Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform Reviews

We are a data center located in Mexico. We use a wide array of storage solutions from different companies. Our largest storage installation is on Hitachi.

We use this solution to share storage between our cloud environments. We have a VMware Cloud in each of our data centers with two locations in Mexico City. We have a replica between these two sites. We also have another Cloud Suite for OpenStack. 

This solution is equipped with virtualization technology inside the storage box. Other companies like TMS have virtual technology outside of their storage boxes. IBM has a SAN Volume Controller that allows us to virtualize any type of storage whether it's on the same label or not. This is not the case with Hitachi. 

This solution is very stable. 

The technical support is great. 

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of nine. 

This machine was being used in the DMZ area of the company. It was isolated. The external users were something around 4.5 million customers. I don't know if every one of them uses the machine, but this machine is the gateway to the website and host application. 

To install and do maintenance on this machine at this scale was a one person job. It was a storage admin for this use case. If I look only at that solution, it's not a full-time job. 

We increased the capacity of the solution one year after we initially bought it. Before I left my last job, one of the decisions I made was to change the solution to another platform in this environment. It was also out of warranty. They're still using this appliance, but they need to migrate out of it to another solution. 

It may be a newer version of the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series or a new solution from another vendor. It depends on the product features and total cost. 

It's the public sector, so everything is running on a bid process. The suppliers bid to give a better offer to win the opportunity. Hitachi came up with a better deal and pricing.

The company is opening up opportunities for vendors. The vendors that supply the solution at the lowest prices win the bidding. It's a public sector or government contract. There was special pricing in this case since it's the government sector.

Four years in that environment, the Hitachi GAD we used to replicate in between the primary site and the secondary site was finished. After we started using GAD, we didn't have to replicate the data anymore. It was already up to date in both types.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series eliminated all the management around replication. It helps us to do the recovery better and easier. We removed the software that was managing all the little steps in synchronizing the recovery plan.

I found the Hitachi GAD, Global Active Device feature, most valuable because it enables direct access to the same volume from different physical sites.

With Hitachi, everything that regards the user experience has a big room for improvement. 

• The user experience is pretty bad in Hitachi. 
• A lot of mandatory tasks take a long time to work through.
• Compared to other storage vendors, there is a big disadvantage to Hitachi. 
• Automation has room for improvement in Hitachi.

Something about the NetSure schedule and NetSure management would be good because in my machine everything was only manual. My staff was needed to write automation around the machine to solve the issue. 

Before the snapshot itself, residing on another server was more extensive. If they can do the snapshot in the data pool, i.e. the capacity pool, it will be better for the customer and their matchup vs. the competition.

The Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series is a very steady solution. It's a state of the art solution in storage systems. 

High-availability and performance are the strongest aspects of these machines.

When you purchase the machine, you need to know what the purpose is that you buy the machine for. If you do design, it's pretty scalable for most use cases. 

As a career job, I have around 45 storage machines. If I didn't have enough room in one, I choose another for use.

I used to work with their tech support. Every time I had the need for support, I got it directly from the Israeli team. I didn't have a chance to work with the global support team. 

The local team is great. It was very responsive and very generous.

The previous solution was a sync-based solution storage system. It wasn't active/active and before that, we used EMC VPLEX in another environment. We tested the active/active feature benefits. 

One of the main demands for this particular solution was to be active/active. At that time, the only vendors that offered an active/active machine were EMC and Hitachi.

The initial setup is not straightforward. You need to be a storage expert to install the product and work with it. It's not that simple and discouraging.

If it wasn't so complicated to install it, it would be better. Every step takes a lot of time in the system. But it's a very steady system. It works after the initial setup.

Deployment took two months before we started to migrate data. There was another month for the data migration and two months was the machine hardware install, the software updates, and resilience checks from my side. 

After all the setup and the discovery of the product, we started to schedule dates for data migration and move all the relevant data subscriptions.

I was the customer. The vendor supported the installation for three months, i.e. the initial setup and checks for another month to assist the data migration.

Return-on-investment comes from satisfaction in the product. It was 90% of what I expected it to be and that is very good.

We don't have a monthly license for this product. We just got it up front. We are in the governmental sector, so it was very cheap for us.

This version on the market is priced at a much higher cost. Since we are in government, we got a discount. We grew and the purchase needed additions since the time of installation.

It was just the EMC Unity with VPLEX, i.e. two Unity VPLEX machines: the VSP 400. We required two machines to support the VSP 400. It was all about money. The bottom line. 

You first need to qualify the technical requirements. Both of them qualified, so it was money related. The bottom line was whether another solution was better, so long as they met all the requirements and they were the cheapest.

