9500v architecture guide

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Hi-Track is a registered trademark and Application Optimized Storage, Thunder 9500, Lightning 9900, TagmaStore, Thunder 9520V, Thunder 9530V, Thunder 9570V, Thunder 9585V, TrueCopy, ShadowImage, Universal Storage Network, TrueNorth, SplitSecond, and Hi-PER Architecture are trademarks of Hitachi Data Systems Corporation.

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©2005, Hitachi Data Systems Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

DISK-415-03 May 2005

Hitach

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Hitachi Thunder 9500™

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Architecture Guide

Partner Beyond Technology

I

Executive SummaryThe Most Architecturally Advanced Midrange Offering

From the small business to the large enterprise, most organizations face similar IT challenges. Growth

means demands for higher capacity, increased utilization, improved performance, business continuity,

regulatory compliance, and data protection, as well as the need to simplify overall management. The

primary difference is in the scale of these issues.

Previously, the answer to these challenges was for vendors to group organizations by storage system

size—high-end, midrange, and low-end—and apply solutions based on these system sizes. Hitachi

Data Systems has taken a step beyond this approach with Application Optimized Storage™ solutions

that closely align IT and business objectives to attain optimum business value for your organization—

whether it is an enterprise or a small- to medium-sized business (SMB). Application Optimized Storage

solutions employ Hitachi storage systems, including Hitachi Thunder 9500™ V Series modular storage

systems, software, and services to address data protection and backup, storage growth, and

consolidation requirements with the same quality and data availability standards found in systems

used to power the world’s largest banks.

First announced in December 2002, the Thunder 9500 V Series modular storage systems are an

architecturally advanced midrange offering from Hitachi Data Systems. The Thunder 9500 V Series

sets a new standard for modular storage systems, not only in terms of footprint and performance,

but also in terms of management software and storage virtualization features. The product line

shares a wide range of similar functions with Hitachi high-end storage, including a common

management platform, Virtual Storage Ports/Host Storage Domains, and enhanced Serial ATA

options. Throughout the entire range Thunder 9500 V Series systems, common management and

replication software can be deployed, including Hitachi ShadowImage™ In-System Replication and

Hitachi TrueCopy™ Remote Replication modules, helping you keep management simple while

avoiding downtime and data loss.

Like large enterprises, SMBs are also faced with managing disparate storage islands tailored to individual

server applications such as Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server, Linux, and file servers. From high-end to

entry-level, Thunder 9500 V Series systems, including the recently introduced Hitachi Thunder 9520V™

workgroup modular storage systems, meet these challenges. The new Thunder 9520V system offers

best-in-class scalability and performance and enables you to consolidate shared storage across

platforms by increasing utilization, sharing capacity, and simplifying overall management.

II

The Thunder 9500 V Series Product Line

Thunder family systems can serve as the first tier of storage for the workgroup or SMB, or as a

second tier of storage in Application Optimized Storage solutions for the high-end enterprise.

For the SMB or departments in large enterprises, the Thunder 9500 V Series systems are used

most frequently for storage and storage management of consolidated heterogeneous open

systems computing environments, and business applications, e-mail, and Web serving. For the

high-end enterprise, the Thunder 9500 V Series systems complement the Hitachi TagmaStore™

Universal Storage Platform in tiered-storage deployments for applications such as data lifecycle

management (DLM), e-mail archiving, data warehousing, and mainframe archiving for

compliance or mainframe tape replacement.

Choose High-end Models for Reduced TCO

The Thunder 9585V™ ultra high-end and Thunder 9570V™ high-end modular storage systems

provide SMBs with a simplified, low-cost, easy-to-manage storage solution with robust business

continuity features. This means reduced total cost of ownership (TCO) compared to any competitive

system that requires much more time and effort to manage. In standalone configurations, these

models provide “SAN in a box” and “DLM in a box” storage consolidation and virtualization for

heterogeneous servers with low operating expense, common storage management, high availability,

and high performance. The Thunder 9570V and Thunder 9585V systems are perfect first-tier storage

solutions for information-intensive industries like oil exploration, life sciences, health care, and rich

media. The Thunder 9585V and Thunder 9570V systems are available either with “all Fibre” drives for

applications demanding highest performance or with Serial ATA drives (SATA Intermix Option) for

less demanding applications, such as archival.

Choose Entry-level and Workgroup Models for Consolidation, Easy SAN

The Thunder 9530V™ entry-level storage deck and the Thunder 9520V workgroup modular storage

system offers best-of-class scalability and performance aimed at the workgroup market segment.

The Thunder 9520V system more than holds its own for consolidation of multiple Microsoft Windows

servers—or any other deployment of quick-and-easy storage area networks (SANs). The Thunder

9520V system is also ideal for second-tier archival storage in tiered environments. The Thunder 9530V

system and the SATA-based Thunder 9520V system are ideal for standalone deployment in retail

outlets, business franchises, and professional offices.

III

Employing Tiered Storage in Application Optimized Storage Solutions

With the Application Optimized Storage solutions approach, Hitachi Data Systems looks at your IT

challenges from your viewpoint to gain an understanding of your business and then works with

your IT managers to build, manage, and adapt a storage infrastructure that supports your business

applications with optimized data delivery. Your Application Optimized Storage solution is based

upon an integrated framework of hardware, software, and related services, including application,

content, data, and storage services.

This storage architecture matches business application performance and data availability require-

ments to different classes (tiers) of storage. Tightly integrated through common management and

external virtualization, the Thunder 9500 V Series systems enable enterprises to deploy applications

within an Application Optimized Storage solutions framework and fully leverage current storage

investments by better aligning IT and business objectives.

Thunder 9500 V Series Systems and the Universal Storage Platform

All Thunder family models connect to the Universal Storage Platform. Through the innovative and

integrated virtualization layer of the Universal Storage Platform, mainframe data volumes can be

stored on Thunder 9520V workgroup modular storage systems. The unique, controller-based

virtualization of the Universal Storage Platform enables storage administrators to manage not only

attached Thunder 9500 V Series systems, but also third-party storage systems from EMC, IBM, and

HP through a “single pane of glass.”

The Universal Storage Platform and Thunder 9500 V Series systems provide a foundation for

applications such as Enterprise Content Management by aggregating all sources of information

across the organization and optimizing the placement of content across all tiers of storage.

Modular and Cost-effective, Thunder Family Storage Is a Sure Fit

Whatever the size of your business, Hitachi Data Systems offers a Thunder 9500 V Series modular

storage system that’s sure to fit. Each of the Thunder 9500 V Series models can complement the Universal

Storage Platform and Hitachi Lightning 9900™ V Series enterprise storage systems in tiered storage

deployments, which require common management tools and data movement for data lifecycle

management applications. Able to support both Fibre Channel and Serial ATA disk drives, the high-

end Thunder 9570V and Thunder 9585V systems also offer cost-effective backup, archiving, and

compliance solutions all in one box, or paired with the larger enterprise systems. For any size of

business, the Thunder family is the only modular product set that truly delivers enterprise-level

features with a midrange package and price.

IV

Table of ContentsChapter 1. The Hitachi Thunder 9500™ V Series Sets a New Standard for Modular Storage .......................................................................................................... 1

The SATA-based Thunder 9520V™ Workgroup Modular Storage System ....................................................................................................................1

The Thunder 9500 V Series Systems Deliver on the Hitachi Data Systems Vision and Strategic Direction .....................................................2

Thunder 9500 V Series Positioning .............................................................................................................................................................................................3

The Thunder 9500 V Series Offers Attributes of High-end Hitachi Storage .................................................................................................................3

Hi-PER Architecture™—High-performance RAID Architecture .......................................................................................................................................7

Application Optimized Storage™ Solutions ...........................................................................................................................................................................8

Global Solution Services and Best Practices for the Thunder 9500 V Series ........................................................................................................... 10

Hitachi Data Systems Provides Clear-cut, Comprehensive Service Solutions Throughout the Data Lifecycle ............................................ 11

Message Archive for E-mail ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 11

Message Archive for Compliance ................................................................................................................................................................................... 12

Chapter 2. Hitachi Thunder 9500 V Series Packaging .............................................................................................................................................................................................13

The Thunder 9500 V Series Storage Systems’ Packaging Is Completely Modular and Expandable ............................................................... 13

The Rackmount System Is Ideal for Growing Enterprises ............................................................................................................................................... 14

Command Module Design .......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 15

Expansion Module Design .......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 18

Chapter 3. High-performance Front-end Design ......................................................................................................................................................................................................19

Fibre Channel Host Connectivity and Scalability .............................................................................................................................................................. 19

Thunder 9500 V Series “Virtual” Storage Ports Reduce Total Cost of Ownership and Improve SAN Security .............................................. 19

Hosts Supported by the Thunder 9500 V Series Storage Systems ............................................................................................................................... 21

Nonvolatile Redundant Cache Memory Accelerates Front-end Performance ....................................................................................................... 21

Hitachi Cache Residency Manager Software Feature Accelerates Front-end Performance Even Further ................................................... 21

Read-ahead for High-performance Sequential Reads ..................................................................................................................................................... 22

Chapter 4. Back-end Design, System Capacity, and RAID .....................................................................................................................................................................................23

High-performance or High-capacity Back-end Design .................................................................................................................................................... 23

Disk Drive Specifications of the Thunder 9500 V Series Systems ................................................................................................................................. 23

Storage Capacities of the Thunder 9500 V Series Systems ............................................................................................................................................. 24

Hi-PER Architecture—High-performance RAID Architecture ........................................................................................................................................ 24

