our legacy applications.

It is also responsible for replication from our production site to DR site.

The performance is very good. 

The size of the storage is very good.

We use many of the enterprise features in production. 

This product should be easier to install and set up.

I have been working with the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series for three years.

This is a stable storage system.

This is a scalable product.

We have five or six storage engineers that are in charge of administration.

We get our support from a local vendor. If there is an escalation then it is done directly to the vendor.

I have experience with several enterprise storage solutions.

The installation and initial setup are not straightforward. We had to do a lot of configuration and required assistance from the vendor to complete it. In particular, there were certain things that there was some confusion about.

The location and the sizing were also things that we had to plan for internally. 

We used a consultant for the deployment, and we also had assistance from the vendor.

We pay for a support contract agreement.

We have decided to migrate our application to the cloud, which is something that we are currently in the process of doing. As such, we do not plan to increase our usage of this storage platform.

In summary, this is a stable product and I highly recommend it. It provides a trouble-free work environment. There are also newer models than the one that we have, and I also recommend these.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We are Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series for hard disk replication.

We have many different types of replication, such as remote and drop local replication. All these features and licenses are already available. These are basic features available in the current model. Additionally, the performance has been good in our experience.

We have not been able to procure more discs for upcoming projects and this has been a problem for us. Not having additional storage is going to be an issue. The solution is at its end of life and will be replaced soon.

I have been using Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series for approximately 10 years.

The stability of the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series is good.

The technical support is good.

If you are migrating from Hitachi to Hitachi, it has not been a problem for us because if you have an existing model they will do the migration to a newer one. In case if you are going to change different OEMs you will have to have the right model equivalent for migration. For example, if you have an HPE solution equivalent to the Hitachi is 5100 then the migration is possible.

The price of the solution is reasonable. However, I have not done extensive comparative research on the price. If you want to upgrade the size of the disc you will need to purchase a license that accounts for the size.

I rate Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series a nine out of ten.

We use the private cloud version.

The high performance of flash storage is especially valuable to us.

Pricing could be better because the cost is very high.

In terms of new features, I would be interested to see deduplication added in their next release.

It's very stable. As of now, we haven't had any events with the loss of storage. It is very stable.

We have one storage device for all of the patients, so it's very critical. There are more than a thousand users.

I recommend this product and I would rate it as nine out of ten.

We use the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform 5000 Series as a storage solution in our organization.

The most valuable features in Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series are Shadowimage, easy to manage equipment, and upgrading the firewire is very simple.

I have been using the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform 5000 Series for approximately two years.

The solution is stable. However, there have been some software crashes where we had to restart the system. They could improve the hardware to prevent this type of issue.

The price of the solution is reasonable compared to others, such as Dell EMC.

I rate Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform 5000 Series a ten out of ten.

Our primary use case in our company is as a reseller of the product. We don't have any Hitachi equipment solutions ourselves for production. We sell storage equipment to clients.

Popular usage for our clients is for email storage in telecall centers and for high-performance data storage and utilization.

I don't really know what parts of the product could be improved because it works well for me in testing and installations as a reseller. I would need more experience with it as a storage solution. However, I have not heard customers complaining.

One thing that can be improved is the price because it is a bit expensive. It would be easier to market and for clients to buy if the licensing were not so costly. It is not really a feature of the product but it is something that can be better.

The only feature I can think of is that it would be nice if it had data a duplication feature as an option. We have to use other products for this.

The stability is really very good. The clients never complain of downtime.

The scalability is good. We did have an incident with a client who needed more storage space on a G400 but they had run out of opportunities on their unit. The client felt that the limitation on the number of disk enclosures was not enough and should have more capacity. As far as scalability it may be better if it were either possible to expand the capacity or provide additional capacity initially with the device.

We have only three customers but some have several of the storage systems and use them for different purposes. There would usually be no problem in providing them with scaling except for cost.

The technical support is very good and responds with expertise quickly.

We worked with HP products before switching to Hitachi. The Hitachi product had everything we needed for our customer demands and we think it is a better solution.

The installation of the product is very straightforward. It is very easy. I stay busy while I am installing the VSP (Virtual Storage Platform) and Storage Advisor for infrastructure management. Both of these parts of the installation make for busy work but it is not hard.

My advice to other people considering this solution is that it is a very good product. It has very good stability, it is easy to use, it has a 100% data security and availability guarantee. It is a very, very good solution manufactured by a good company.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate these products as a ten because they do what we need them to without fail. For us they are perfect.

We use this solution primarily within our large IaaS platform for All-Purpose Storage, Tiered Storage, Storage Replication, and non-disruptive Data Mobility between storage tiers. It is an ideal device for secure multi-tenanting and those hosting many clients.  

This solution has given us a huge improvement to DR, resiliency, and business continuity.

The hybrid array provides scaleable, predictable, high performance with no capacity constraints.

The G-Series platform has proven to be our platform of choice for providing our clients with reliable IaaS and cloud services.   

The most valuable features of this solution are its Data Mobility and High-performance flash capabilities.

The Management Interface needs to be improved. Hitachi Vantara has invested heavily in improving their management interface, however, they still have a way to go to catch up with many of their competitors.

The G-Series is an extremely stable platform, a chief criterion for deploying it in our IaaS and cloud services platforms. 

Scalability is one of the best in the industry. The G-Series is soon to be superseded by Hitachi's next generation of enterprise storage, which I'm confident will continue the Hitachi tradition of extreme scalability with virtually unbreakable reliability.

Because our own engineers have a high skill base and accreditation on the G-Series, it is seldom that we have to seek vendor support or request a call out. Whenever we do, we experience professional and skilled levels of support. 

We have used Hitachi high-end storage products for many of the past fifteen years as the primary storage resource for our enterprise clients. About ten years ago, we were struggling with Hitachi's local sales force not being proactive/value-added enough, so we made the decision to introduce another storage vendor (NetApp) into our infrastructure. The two vendors continue to coexist and compete today in a positive way.  

The initial setup of this solution is straightforward. The G-Series was an evolution of our previous enterprise storage platform, and its deployment was largely problem-free, non-disruptive, and transparent to our clients.  

The vendor team assisted our in-house team with the deployment. They were highly experienced and skilled personnel. 

Our main issue with the Hitachi G-Series is what we consider to be an archaic software licensing scheme and high maintenance costs. It makes little sense in this era to continue to use capacity-sensitive licensing and costs that might have been acceptable in the 1990s but not now.

Ten years ago we evaluated Hitachi, NetApp, EMC, and IBM high-end storage. Hitachi and NetApp won.