If the solution is not compliant with our demands, we can't offer it to the company. Because of that, only two vendors got the chance to offer the solution. It was down to VSP and DELL/EMC Unity didn't meet the requirements.

The Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series are real sturdy machines with high-performance capabilities. I didn't do a POC before choosing the solution, but I did go to visit several customers who already had similar solutions from the company. 

I talked to them and got an impression. If you have time for POC it will be better. In the government, it is not very often that we do a POC. They're very thin and human resources didn't have time.

On a scale from one to 10, I would rate the product an eight for the management. The lack of management features on the product is very deflating.

It's very difficult to find this class of machine from other vendors. The storage system is high-availability. The performance is elite.

For the system and performance, this machine is very impressive. It's working 24 hours a day. The machine is very reliable for the user experience.

This gave a big boost to the performance of the application because of the Flash. It also introduced compression which makes the storage more efficient.

The first thing that attracted this model to us was the non-disruptive migration. We had a very large database application that was on older gear and needed to be migrated to these arrays. We had experience with virtualizing behind an array and moving applications and data but this made it even better.

The software has always been lagging a bit compared to the newer features. It usually takes a cycle for it to catch up.

This product is very stable and we didn’t experience any issues.

It scales to a very large array and we haven’t encroached on its limits yet. This particular database application is growing rapidly and we have had to expand several times in the last year.

Excellent. The team is very knowledgeable about their products and how these work with other products.

The previous solution was Hitachi but it had spinning disks. We went to all Flash for the performance.

The initial setup of the non-disruptive migration was complex but we had excellent assistance from Hitachi.

The pricing we get is very competitive when compared to other vendors. Hitachi is working on their licensing model and it is improving but can be irksome when many different items are not bundled or enterprise size.

We evaluated three different solutions, products from EMC, IBM and Hitachi. The vendors provided several configurations including all Flash and hybrid configurations.

Definitely check it out. Talk to other customers and look into the stability and reliability of Hitachi products. They are conservative and don’t market heavily but they are determined to be right and data is the most important aspect.

We use the platform for virtualization purposes.

The product provides a good storage space.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform's GUI could be better.

We have been using Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform for ten years. At present, we use the latest version.

I rate the product's stability a nine out of ten. We encountered a few stability problems.

I rate the product's scalability a five out of ten.

The distributor needs more knowledgeable resources for technical support. It would be better to connect directly to the vendor in case of queries.

Negative

We have used BMC and Hewlett-Packard before.

The initial setup is difficult. I rate the process a five out of ten. It takes a few hours to a day to complete.

It is an expensive product. I rate its pricing a three out of ten.

I recommend Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform to others and rate it a seven out of ten.

Our primary use case of this solution is for bug detection.

What I like about this solution is that you can ask to print the document function with the keyboard functions. You can always go back and hit the enter button, without getting any downtime. That is one of the great uses for the solution.

I think what needs to be improved is to simplify the complexities that are under storage so that it will be easier to work with Hitachi products. I would also like to see better pricing and more discounts. 

This is one of the most reliable and dependable products on the market. It is very stable.

It's a scalable solution. I think that one of the strategies around the scalability is to allow different classified storage options. You will need to have infinite supply for an enterprise. For you to scale, it might be easier for you to do an upgrade, but then you'd have to change your computer, or you would have to change each of the classes. But it is pretty scalable in each of the classes of storage. One of our biggest customers, an enterprise customer, has a modem and he buys his storage. 

The technical support is acceptable and it can fix your issues. You usually get a fast reply to your calls. The product is very good. 

If you do it correctly, the initial setup is straightforward.

The F series is a very accurate solution and it does what I want it to do. In the next version, I would like to see additional features like artificial intelligence and an increase in the amount of data it can store. The storage solution should be able to discover the internet force that is coming up so that you can discover them beforehand. The solution should be able to grab information from what the customer has been doing with the environment and then give the customer new solutions.

On a scale of one to ten, my rating is eight.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform 5000 Series exhibits good performance. It has a good IOPS (input/output operations per second), particularly 300 IOPS, so this is what I like about it.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform 5000 Series is not easy to use and this needs improvement. This product also has a complex setup and is not easy to implement. Snapshot operations for this product could also be improved.

I've been working on Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform 5000 Series for more than a year.

I'm satisfied with the technical support for this product.

Implementation of this product wasn't easy. It took one week.

We implemented Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform 5000 Series through a local vendor team. There was an issue with the vendor so implementation took longer to complete.

I'm satisfied with the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform 5000 Series.

I'm rating Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform 5000 Series an eight out of ten, because of its complex setup.

We are a solution provider and I work with a lot of different SAN products, depending on the needs of the customers. we have implemented this solution, as well as the G series, for some of our clients.