Advantages of the Thunder 9500 V Series RAID Hardware ............................................................................................................................................ 24

Chapter 5. Surrounding the Hitachi Thunder 9500 V Series Systems with Software, SAN, NAS, and Service Solutions ........................................................27

Advanced Storage Solutions ..................................................................................................................................................................................................... 27

Support for SAN, NAS, and iSCSI Network Topologies ...................................................................................................................................................... 27

Hitachi Open Networked Storage Solutions ........................................................................................................................................................................ 27

Second-generation Virtual Storage Ports and Secure Multitenancy .......................................................................................................................... 28

DAS, NAS, and SAN Coexistence ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 29

High-end Hitachi Solutions for SAN ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 30

V

Chapter 6. Common Storage Management via the Hitachi HiCommand® Suite and Storage Area Management (SAM) Software .............................31

Hitachi HiCommand Storage-specific Management ......................................................................................................................................................... 31

Hitachi HiCommand Heterogeneous Storage Area Management .............................................................................................................................. 33

Hitachi HiCommand Storage Services Manager Software .................................................................................................................................... 33

Hitachi HiCommand Application Modules ................................................................................................................................................................. 33

Hitachi HiCommand Business Modules ....................................................................................................................................................................... 33

Hitachi HiCommand Replication Monitor Software ................................................................................................................................................ 34

Hitachi HiCommand Protection Manager Software ................................................................................................................................................ 34

Hitachi Dynamic Link Manager™ Path Manager Software ............................................................................................................................................. 35

Hitachi Resource Manager™ Utility Package Provides Powerful Device-level Storage Management Capability ...................................... 35

Chapter 7. Data Protection: the Highest Availability Modular Product ..........................................................................................................................................................39

Hitachi Thunder 9500 V Series Modular Storage Systems—Redundant and High-availability Features ...................................................... 39

Software Products Contribute to High-availability Computing .................................................................................................................................... 40

The Thunder 9500 V Series Systems Have an Advanced Availability Profile Compared to Competitive Products .................................... 40

Thunder 9500 V Series Systems Support Software for Business Continuity ............................................................................................................ 42

Remote Copy, PiT Copy, and Data Migration Defined ....................................................................................................................................................... 43

Business Goals Served by Copy Solutions ............................................................................................................................................................................. 44

Open Systems High-availability Middleware Support ...................................................................................................................................................... 47

Chapter 8. Optimizing Performance, Availability, and Cost for the Hitachi Thunder 9500 V Series Systems ...............................................................................51

Understanding the Target Workload Is Critical to Optimizing Objectives ................................................................................................................ 51

Guidelines for Performance and Capacity Optimization of Thunder 9500 V Series Systems ............................................................................ 51

RAID Selection ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 52

Optimizing Cost with the Storage Economics Strategy Service ................................................................................................................................... 52

Chapter 9. Competitively Unique Financial Benefits and Large-enterprise Applications of Hitachi Thunder 9500 V Series Systems ...........................53

Redefining the Industry Standard, Once Again ................................................................................................................................................................... 53

Building a Business Case for the Thunder 9500 V Series in a Tiered Architecture ................................................................................................. 53

A Powerful Mix of Unique Features and Benefits ............................................................................................................................................................... 55

Services Supporting TCO and ROI ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 61

Glossary ...........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................63

The Hitachi Thunder 9500™ V Series Sets a New Standard for Modular StorageThe Hitachi Thunder 9500™ V Series modular storage systems once again move the bar out of reach of the competition in the midrange market segment. The Thunder 9500 V Series sets a new standard for modular storage systems, not only in terms of footprint and performance, but also in terms of management software and storage virtualization features. It is becoming widely accepted by industry analysts today that storage systems must be surrounded with features and services that enable simplification of storage management. The Thunder 9500 V Series delivers.

Whatever the size of your business, Hitachi Data Systems offers a Thunder 9500 V Series storage system that’s sure to fit. Integral to Application Optimized Storage™ solutions from Hitachi Data Systems, Thunder 9500 V Series systems can precisely match your business application needs. The Thunder 9570V™ high-end and Thunder 9585V™ ultra high-end systems support high- performance, high-capacity, and high-connectivity features that make them perfect for information-intensive industries like oil exploration, life sciences, health care, and rich media. The smaller models—the Thunder 9530V™ entry-level storage deck and the Serial ATA (SATA)-based Thunder 9520V™ workgroup modular storage—are ideal for standalone deployment in retail outlets, business franchises, and professional offices.

Each Thunder 9500 V Series model can complement the Hitachi TagmaStore™ Universal Storage Platform and Hitachi Lightning 9900™ V Series enterprise storage systems in tiered storage deployments, which require common management tools and data movement for data lifecycle management applications. Able to support both Fibre Channel and SATA disk drives, the Thunder 9570V and Thunder 9585V systems also offer cost-effective backup, archiving, and compliance solutions all in one box, or paired with the larger enterprise systems. With the Thunder family, you gain the intelligence of automated management in affordable, easy-to-grow packages. (See Chapter 9 for a full discussion of the enterprise-level tiered storage solutions available with the Universal Storage Platform and the Thunder 9500 V Series systems.)

The SATA-based Thunder 9520V™ Workgroup Modular Storage SystemThe newest member of the Thunder family is the Thunder 9520V storage system, which offers best-of-class scalability and performance and is aimed at the workgroup or the small- and medium-sized business (SMB). This compact anchor for Application Optimized Storage solutions more than holds its own for consolidation of multiple Microsoft Windows servers—or any other deployment of a quick-and-easy storage area network (SAN). The Thunder 9520V system is also ideal for archival storage in tiered environments—the addition of Hitachi storage optimized for nearline data, tamperproof archiving, or remote deployment. The Thunder 9520V workgroup modular storage is unique in the level of scalability and performance it delivers within its class.

The Thunder 9520V system is the most reliable, fastest,

and most complete workgroup SAN storage in

the market today.

Chapter 1

1

The Thunder 9500 V Series sets a new standard for

modular storage systems.

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Hitachi Thunder 9500™ VSeries Systems

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The Thunder 9500 V Series Systems Deliver on the Hitachi Data Systems Vision and Strategic DirectionAs the information sources driving their businesses expand, enterprises must cost-effectively manage the escalation in the physical quantity of storage, the reliance on universal access to information, the growing complexity of storage environments, and the accelerating emergence of confusing and often competing technologies. Hitachi Data Systems defines an elegant yet common-sense approach that is based on high-performance, intelligent storage systems combined with sophisticated policy-based management software that enables automated management of existing investments, while maximizing uptime and lowering the total cost of ownership (TCO). The Hitachi Data Systems strategy cuts through the increasing complexity of managing storage resources and adapts storage environments to meet demands for dynamic business growth with a vision and direction based on a synergistic combination of three key elements:

: : HiCommand® Suite and Storage Area Management software—standards-based SAM software

: : Hitachi storage systems—intelligent, scalable data storage systems with advanced management assist features

: : A collaborative business model that leverages the strengths of our partners and customers to create leading-edge solutions

The Thunder 9500 V Series systems, available in a number of packaging options, are aimed at wide industry segments. This is the only distributed, modular product family that truly delivers significant enterprise-level features with a modular package and price, as illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1. The Thunder 9500 V Series outperforms all competitors.

The Hitachi Data Systems vision defines an elegant yet common-sense approach that enables automated manageability of heterogeneous storage environments.

3

Thunder 9500 V Series PositioningThe Thunder 9500 V Series modular storage systems are designed for use in heterogeneous open systems computing environments in SMBs or departments in large enterprises and are targeted at e-commerce, Web serving, and data warehousing applications. The Thunder 9500 V Series systems can complement the Universal Storage Platform systems in tiered storage deployments supporting data lifecycle management, e-mail archiving, mainframe archiving for compliance, or mainframe tape replacement strategies.

The Thunder 9500 V Series systems are the best choice for any of the following circumstances:

: : When the environment is open systems and direct IBM® z/OS® connectivity is not required

: : When eight front-end Fibre Channel attachments with 1,024 Virtual Storage Ports/Host Storage Domains provide adequate bandwidth and connectivity

: : When storage capacity requirements are up to 129.1TB of Fibre Channel disk, or 173.6TB of SATA disk are adequate

: : When the advanced software supported by the Thunder 9500 V Series meets your needs

: : When mainframe volumes can be cost-effectively archived behind a Universal Storage Platform

The Thunder 9500 V Series Offers Attributes of High-end Hitachi StorageWith the Thunder 9500 V Series, Hitachi is bringing high-end storage functionality to lower cost modular storage. Both enterprise and modular product lines from Hitachi Data Systems offer the innovative Host Storage Domains and virtual Fibre Channel ports, which provide major cost of ownership and configuration advantages over competitive products. Typically, the Universal Storage Platform is found in enterprise-level (data center) installations, whereas Thunder 9500 V Series systems are appropriate for small- to medium-sized companies, work groups, or departments in large companies, branch offices, or retail outlet applications.

The Thunder 9500 V Series provides the choice of highly expandable, high-capacity Thunder 9585V ultra high-end and Thunder 9570V high-end systems, and the Thunder 9520V workgroup and Thunder 9530V entry-level systems. Simply select the system that best supports your business and IT objectives. Table 1 and Table 2 provide a quick comparison of the major hardware and software features of the Thunder 9500 V Series systems.

Thunder 9500 V Series systems deliver

enterprise-level features at a modular price.

4

Table 1. Comparison of Thunder 9500 V Series systems.

Thunder 9585V™ System




Configuration Rack Deskside/Rack Deskside/Rack Deskside/Rack

Maximum Raw Storage

Fibre Channel

129.1TB 64.4TB 4TB N/A

Serial ATA (SATA)

173.6TB 86.7TB N/A 19.7TB

Maximum Internal Bandwidth

7.5GB/sec 4.2GB/sec 4.2GB/sec 4.2GB/sec

Mirrored Cache per System

2–8GB 2–4GB 1–4GB 1–2GB

Controllers 2 1 or 2 1 or 2 1 or 2

Maximum Virtual Storage Ports

1024 512 256 512

Maximum Physical Ports

8 4 2 4

Maximum Disk Drives (includes SATA support)

449 224 14 59

Maximum Hot Spares

30 15 12 15

Disks

Fibre Channel 36GB (15,000RPM), 72GB (10,000 or

15,000RPM), 146GB and 300GB

(10,000RPM)

36GB (15,000RPM), 72GB (10,000 or

15,000RPM), 146GB and 300GB

(10,000RPM)

36GB (15,000RPM), 72GB (10,000 or

15,000RPM), 146GB and 300GB

(10,000RPM)

N/A

SATA 400GB and 250GB (7,200 RPM)

400GB and 250GB (7,200RPM)

N/A 400GB and 250GB (7,200RPM)

Operating Systems Supported

Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Microsoft Windows 2000,

Microsoft Windows NT, Sun

Solaris, HP-UX, IBM AIX, Red Hat Linux,

SuSE Linux, Turbolinux, HP OpenVMS, HP

Tru64 UNIX, Novell NetWare, SGI IRIX,

NetApp Data ONTAP (with HDS-NetApp Enterprise

NAS Gateway)







NAS Gateway)





Tru64 UNIX, Novell NetWare, SGI IRIX







NAS Gateway)

Host Storage Domains

Yes Yes Yes Yes

5

Table 2. Summary of software products offered on Thunder 9500 V Series systems.

Hitachi Software





Hitachi HiCommand® Suite Modules

HiCommand Storage Services Manager1

Optional Optional Optional Optional

HiCommand Device Manager


HiCommand Tuning Manager


HiCommand Chargeback1


HiCommand Global Reporter1


HiCommand Path Provisioning1


HiCommand QoS for Oracle1


HiCommand QoS for Sybase1


HiCommand QoS for Microsoft Exchange1


HiCommand QoS for File Servers1


HiCommand Backup Services Manager, powered by APTARE®


HiCommand Replication Monitor


HiCommand Tiered Storage Manager


HiCommand Protection Manager


1 Powered by AppIQ

6

Table 2. Summary of software products offered on Thunder 9500 V Series systems. (Continued)

Hitachi Software





Hitachi Storage Area Management (SAM) Software Modules

Hitachi Data Retention Utility (formerly Open LDEV Guard)


Hitachi Resource Manager™ utility package2 components:

Required Required Included Included

Disk Array Management Program

Included Included Included Included

LUN Management Included Included Included Included

LUN Size Expansion3 (LUSE)


Hitachi Volume Security Port Option (formerly SANtinel)


Hitachi Cache Residency Manager (formerly FlashAccess)


Password Protection Included Included Included Included

SNMP Included Included Included Included

Hitachi Data Protection Suite, powered by CommVault®


Hitachi Backup and Recovery


Hitachi Data Migrator Optional Optional Optional Optional

Hitachi Data Protection Monitor


Hitachi Data Archiver Optional Optional Optional Optional

Hitachi Quick Recovery Optional Optional Optional Optional

Hitachi Copy Software Modules

Hitachi TrueCopy™ Remote Replication

Optional Optional No No

Hitachi ShadowImage™ In-System Replication


Hitachi Copy-on-Write Snapshot (formerly QuickShadow)


Hitachi Cross-System Copy (formerly HiCopy)4


2 One copy of Resource Manager software is required for a Thunder 9570V or Thunder 9585V system environment.

3 LUSE is not recommended across Fibre Channel and SATA drives on the Thunder 9520V system.

4 Although Cross-System Copy software moves data bidirectionally between the Thunder 9500 V Series systems and the Universal Storage Platform, the software resides on the Universal Storage Platform.

7

Max. 449 HDDMax. 59 HDD

Max. 224 HDD Max. 14 HDD

Thunder 9585V™Thunder 9520V™Thunder 9570V™Thunder 9530V™

Note: HDD = hard disk drives

FPC

FPC FPC

FPC FPC FPC FPC

FPC FPC FPC FPC FPC FPC FPC FPC FPC

FPC FPC FPC FPCFPC FPC FPC FPCFPC

FPCFPC FPCFPC FPC

Hi-PER Architecture™—High-performance RAID ArchitectureA custom high-performance logical processor chip set is at the heart of the Hi-PER Architecture within the Thunder 9500 V Series systems. Working together, these chips perform all RAID functions in silicon and switch data in and out for optimal performance. The logic-assist processor provides support for Hitachi ShadowImage™ In-System Replication, Hitachi TrueCopy™ Remote Replication, and Hitachi Copy-on-Write Snapshot (formerly QuickShadow) software, and provides self-checking of the system. The chip set also supports large and fast caches plus the ultra high-speed cached bandwidth (up to 7.5GB/sec) for optimal performance.

The Thunder 9500 V Series systems offer 2Gbit/sec-throughput Fibre Channel connectivity to both host and disk. Thunder 9500 V Series systems support up to two disk controllers in keeping with the Thunder family’s completely redundant design. The controllers are linked with twin high-speed connections that are about five times as fast as competitive offerings. This ensures extremely fast operation along with controller failover in the case of component failure for uninterrupted operation.

Figure 2. System block diagram of the Thunder 9500 V Series architecture.

The Thunder 9500 V Series Hi-PER Architecture is a

generation ahead of the competition.

8

Business Operations

Performance, Chargeback, Provisioning,Problem Management

Application Services

Archiving, Indexing, Search, RetrieveContent Services

Backup, Migration, Replication, SecurityData Services

Multitier Capacity, Universal Connectivity,Heterogeneous Management

Storage Services

Serv

ices

an

d B

est P

ract

ices

Application Optimized Storage Solutions Hitachi Data Systems leverages global R&D resources to develop storage solutions built on industry-leading technology with the performance, availability, and scalability to maximize your return on investment (ROI) and minimize your risk. By focusing on the your perspective and using the Application Optimized Storage solutions approach, Hitachi Data Systems is able to apply the best hardware, software, and services from Hitachi and partners. This approach uniquely satisfies your business needs of data consolidation, guaranteed data availability throughout the information lifecycle, and simplification of centralized storage management.

The Thunder 9500 V Series provides a range of choices that allows you to match your application requirements to the models that best serve those needs. Maximum capacities range from 4TB on the Thunder 9530V system to 173.6TB on the Thunder 9585V system. The Thunder 9530V and Thunder 9570V systems each support 1–2GB of cache per controller (4GB maximum per system). The Thunder 9585V system supports 1–4GB cache per controller (8GB maximum per system). RAID-0, RAID-1, RAID-5, and RAID 1+0 are supported and can be intermixed within the Thunder 9500 V Series systems. Drive types can also be intermixed within the modules, but they must be the same within RAID groups. On the back end, the Thunder 9500 V Series systems support four or eight 200MB/sec Fibre Channel loops (two per controller) with dual-ported 2Gbit/sec drives. The Thunder 9500 V Series architecture is illustrated in Figure 2.

The Universal Storage Platform and Thunder 9500 V Series systems provide the architectural foundation for the Application Optimized Storage solutions that match business application performance and data availability requirements to different classes of storage. The Universal Storage Platform and Thunder 9500 V Series systems not only enable enterprises to deploy applications within an Application Optimized Storage solutions framework, but also fully leverage and add value to current investments, aligning IT and business objectives through the unique Hitachi Data Systems approach to storage virtualization and logical partitioning. Figure 3 illustrates the Application Optimized Storage solutions framework. And Figure 4 depicts Application Optimized Storage applications suitable for the Thunder 9520V system in workgroup environments.

Figure 3. The Hitachi Application Optimized Storage solutions framework.

Match your application requirements to storage attributes.

Application Optimized Storage solutions align IT and business objectives.

9

Figure 4. Example of an Application Optimized Storage solution.

HitachiTagmaStore™

UniversalStoragePlatform

HitachiLightning9970V™

HitachiThunder9585V™



Business Benefits Increased Revenue Transactions = Growth

Increased Reduced Reliability = Risk

Common Reduced Management = Cost

Storage Solution: : Hitachi Thunder 9585V™

Features: : High Performance: : High Availability: : Scalability: : Moderate Cost

Application: : Rich Media

Requirements: : High Performance: : Good Availability: : Moderate User Count: : Moderate Cost

Common Management Layer (Hitachi HiCommand® Storage Services Manager Software, HiCommand Device Manager Software)

Common Software Layer (Program Products)

Common Access Layer (SAN or NAS)

ERP

Ord

er System

Data W

areho

usin

g

Data M

inin

g

Wo

rkgro

up

E-mail

Testing

Develo

pm

ent

Rich

Med

ia

File Services

10

Maintenance

Corporate ComplianceIndustry Solutions

Application Optimized Solutions

Enterprise ArchiveEd

uca

tio

n S

ervi

ces

Storage Services

Infrastructure

Storage Area Management Business Continuity

Product-based ServicesQuick Start

Consulting

Consulting

E-mail Database FilesystemEnterprise Application

Consulting

ProcessDevelopment

ManagedServices

UtilityEnablement

Replication DisasterRecovery

Backup

SAN Implementation Migrate, Upgrade & Consolidate Fabric

Advanced Implementation Custom Services

Global Solution Services and Best Practices for the Thunder 9500 V Series The final key components required to implement Application Optimized Storage solutions with Thunder 9500 V Series systems are Services and Best Practices. To ensure that organizations maximize their investment, Hitachi Data Systems offers a comprehensive suite of technology, storage, education, and professional services. These are shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5. Hitachi Data Systems Global Solution Services offerings.