I have a project right now that involves revising and fine-tuning a storage network. This network contains two Hitatch VSP G Series units. There is not a major difference between the F Series and the G Series. Both of them are enterprise-scale and efficient for many data centers. It is used as primary storage in industries such as banking, automotive, health care, and insurance. Large companies, or companies that have an IBM mainframe.

If the solution requires a very high IO/s (Input/Output per second) with sub-millisecond response time then they should select the F Series because it has better performance.

I was attracted to this solution after finding out several of the special features that are available for storage.

• Storage Virtualization
• Global Active Device
• FMD
• Metro Clustering
• 3D Scale ( Scale-up, Scale-out, Scale-deep)

Three years later, I started to design an enterprise solution for one company, using this product has led to more stability and business owner satisfaction due to prevent unwanted downtime or service outage.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G provides the always-availablHitachi Virtual Storage Platform G provides the always-available, agile and automated foundation needed for a trusted Continuous Cloud Infrastructure. Powered with Hitachi global storage virtualization, its new software capabilities unlock IT agility and enable the lowest storage TCO. This solution helps to provide more stability and high availability in Datacenters.e, agile and automated foundation needed for a trusted Continuous Cloud Infrastructure. Powered with Hitachi global storage virtualization, its new software capabilities unlock IT agility and enable the lowest storage TCO. This soultion helps to provies more stability and high-avalbility in Datacenters.

Compared to others, Hitachi products are more complex and not user-friendly. The interface should be simplified and made easier to use. For instance, the EMC Unity series is easier to manage.

In the next release of this solution, it should support NVMe.

An important improvement for this solution is cloud integration (OpenStack), as well as integration with VVoL technologies, Docker, Kubernetes, and Red Hat OpenShift.

I have started working with HDS solutions for more than ten years ago. In my idea, the most perfect one is VSP G Series because you can find better integration with business requirments and better response to IT challenges.

This is one of the most stable, high-end solutions in this area. It has eight controllers and special features for connecting disks on the back end. It has a lot of front ports and all of the components are redundant. It is hard to find a problem with this product. It is designed for those who want less than one minute a year of downtime. It's a 24/7 product.

Based on customers need solutions should be designed. In my experience switching from previous brands to HDS VSP has led to reaching 40% better TCO and 99.9999 availability.

The installation of this solution is a little bit hard. In these kinds of products, the original companies are often interested in setting up the product in the customer's environment.

We are located in Iran, and there is a lot of tension and lack of communication because of our locale. There are restrictions in a lot of our data centers that preclude us from having special software from the original company, and because of that, we face a lot of problems when using these kinds of products.

The initial setup and configuration are usually done by the CE of the vendor, and after the initial configuration is complete, These products are sent to our data centers.

This solution is less expensive than the EMC VMAX series.

When you are looking for high-end solutions such as this, price is less important than stability and availability.

I have researched many products in the Enterprise area to find the best suits for my customers. These include high-end products by NetApp(FAS8060), EMC VMAX, the HPE XP P9500, and the HPE XP Series.

For instance, for one of my customers comparing the details of these products and my customer requirements has led to scoring each of the features. Ultimately, I chose the Hitachi VSP series. The second choice was the HPE XP P9500.

This type of comparison is not easy because there are a lot of companies and a lot of brands. However, I just wanted to find the best solution for my customer.

Day to day, everything changes in the field of IT. I have done a lot of research on products such as this, and I have learned that we are going to have a lot more data in 2020. This huge amount of data means that you need the right platform for processing data quickly. More than before, we need a platform that can process large amounts of data in less than ten milliseconds. One such platform is the Hitachi VSP, with both good performance and availability.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Our primary use case of this solution is to monitor the use of products from other vendors. Its firmware is very compatible.

The most valuable aspects of this solution are the storage system and availability.

In the next version, I would like to see more intelligence. I would like to see backup repository, and the Hitachi storage system as the main storage system without any further applications, without any further layers. I need the data protection layer to protect the data at the right time and at the right place.

The solution is stable and highly available. With Hitachi brands, customers get one hundred percent availability on the product. 

The technical support and the billing team are all winners. Dell is one brand that provides better technical support for its customers. There are many Dell customers in the U.S. and these customers have really crucial issues that need support. Whenever you call in with an issue, you can rest assured that it will be fixed.

On a scale of one to ten, I rate this solution an eight. 

My advice to others who are trying to buy all-flash storage would be to go and take a look at the core storage products. I don't mean the hardware part, I mean the software part, in other words, the data protection layer. The storage layer is a broad layer. You have the main storage, you have the data protection of storage and you have the storage networking. All these layers matter and you will need something in the background on the data protection layer to be able to get the data at the other end.