Global Solution Services consultants can help you plan, design, implement, integrate, manage, and optimize storage infrastructure solutions that meet your needs. Areas in which our consultants assist can assist you include:

: : Industry Solutions—including enterprise content archival solutions that incorporate hardware, software, and professional services to address your business and regulatory compliance requirements

: : Application Optimized Solutions—bridging the gap between business applications and IT’s ability to precisely deliver service levels with strategic consulting, design integration, and robust deployment capabilities

: : Storage Services—applying proven best practices along with appropriate tools and training to help with all stages of your storage infrastructure—from planning to maintenance

: : Product-based Services—providing implementation, simplification, and optimized ROI and TCO for Hitachi Data Systems and select third-party products

: : Education Services—helping you to improve your staff efficacy and efficiency in implementing and supporting multivendor storage solutions

Global Solution Services offers a comprehensive suite of technology, storage, education, and professional services.

11

Hitachi Data Systems Provides Clear-cut, Comprehensive Service Solutions Throughout the Data LifecycleThe Hitachi Data Systems Global Solution Services organization designs and implements solutions that address current and emerging storage-intensive demands such as data lifecycle management. Data lifecycle management can reduce the pain caused by the runaway growth of all data types. One example is e-mail, which is causing problems for everyone from CEOs and CFOs to e-mail administrators and users faced with “Mailbox Size Limit Exceeded” messages. At the same time, tough new regulations are forcing organizations to retain messages and other business documents in a tamperproof, disaster-proof form for specified periods and to be able to produce them on demand. Ideally, mainstream storage and existing business continuity practices can be leveraged rather than incurring the expense of managing special-purpose hardware. Figure 6 illustrates the Hitachi Data Systems strategy of policy-based data movement from high-cost, fast-response storage systems to lower-cost, slower-response storage systems as the frequency of access and the retention value of the data decreases over time.

Figure 6. Data is moved automatically throughout its lifecycle.

Data lifecycle management solutions that Global Solution Services offers around the Thunder 9500 V Series systems include:

Message Archive for E-mail

The Message Archive for E-mail solution leverages the standard Hitachi archival platform to provide automatic and selective document archiving, along with search and retrieval capabilities and audit trails. Figure 7 illustrates how e-mail archiving works in the data lifecycle. When data is introduced to the archive, a digital signature is assigned to uniquely identify the object and make sure it has not been tampered with. The object is then indexed and metadata is created to describe the object in the message archive’s metadata store. Metadata is information about the data that is used in populating, maintaining, and accessing both the descriptive information that identifies the archive’s holdings and the administrative data used to manage the archive. In the Message Archive for E-mail, the only metadata needed might be the sender, data and time sent, subject line, and information about any attachments (file name, size). In addition to providing users with a view of archived information, the solution seamlessly integrates into the client interface for Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes. Importantly, it eliminates “mailbox limit exceeded” problems, effectively expanding overall storage capacity for your e-mail users.

All retrievals from low-cost, lower-performance, archival media from this point forwardE-mail/ report/ record creation,

document receipt,statement print time

Disposition

High-performance disk purge

Retention Period

High-cost, Fast Response (Subsecond)

Low-cost, Slow Response (Subsecond to days)

Freq

uen

cy o

f Acc

ess

and

Ret

riev

al

Relative V

alue o

f Reco

rd

HitachiTagamStore™

Universal Platform,Model USP100

Thunder 9585V System

Hitachi Thunder9520V™ System

Hitachi Thunder9585V™System

Hitachi Thunder9570V™ System

12

Figure 7. With the Message Archive for E-mail, users gain an unlimited mailbox.

MessageIndex

(metadata)Index Header, Bodyand Attachment Data Query Result Set

End User/Auditor

RetrievedMessages

Archived Messages

Archive Software Server

Access Control, Queries, Retrieval Requests

Original Messages

Hitachi Thunder 9570V™ System

E-mail Server

Message Archive for Compliance

The Message Archive for Compliance solution was developed to help you optimize your e-mail system while providing message indexing, search and retrieval capabilities, audit trails, and policy management to preserve messages for mandatory retention periods. As shown in Figure 8, Message Archive for Compliance enables you to retain an unalterable archive of e-mail and instant messages for the fixed period of time mandated by SEC Rule 17a-4, Sarbanes-Oxley, Basel II, and other regulatory requirements. To do so it leverages Hitachi Data Retention Utility (formerly Open LDEV Guard) software to provide functionality on standard disk hardware. Data Retention Utility software’s tamperproof “write once, read many” (WORM) software is available now on Hitachi Lightning 9900™ V Series enterprise storage systems as well as the Thunder 9500 V Series systems.

Figure 8. Message Archive for Compliance enables companies to retain an unalterable archive of e-mail and instant messages for the fixed period of time required by Sarbanes-Oxley and other mandates and regulations.

Header

OpenMessage

MessageContent

RetentionPeriod

Expires

VolumeFull

FileHash

Data RetentionUtility SoftwareEnabled

Hitachi DataRetention Utility Software Enabled

(formerly OpenLDEV Guard)

Body

Attachments

Archive Software

Index

13

Hitachi Thunder 9500™ V Series PackagingThe Thunder 9500 V Series Storage Systems’ Packaging Is Completely Modular and Expandable The Hitachi Thunder 9500™ V Series of modular storage systems consists of four major products:

: : Thunder 9585V™—Ultra high-end modular storage

: : Thunder 9570V™—High-end modular storage

: : Thunder 9530V™—Entry-level storage deck

: : Thunder 9520V™—Workgroup modular storage

A scalable, building-block architecture is at the heart of the design philosophy of the Thunder 9500 V Series storage systems. Command Modules (controller plus 14 disk drives) are combined with Expansion Modules (15 disk drives) in the Thunder 9585V ultra high-end and Thunder 9570V high-end modular storage systems to create single-image storage systems as large as 129.1TB and 64.4TB, respectively, with “all Fibre Channel disks.” The Thunder 9585V systems can produce a single system image as large as 173.6TB with SATA disks. In this case, Command Modules and up to 30 Expansion Modules (for a total of 449 hard disk drives or HDDs) meet capacity needs from the department to the enterprise.

Figure 9. A Thunder 9520V™ workgroup modular storage system and a Thunder 9530V™ entry-level storage deck.

Chapter 2

Thunder 9500 V Series systems are based on

Command and Expansion Modules.

14

Expansion Modules

Command Module

A Command Module with 2-14 disks constitutes the smallest element of the Thunder 9530V entry-level storage decks. As shown in Figure 9, the Thunder 9530V systems provide flexible, “build-your-own” configurations for capacity, cache, controllers, and software. Data-in-place upgrades are available for moving to the next higher Thunder 9500 V Series model, when capacity or connectivity needs grow.

The Rackmount System Is Ideal for Growing Enterprises In the Thunder 9570V systems, the Command Module and up to 14 Expansion Modules compose a fully configured 224-disk rackmount system in a 19-inch-wide cabinet. A fully populated Thunder 9570V rackmount system (Figure 10) offers a maximum of 224 disk drives and 64.4TB of RAID-0 Fibre Channel storage capacity or 86.7TB of SATA storage capacity. In the Thunder 9585V systems (Figure 11), the Command Module and up to 30 Expansion Modules (with 449 HDDs) offer 129.1TB of Fibre Channel storage capacity or 173.6TB of SATA storage capacity.

Figure 10. A fully configured Thunder 9570V rackmount system contains a Command Module and 14 Expansion Modules.

15

Battery Unit

14 High Density Drives (HDDs)

ExpansionModules

CommandModule

Figure 11. A fully configured Thunder 9585V rackmount system contains a Command Module and 30 Expansion Modules.

Command Module DesignAll elements of the Command Module for the Thunder 9570V and the Thunder 9585V systems are fully redundant and efficiently packaged into a highly modular enclosure. Figure 12 shows the front view of the Command Module containing 14 HDD modules and a battery unit to protect data in cache in the event of a power failure.

Figure 12. Front view of a Thunder 9570V and Thunder 9585V Command Module.

16

Controller 1

Fan

Fan

Power Supplies

Controller 0

Controller 1

Power Supply

Controller 0

Power Supply

As shown in Figure 13 and 14, the Thunder 9585V and Thunder 9520V Command Modules contain redundant power supply/fan units, redundant controller boards (optional) and connections to Expansion Modules for additional storage capacity.

Figure 13. Rear view of a Thunder 9585V Command Module.

Figure 14. Rear view of a Thunder 9520V Command Module.

17

SCSI Connect toExpansion chassis

LAN Ports

Microprocessors

Cache Modules

200MB/secFibre Channel Ports

Thunder 9585V controller board and power supply modules are shown in Figures 15 and 16. The controller board illustrates the “2Gbit/sec throughput” design of the Thunder 9500 V Series systems with two 200MB/sec Fibre Channel host ports and two back-end 200MB/sec Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loops to support back-end disk. Fibre Channel front-end interfaces are standard.

Figure 15. A Thunder 9585V controller board.

Figure 16. One of two redundant Thunder 9585V power supply modules.

18

15 High Density Drives (HDDs)

Expansion Module DesignThunder 9500 V Series Expansion Modules contain up to 15 HDDs each and stack on top of the Command Module for efficiency. An Expansion Module is shown in Figure 17 and a dual-ported hot-swappable Fibre Channel HDD Assembly is shown in Figure 18.

Figure 17. A Thunder 9500 V Series Expansion Module with 15 HDDs.

Figure 18. A dual-ported hot-swappable HDD assembly.

19

High-performance Front-end DesignFibre Channel Host Connectivity and Scalability The Hitachi Thunder 9500™ V Series modular storage systems support Fibre Channel interfaces for open systems connectivity. The interface chips on the Thunder 9500 V Series controller board are shown in Figure 19, and all Fibre Channel ports operate at 200MB/sec or 2Gbit/sec. Table 3 highlights this and other front-end specifications.

Figure 19. A Thunder 9585V™ ultra high-end modular storage system controller board with front- and back-end Fibre Channel interface chips.

Chapter 3

Fibre Channel front-end interfaces are standard.

Table 3. Front-end specifications of the Thunder 9500 V Series systems.

Front-end Specifications





Maximum Internal Bandwidth

7.5GB/sec 4.2GB/sec 4.2GB/sec 4.2GB/sec

Maximum Mirrored Cache

8GB 4GB 4GB 2GB

Maximum Virtual Storage Ports

1024 512 256 512

Maximum Physical Ports

8 4 2 4

Thunder 9500 V Series “Virtual” Storage Ports Reduce Total Cost of Ownership and Improve SAN SecurityThe Thunder 9500 V Series is the only family of modular storage systems to offer Virtual Storage Ports. This unique feature lowers TCO, both reducing acquisition costs of Fibre Channel interface cards and simplifying SAN and network administration. Virtualization is becoming increasingly important in today’s heterogeneous storage environments, which are made up of these storage architectures: direct attached storage (DAS), SAN, and NAS. Virtual Storage Ports offer you a secure multitenancy capability, which reduces network infrastructure costs by centralizing and efficiently managing all heterogeneous storage with uniform enterprise policies and procedures.

Virtual storage ports are key to reduced TCO through

storage simplification.

200MB/secFibre Channel Ports

200 MB/secFibre ChannelInterface Chips

20

Third-partyStorage System

IBM® AIX®Sun Solaris

LUN 0

LUN 1

LUN 2

LUN n

LUN 0

LUN 1

LUN 2

LUN n

FC portSolaris mode FC portAIX mode

WWN WWN1

Thunder9585V™System

Sun Solaris

AIX

VirtualFC port VirtualFC port

WWNWWN

PhysicalFC Port

As shown in the top part of Figure 20, competitive heterogeneous solutions require the separate configuration of physical ports for each host platform type supported, particularly in high-availability path failover and clustered environments. This both increases expense through unnecessary extra ports and limits heterogeneous consolidation, resulting in higher TCO.

As shown in the bottom part of Figure 20, the Thunder 9500 V Series systems provide for virtual Fibre Channel ports that are logically managed by intelligent Fibre Channel controller cards. In addition to lowering TCO, this improves security and flexibility of storage allocation. Each physical Fibre Channel port may have multiple Host Storage Domains (or virtual private storage), which support “logical” Fibre Channel ports, each with its own set of logical unit numbers (LUNs). Hosts are matched to their assigned Host Storage Domain based on a unique World Wide Names (WWNs) identifier as shown by the color coding in Figure 20.

Since Thunder 9500 V Series volume administration is virtual, it does not require installation of Fibre Channel interface cards. Using Host Storage Domains, multiple open systems hosts, regardless of their platform or operating system, are able to access their own virtual private storage housed on a Thunder 9500 V Series storage system with no threat of exposure to other hosts. LUN security provided by Hitachi Volume Security Port Option5 software (formerly SANtinel Port Security Option) fences access to LUNs based upon host WWNs. Under this innovative software structure, each of multiple host systems has its own unique LUN0, from which it can boot, within its own Host Storage Domain. Volume Security Port Option software enables users to restrict server access to only those LUNs for which they are authorized, thereby providing administrators with unique security and flexibility not available from any other vendor in the midrange market.

Figure 20. The Thunder 9500 V Series virtual Fibre Channel ports overcome physical port limitations of competitors, thereby reducing TCO.

SAN security and flexibility of storage allocation are improved.

5 See also Chapter 6 and Figure 27.

21

Hosts Supported by the Thunder 9500 V Series Storage SystemsThe Thunder 9500 V Series storage systems support all major open systems hosts for unmatched heterogeneous connectivity.

: : Microsoft Windows 2000 : : AIX 32 and 64 bit (IBM)

: : Microsoft Windows Server 2003 : : Linux (Red Hat, SuSE, Turbolinux)

: : Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 : : Tru64 UNIX (HP)

: : IRIX (SGI) : : OpenVMS (HP)

: : HP-UX : : NetWare (Novell)

: : Solaris (Sun)

Nonvolatile Redundant Cache Memory Accelerates Front-end Performance Each Thunder 9570V controller supports up to 2GB of cache (4GB maximum per Command Module) to accelerate information flow to and from the connected hosts. Each Thunder 9585V controller supports up to 4GB of cache (8GB maximum per Command Module). System microcode maintains cache coherency between the caches using high-speed links that are many times faster than competitive offerings. This design is very important in maintaining consistent performance. First, a large nonvolatile cache can receive large writes without having to de-stage to disk and can terminate the operation to the host in the fastest possible time. Some applications write large temporary database files in the process of joining two large tables that exceed the size of system memory. For these and other types of decision support (DSS) applications, the Thunder 9500 V Series systems are ideal.

A second performance benefit of a large cache design is that more frequently accessed data can be kept in cache using the Hitachi Cache Residency Manager software feature (formerly FlashAccess). This increases the possibility that it will be read from cache and not disk if re-referenced by the application.

The third performance implication of the mirrored cache and the high-speed interconnect design of the Thunder 9500 V Series can be seen from the perspective of rapid updating of the mirror in cache to maintain matching copies of data (cache coherency). Since this is a critical path item in system operation, the faster the interconnect, the faster overall system performance regardless of the “read write” mix.

Hitachi Cache Residency Manager Software Feature Accelerates Front-end Performance Even Further The Cache Residency Manager software feature enables storage managers to increase the speed of database applications by locking selected LUNs into cache. This is ideal for frequently accessed data, such as database indices. The result is ultrahigh performance, with a 100 percent hit rate to the selected LUNs locked in cache as they are accessed at memory speed rather than disk I/O speed. Using the Cache Residency Manager software feature for a data set is like placing data on a solid-state disk. This is illustrated in Figure 21.

Thunder 9500 V Series cache design is superior to that of

all modular competitors.

Using Cache Residency Manager software

feature is like having a solid-state disk.

22

Cache Memory

LUN

Figure 21. The Hitachi Cache Residency Manager software feature maximizes front-end performance by placing data in cache.

Read-ahead for High-performance Sequential Reads Read clustering in the Thunder 9500 V Series systems is enabled using built-in heuristics to read ahead for every I/O. The heuristics are applied to determine if the data is being accessed sequentially. If so, then the Thunder 9500 V Series system “reads ahead” pages corresponding to that data. Read-ahead helps to ensure that when a client read request is received, the requested data will already be stored in the cache, so the request can be satisfied immediately for the highest possible front-end performance.

Cache read-ahead ensures that “likely to be requested” data will already be in cache.

23

Back-end Design, System Capacity, and RAIDHigh-performance or High-capacity Back-end DesignBoth state-of-the-art, high-performance, dual-ported (active-active), Fibre Channel drives or cost-effective high-capacity SATA drives are available with the Hitachi Thunder 9500™ V Series modular storage systems. This allows users to configure and build either high-capacity or high-performance systems or a mix of both high-capacity and high-performance systems in the same rack. All drives are attached via two Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loops (FC-AL) per controller. Each Thunder 9500 V Series loop operates at 200MB/sec. This gives an unsurpassed back-end bandwidth of 800MB/sec for the Thunder 9570V™ high-end systems and 1600MB/sec for the Thunder 9585V™ ultra high-end systems.

Each FC-AL path is driven with a dedicated processor and a data recovery and regeneration (DRR) circuit. This is in contrast to some competitive products, where back-end paths are shared through a single processor and single DRR circuit.

Disk Drive Specifications of the Thunder 9500 V Series SystemsThe Thunder 9500 V Series systems support both Fibre Channel and SATA disk drives to enable various configurations of high-performance or high-capacity systems as shown in Table 4.

Table 4. Disk Drive Specifications for Thunder 9500 V Series systems.

Disk Drive Specifications





Fibre Channel

36GB 15,000RPM Yes Yes Yes No





SATA

250GB 7,200RPM Yes Yes No Yes

400GB 7,200RPM Yes Yes No Yes

To configure high-performance systems to serve high-transaction applications, choose from the following two high-speed Fibre Channel drive options:

: : 36GB 15,000RPM drives


For other high-performance needs choose from the following three high-capacity Fibre Channel drive options:




Chapter 4

Back-end bandwidth is unsurpassed by modular

competitors.

Mix and match high-performance and

high-capacity disks.

24

To address archiving, low-access application, and low-cost storage needs, choose from the following two SATA options:



Storage Capacities of the Thunder 9500 V Series SystemsThe Thunder 9500 V Series systems support an unmatched range of capacities among modular products, as shown in Table 5.

Table 5. Thunder 9500 V Series system capacities and numbers of disk drives for various configurations.5

Capacities Thunder 9585V™ System




Maximum Raw Storage

Fibre Channel 129.1TB 64.4TB 4TB N/A

SATA 173.6TB 86.7TB N/A 19.7TB

Hi-PER Architecture™—High-performance RAID ArchitectureHitachi includes a custom high-performance logical processor chip set at the heart of its state-of-the-art Hi-PER Architecture™ of the Thunder 9500 V Series systems. Working together, these chips perform all RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) functions in silicon and switch data in and out for optimal performance.

Advantages of the Thunder 9500 V Series RAID HardwareAll Thunder 9500 V Series systems support RAID-0, RAID-1, RAID-5, and RAID-1+0. Hitachi has a reputation for designing the most advanced RAID controllers in enterprise and modular storage to interface to its disk systems. These intelligent controllers provide disk interface and RAID management, offloading these tasks to dedicated processors. All disks in the system are defined as part of a RAID array of one type or another and nonvolatile RAM on each controller accelerates RAID functions, particularly disk writes.

Configurations for all Thunder 9500 V Series systems are shown in Figure 22 and are defined as follows:

The Thunder 9500 V Series Hi-PER Architecture is a generation ahead of the competition.

6 Disk sizes can be intermixed.

25

Stripe 1Stripe 2Stripe 3

d1d4d7

Parity

d2d5

d10Parity

d3

d8d11

Parity d6d9d12

Parity

Disk 0 Disk 1 Disk 2 Disk 3

Disk 1 Disk 1 Disk 2Disk 2 Disk 3


Disk 1 Disk 2 Disk 3


Disk 1 Disk 2 Disk 3

RAID-0:Data is striped over

members of the stripe set.

RAID-1+0:Data is both striped and mirrored.

RAID-1:Data is mirrored between

two disks.

RAID-5:Data is striped with parity

over RAID members.

Figure 22. The Thunder 9500 V Series systems support RAID-0, RAID-1, RAID-5, and RAID-1+0.

With Hitachi RAID-1, data is read from whichever

drive is available first but written to both.

With the Hitachi implementation of

RAID-5, up to 94 percent of capacity is useable.

RAID-0 Data is striped across all members of an array. RAID-0 offers no protection against data loss if a disk fails.

RAID-1—MirroringWith RAID-1, all data is mirrored across to separate disks. This RAID choice is the highest performance and highest availability option, but it is also the most expensive. Data is read from whichever drive is available first but written to both.

RAID-5—Distributed ParityIn RAID-5 arrays, data is striped across the array members in a fashion similar to RAID-0, but RAID-5 provides fault resilience by keeping parity information on each stripe of data. If a failure occurs, the contents of that block can be recreated by reading back the other blocks in the stripe along with the parity. Parity information is rotated throughout the array to minimize potential bottlenecks in the event that data must be rebuilt from a failed disk. The space overhead of RAID-5 is equivalent to one disk drive, regardless of the size of the array or the specific RAID configuration.

Through the use of unique algorithms, Hitachi RAID-5 arrays perform as well as other vendors’ RAID-1 arrays. The Thunder 9500 V Series systems also provide the unique ability to configure RAID-5 arrays with up to 16 drives, thereby greatly reducing the cost of RAID protection. With these systems, up to 94 percent of RAID-5 capacity is usable, in contrast to many competitors’ 80 percent usable storage.

26

RAID-1+0—Striping and MirroringRAID-1+0 arrays combine the best of both RAID-0 and RAID-1 by striping a mirrored array. The fastest RAID, RAID-1+0 provides fully mirrored protection.

Definable RAID Rebuild Priorities In the event of a disk failure, RAID-1, RAID-1+0, or RAID-5 arrays can be rapidly and automatically rebuilt using up to 15 available “global hot spare” drives. Users can choose from slow, medium, or fast rebuild priorities, depending on the time of the failure and other operational considerations.

Up to 30 Global Hot SparesDesigned to ensure the integrity of data, the Thunder 9500 V Series systems allow users to specify up to 30 global hot spares (30 on the Thunder 9585V system) from among any of the modules in the storage system. In the highly unlikely event that a disk drive reaches an error threshold but is still able to transmit data correctly, the data on the failing disk is automatically copied to one of the global hot spares with no need to rebuild data from the failed disk. If the disk drive fails completely before the copy is produced and the user has defined the RAID group as either RAID-1 (mirrored), RAID-0+1 (mirrored and striped), or RAID-5 (rotating parity group), a global hot spare is selected onto which the data is copied from the surviving disk of the mirror (RAID-1 or RAID-0+1) or rebuilt from parity (RAID-5).

Logical Unit Size ExpansionIncorporating Logical Unit Size Expansion (LUSE), the Thunder 9500 V Series systems allow logical volumes to be expanded or deleted online.

RAID Levels Can Be Intermixed for Optimal Data Protection and PerformanceThe Thunder 9500 V Series RAID choices can be intermixed concurrently within each system. Different RAID levels can be selected to best fit application data availability and performance requirements.

Users can choose from slow, medium, or fast RAID rebuild priorities.

Data on the failing disk is automatically copied to one of the global hot spares.

27

Surrounding the Hitachi Thunder 9500™ V Series Systems with Software, SAN, NAS, and Service SolutionsAdvanced Storage Solutions Customers and analysts regard the Hitachi storage systems as the most advanced products in their respective markets. Recently, Hitachi Data Systems has also won the respect of many analysts for having taken the lead in advanced-function storage software that supports all Hitachi storage products. At the foundation of Hitachi software solutions are the industry-standard Common Information Model (CIM), SMI-S, and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). The Hitachi Thunder 9500™ V Series software and services combine to provide almost turnkey storage management that solves real business problems both for business and technical executives.

The Hitachi solutions support an enterprise’s strategic goal of accessing any information, on any computer, located anywhere, at any time. The many advanced hardware and software functions available on Thunder 9500 V Series systems are initiated, managed, and controlled through the powerful Hitachi HiCommand® Suite and Storage Area Management (SAM) software.

Hitachi software solutions deliver enterprise-wide coverage of online data copy/relocation, data access/protection, and storage resource management, whether for the modular or enterprise market segments. You have the freedom to choose the precise solution—or combination of solutions—appropriate for your environment after, of course, choosing the appropriate storage platform.

Support for SAN, NAS, and iSCSI Network TopologiesAs today’s information-centric businesses expand operations and implement data-intensive applications, IT managers seek new ways to quickly deploy storage and storage infrastructures without disrupting business operations. To this end, networked storage plays a key role, delivering numerous benefits, from shared pooling and better utilization of storage resources to improved performance, better security, and higher availability. With storage area network (SAN), network attached storage (NAS), and iSCSI options, now it’s possible to have it all in one solution.

Hitachi Open Networked Storage SolutionsA major potential benefit of open networked storage solutions based on the Thunder 9500 V Series storage systems is that the resulting LAN-free and server-free backup reduce dramatically the amount of planned downtime needed for data center operations.

Hitachi Data Systems provides an open architecture that offers organizations freedom of choice in deploying data access, protection, and sharing capabilities across the enterprise. Using multiple technologies, protocols, and solutions, such as SAN, NAS, and IP, Hitachi Data Systems enables you to design and build, leverage, and augment storage infrastructures—providing access to any data from any computer, anytime, and anywhere.

Chapter 5

Advanced Hitachi software and services solve both business and technical

storage problems.

Whether Fibre Channel SANs, gigabit Ethernet NAS, or iSCSI for open

systems and SAN interconnect are required, the Thunder 9500 V Series systems support them all.

Hitachi Open Networked Storage dramatically

reduces planned downtime.

28

Hitachi Data Systems presents SAN, NAS, and iSCSI solutions as the core offerings behind the Open Networked Storage approach. They complement all Hitachi storage product families by allowing more flexibility than ever in heterogeneous environments. While SAN architectures address high bandwidth needs, NAS addresses the need for rapid file access, which is especially critical for e-business applications. Supported by McDATA switches, iSCSI allows SMBs to gain the benefits of networked storage. Hitachi Data Systems offers the best of all three.

The Open Networked Storage architecture exploits advances in servers, storage systems, interconnection devices, network protocols, and network configurations. However, this architecture goes beyond networked storage, providing the overall structure for solutions that allow you to manage your data without being tied to proprietary technology that limits your business options. This gives you the option to locate storage either inside or outside the data center, wherever it makes the greatest business sense to do so. Moreover, it gives operations personnel the ability to manage a wide variety of server, interconnection, and storage platforms under the Open Networked Storage methodologies. This provides flexibility in establishing open system configurations and protecting investment in currently installed system components.

Within the Open Networked Storage architecture, SANs provide high-speed Fibre Channel networks for connecting multiple, multivendor servers to a pool of multivendor storage devices distributed throughout the enterprise. SANs offered by Hitachi Data Systems support the open-systems standards being developed by the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA).

Second-generation Virtual Storage Ports and Secure MultitenancyAn important key to lowering TCO for today’s complex networked storage topologies is the Thunder 9500 V Series systems’ virtual Fibre Channel ports. Virtualization is becoming increasingly important in current heterogeneous storage environments, which include DAS, SAN, and NAS architectures. This increases the need to centralize and efficiently manage all heterogeneous storage with uniform enterprise policies and procedures.

The heterogeneous solutions of today require the separate configuration of physical ports for each host platform type supported, particularly in high-availability path failover and clustered environments. This both increases expense through unnecessary extra ports and limits heterogeneous consolidation, resulting in higher TCO.

The Thunder 9500 V Series systems provide virtual Fibre Channel ports that are logically managed by intelligent Fibre Channel controller cards. Each physical Fibre Channel port may have multiple Host Storage Domains, supporting up to 128 heterogeneous open systems hosts. A Host Storage Domain supports a logical Fibre Channel port, each with its own set of LUNs. Hosts are matched to their assigned Host Storage Domain based on a unique World Wide Names (WWNs) identifier. LUN security provided by Hitachi Volume Security Port Option software (formerly SANtinel) fences access to LUNs based upon host WWNs. Under this innovative software structure, each of multiple host systems may have its own unique LUN0, from which it can boot, within its own Host Storage Domain.

The Open Networked Storage architecture allows you to manage data without being tied to proprietory technology.

Host Storage Domains are the underlying reason for reduced Thunder 9500 V Series TCO.

29

Third-partyStorageSystems

FC SwitchFC Switch

Hitachi TagmaStore™Universal Storage Platform

DAS

SAN

IBM z/Series®

NAS

DataServers

UNIX ClientsMicrosoft Windows

Clients

Red Hat Linux Clients Novell Clients

IBM® z/OS®Clients

Thunder 9585V™ SystemNote: FC = Fibre Channel


But for many applications—especially Web, design, and medical—the concern is not bandwidth. It’s file access response time. Hitachi solutions for NAS, the HDS-NetApp® Enterprise NAS Gateways, help deliver cost-efficient storage utilization across the enterprise. The Thunder 9500 V Series modular storage system NAS and SAN packaging options provide the best rapid access addition to quick, easy, and inexpensive expansion of storage.

DAS, NAS, and SAN CoexistenceThe Hitachi solutions for DAS, NAS, and SAN coexistence address the need for high-bandwidth connectivity between servers and storage nodes and for greatly improved centralized virtual management of storage resources, as shown in Figure 23.

Figure 23. A Thunder 9500 V Series system employs an HDS-NetApp® Enterprise NAS Gateway to provide NAS/SAN integration.

Hitachi solutions for DAS, NAS,

and SAN address high-bandwidth

connectivity needs.

30

High-end Hitachi Solutions for SANHitachi Data Systems offers the ultimate turnkey networked storage solution by combining a Thunder 9500 V Series system with two Fibre Channel fabric switches in one rackmounted configuration, pre-wired and ready-to-go. This option provides the high-availability and high-performance advantages of Hitachi storage, plus the benefits of a switched Fibre Channel networking architecture. This networked fabric design provides the high level of intelligence and scalability that successful enterprise deployments require. This solution fulfills a wide variety of success criteria for IT departments that face growth, consolidation, and response-time issues.

Figure 24. An HDS-NetApp Enterprise NAS Gateway built on a Thunder 9585V system allows packaging options that support up to 64TB of NAS storage.

The Hitachi solutions for SAN provide state-of-the-art storage area networking benefits.

Expansion Modules

Brocade SilkWorm3800 Switches

Command Modules

Hitachi Thunder 9585VTM System

HDS-NetAppEnterprise NAS

GatewaySAN Connected

Common Storage Management via the Hitachi HiCommand® Suite and Storage Area Management (SAM) SoftwareCommon storage management is perhaps the most important component of Application Optimized Storage™ solutions from Hitachi Data Systems. Rather than provide end users with disparate interfaces for disparate platforms, essentially resulting in multiple islands of storage management and inaccessible information, Hitachi Data Systems provides you with the same software, the same management interfaces, and the same tool sets to manage all heterogeneous storage systems from a single console. (See Table 6.)

Hitachi Data Systems ensures this simplification through the Hitachi HiCommand® Suite and Storage Area Management (SAM) software modules, which are based on an open architecture. Built on the Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) and Common Information Model (CIM) standards, these modules deploy quickly and easily because they use standard agents already resident on servers and storage components. They protect investments and reduce vendor lock-in by working with almost any storage infrastructure you have in your data center.

To support the Hitachi Thunder 9500™ V Series systems, the HiCommand Suite and Hitachi SAM software offer both modules for Hitachi storage-specific and heterogeneous storage area management. The HiCommand Suite provides application-centric capacity and performance management of your entire storage infrastructure. Key components of Application Optimized Storage solutions, the HiCommand Suite and Hitachi SAM modules tune delivery of storage system performance, availability, recoverability, and functionality attributes to the requirements of your vital business applications.

Hitachi HiCommand Storage-specific ManagementFor granular discovery and control of your Hitachi storage environment, the HiCommand Suite offers Hitachi storage-specific modules. These modules augment and control the management of Hitachi storage systems by providing granular views where standards have not caught up with advanced, industry-leading functionality of Hitachi storage. Storage-specific modules in the HiCommand Suite provide discovery and control of all Hitachi storage elements. The framework for Hitachi storage-specific management is shown in Figure 25.

Hitachi HiCommand Device Manager SoftwareDevice Manager software provides centralized management of distributed Hitachi environments. It also provides the device interface into Hitachi storage systems for heterogeneous HiCommand Storage Services Manager software.

Hitachi HiCommand Tuning Manager SoftwareTuning Manager software provides proactive capacity and performance monitoring, reporting, and forecasting of storage resources, including business applications such as Oracle and SQL Server.

31

Chapter 6

Standards-based management ensures broad device support.

The HiCommand Suite and Hitachi SAM

software help match application requirements

to storage attributes.

32

Table 6. HiCommand Suite and Hitachi SAM software for Thunder 9500 V Series systems.

Hitachi Software Thunder 9585V™

SystemsThunder 9570V™



Systems

Hitachi HiCommand® Suite Modules

Hitachi HiCommand Storage Services Manager7


Hitachi HiCommand Device Manager


Hitachi HiCommand Tuning Manager


Hitachi HiCommand Chargeback7


Hitachi HiCommand Path Provisioning7


Hitachi HiCommand Global Reporter7


Hitachi HiCommand QoS for Oracle7


Hitachi HiCommand QoS for Sybase7


Hitachi HiCommand QoS for Microsoft Exchange7


Hitachi HiCommand QoS for File Servers7


Hitachi HiCommand Tiered Storage Manager


Hitachi HiCommand Protection Manager


Hitachi HiCommand Backup Services Manager, powered by APTARE®


Hitachi HiCommand Replication Monitor


Hitachi Storage Area Management (SAM) Software Modules

Hitachi Dynamic Link Manager™ path manager


Hitachi Resource Manager™ Utility Package8 components:

Required Required Included Included

Disk Array Management Program


LUN Management Included Included Included Included

LUN Size Expansion9 (LUSE)


Hitachi Volume Security Port Option (formerly SANtinel)


Hitachi Cache Residency Manager feature (formerly FlashAccess)


Password Protection Included Included Included Included

SNMP Included Included Included Included

7 Powered by AppIQ8 One copy of Resource Manager software is required for a Thunder 9570V or Thunder 9585V system environment.9 LUSE is not recommended across Fibre Channel and SATA drives on the Thunder 9520V system.

Single-console heterogeneous storage management: same software, same management interfaces, same tool sets.

33

Hitachi HiCommand Heterogeneous Storage Area ManagementHiCommand Suite modules for the management of heterogeneous storage monitor, visually render, and administer your data infrastructure as a whole, including storage from multiple vendors as well as the switches, host bus adapters, servers, and file systems that serve business applications. Hitachi SAM software modules deliver focused management for Hitachi storage and SAN environments.

For multivendor storage environments, Hitachi offers HiCommand Application and Business Modules. Clustered around the core management module—HiCommand Storage Services Manager software—business modules satisfy demands for rapid provisioning and accurate chargeback of storage usage. Application modules extend the HiCommand management reach “inside” application objects, better correlating application performance with the storage infrastructure and providing improved storage resource management for even the largest collections of file servers. Powered by AppIQ, these modules protect investments by working with almost any storage infrastructure to manage business and application demands. The framework for Hitachi heterogeneous management software is shown in Figure 25.

Hitachi HiCommand Storage Services Manager Software

HiCommand Storage Services Manager software acts as the main console for the Hitachi SAM Suite’s heterogeneous storage infrastructure management. Depending on your preference, Storage Service Manager software allows storage under its control to be viewed as independent systems, or, when attached to the Hitachi TagmaStore™ Universal Storage Platform, as part of the virtualized Universal Storage Platform storage pool.

Hitachi HiCommand Application Modules

Application modules—HiCommand QoS for Oracle, HiCommand QoS for Sybase, and HiCommand QoS for Microsoft Exchange software—identify in real time how storage infrastructure performance, capacity, and availability impact applications. In addition, HiCommand QoS for File Servers software delivers end-to-end management of capacity, performance, and user consumption.

Hitachi HiCommand Business Modules

Business modules include HiCommand Path Provisioning software, which automates configura-tion of storage resources to support business applications, and HiCommand Chargeback software, which automatically meters storage resource utilization enterprise-wide, calculates costs, and provides comprehensive reporting. HiCommand Global Reporter software provides integrated reporting from separate servers managed by HiCommand Storage Services Manager software.

Hitachi HiCommand Tiered Storage Manager SoftwareBy transparently and interactively migrating data between heterogeneous storage tiers, HiCommand Tiered Storage Manager software enables IT administrators to match application quality of service requirements to storage system attributes.

Hitachi HiCommand Backup Services Manager SoftwareHiCommand Backup Services Manager software, powered by APTARE®, manages the entire backup environment to actively avoid data loss, improve backup performance and success rates, provide rapid troubleshooting capability, and lower operational costs.

HiCommand Storage Services Manager software

provides application-to-disk management—

powered by AppIQ’s comprehensive, integrated, standards-based solutions.

34

Hitachi HiCommand Replication Monitor SoftwareWith a single, easy-to-use display for monitoring and visualizing volume replication configurations and status information, HiCommand Replication Monitor software simplifies administration of the entire suite of Hitachi replication products for open systems environments.

Hitachi HiCommand Protection Manager SoftwareBy automating a rapid disk-to-disk backup/recovery solution for Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server, HiCommand Protection Manager software decreases Exchange and SQL Server downtime.

Figure 25. HiCommand Suite and Hitachi Storage Area Management (SAM) software.

Heterogeneous HiCommand modules, powered by AppIQ, are based on an open architecture. These modules protect investments by working with almost any infrastructure to manage business and application demands. Hitachi storage-specific modules provide granular discovery and control of your Hitachi storage environment.

BusinessApplication

Modules

StorageOperations

Modules

HitachStorage-specific

Modules

HiCommandChargeback

HiCommand Storage Services Manager

HiCommand Device Manager

HiCommand PathProvisioning

HiCommand Global Reporter

HiCommandTiered

StorageManager

HiCommandReplication

Monitor

HitachiResource

ManagerTM

HitachiPerformance

Maximizer

HiCommandTuning

Manager

HiCommandBackupServicesManager

HiCommand QoSfor File Servers

Storage Resource Management

HiCommand Protection Manager

Exchange - SQL Server

Hitachi Dynamic LInk ManagerTM

Path failover and failback load balancing

Configuration ReportingAPI

CIM/SMI-SProvisioning Replication

HiCommand QoSApplication Modules

Oracle - Microsoft Exchange -Sybase

New Product Updated Product

New Feature SAM Software Suite Only(not HiCommand)

HeterogeneousHitachi

Storage-specific

35

Hitachi Dynamic Link Manager™ Path Manager SoftwareThe Dynamic Link Manager family of software utilities is server-based and enhances RAID systems by providing automatic failover and load balancing from server-to-RAID channel connection failures. This product allows systems administrators to take advantage of the multiple paths on a Thunder 9500 V Series modular storage system by adding redundant connections between data servers and RAID systems. Dynamic Link Manager software, therefore, provides increased reliability and performance. Supported platforms include AIX, Sun Solaris, Red Hat Linux, SuSE Linux, Microsoft Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Windows Server 2003. Dynamic Link Manager software is discussed further in the next chapter.

Hitachi Resource Manager™ Utility Package Provides Powerful Device-level Storage Management CapabilityShipped with every Thunder 9500 V Series system, the Hitachi Resource Manager utility package allows storage managers to display system configuration, create user name/password security for administrators, set up RAID groups, allocate LUNs, expand LUNs, and format storage. Storage administrators who need a flexible, easy-to-use configuration and error management tool will find that Resource Manager utility package is an ideal choice. In addition to robust administrator tools, you can monitor and manage your storage systems through a graphical user interface.

The Resource Manager utility package can also help optimize performance by providing valuable resource utilization information, such as I/O activity, cache usage, and availability status/event notification. Administrators can use Password Protection to authorize users. This provides protection against unauthorized access to the Management mode of Resource Manager software, and stores the password list at the storage system. Reliable error management and reporting offers a big breakthrough for IT troubleshooters who seek rapid-fire detection and notification to maintain productivity.

Out-of-band10 ManagementTwo local area networks (LANs) can be attached to the Thunder 9500 V Series systems: an internal LAN (private LAN), which is used to connect the service processors of multiple systems, and the user’s intranet (public LAN), which allows users to access the Resource Manager utility package.

SNMP Support Ensures Compliance with All Major Systems Management PlatformsResource Manager utility package supports Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). SNMP is the most widely used network management protocol in the marketplace. System Information Messages (SIMs) are converted to SNMP Management Information Blocks (MIBs) for use with Resource Manager software, or the VERITAS Storage Manager, IBM Tivoli, CA Unicenter TNG, or HP OpenView. With CA Unicenter TNG, “super MIBs” allow the control of Thunder 9500 V Series systems using CA Unicenter commands. This out-of-band10 reporting format ensures that Resource Manager software can determine the status of your Hitachi storage system even if the data channel path is down.

Java AgentThe Hitachi Web Utility runs on Web browsers, such as Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. These programs run under the Microsoft Windows and Sun Solaris operating systems and provide a user-friendly interface for Thunder 9500 V Series Remote Console— Storage Navigator functions, which are all based on the use of Java agents.

Out-of-band management ensures data security, data

accessibility, and data manageability.

10 An out-of-band communication is one that does not use the same bandwidth that carries data in a system. For example, the control information in the Thunder 9500 V Series systems does not use the same path as data and is therefore referred to as “out of band.” Out-of-band communication optimizes SAN performance.

36

Host Storage DomainsThunder 9500 V Series systems provide for “virtual” Fibre Channel ports that are logically managed by intelligent Fibre Channel controller cards. Each physical Fibre Channel port has multiple Host Storage Domains or virtual private storage. A Host Storage Domain supports “logical” Fibre Channel ports (see Figure 26), each with its own set of LUNs. Hosts are matched to their assigned Host Storage Domain based on a unique World Wide Names (WWNs) identifier. LUN security is provided by Hitachi Volume Security Port Option software (formerly SANtinel), which fences access to LUNs based upon host WWNs. Under this innovative software structure, one LUN is reserved for the command and control device.

Figure 26. Host Storage Domains virtual storage ports reduce costs through fewer physical connections.

VirtualFC port

VirtualFC port

Host Storage Domain

Host Storage Domain

LUN 0

LUN 1

LUN 2

LUN m

LUN 0

LUN 1

LUN 2

LUN m

Hitachi Thunder 9585V™Ultra High-endModular Storage System

WWN

Physical

FC Port

Sun SolarisIBM® AIX®

WWN

37

WWN1 WWN2 WWN3 WWN4 WWN5 WWN6

WWWN1

WWN2

WWN5/5/6

HostStorage

Domains

Disks

Sun SolarisProduction

IBM® AIX®Production

MicrosoftExchange

SolarisBackupServer

WWN3

WWN4

FCPort

FCPort

Virtual port

LUN 0

LUN 1

LUN 2

LUN n

Virtual port

LUN 0

LUN 1

LUN 2

LUN n

LUN 0

LUN 1

LUN 2

LUN n

Virtual port

LUN 0

LUN 1

LUN 2

LUN n

Virtual port

LUN 0

LUN 1

LUN 2

LUN n

Hitachi Volume Security Port Option Hitachi Volume Security Port Option software (formerly SANtinel) controls host access to Hitachi LUNs in open systems, multiplatform, or SAN environments. This enables you to restrict server access to only those LUNs for which they are authorized, as shown in Figure 27. Volume Security Port Option software for open systems, running on Hitachi storage systems, allows administrators to define multiple Host Storage Domains for each physical Fibre Channel port on the system.

Volume Security Port Option software may be used to create up to 128 Host Storage Domains per physical Fibre Channel port. Each Host Storage Domain may contain up to 256 LUNs, with the maximum number of LUNs contained within all Host Storage Domains on a given Fibre Channel port reaching 512.

Figure 27. Volume Security Port Option software uses pre-defined zones to protect data from unauthorized access.

Hosts are authorized to “see” a Host Storage

Domain using assigned Fibre Channel WWNs.

38

Virtual LUN SoftwareVirtual LUN software allows administrators to convert fixed-size volumes into several smaller, variable, custom-sized volumes. Using the Resource Manager utility package, you can configure a specific number of megabytes to each custom logical volume image LUN. Virtual LUN software improves data access performance by reducing logical device contention as well as host I/O queue times, which can occur when several frequently accessed files are located on a single volume. Multiple LUN types can be configured within each RAID group. Virtual LUN software enables administrators to more fully utilize the physical storage capacity of the Hitachi storage systems, while reducing the amount of administrative effort required to balance I/O workloads. When Virtual LUN software is used in conjunction with Hitachi Cache Residency Manager software (formerly FlashAccess), you can achieve even better data access performance than when either Virtual LUN or Cache Residency Manager software is used alone. The LUN Expansion Manager software allows administrators to create virtual LUNs that are larger by expanding the size of a selected LUN. The maximum size is 2TB.

Hitachi Cache Residency Manager Software Allows Data to be “Locked and Unlocked” in Cache “On the Fly”Hitachi Cache Residency Manager software utility (formerly FlashAcess) allows you to dynamically “lock” and “unlock” data into cache in real time. Read and write functions are then performed at cache speeds, with no disk latency delay. With Cached Residency Manager software, a portion of cache memory can be allocated to specific data. You can add, delete, or change Cache Residency Manager software managed data at any time, quickly and easily.

Data Protection: The Highest Availability Modular FamilyHitachi Thunder 9500™ V Series Modular Storage Systems—Redundant and High-availability FeaturesThe Thunder 9500 V Series systems offer all the high-availability features expected in a modular-class storage system, such as fully redundant and hot-swappable components, battery backed-up cache, host failover, alternate pathing, and cluster support. However, the Thunder 9500 V Series systems also offer an array of additional availability features that are usually only available in higher-end enterprise storage systems. Extra features supported by the Thunder 9500 V Series systems include remote copy, point-in-time (PiT) copy (traditionally an enterprise-class function), microcode sparing, nondisruptive microcode upgrades, automatic monitoring and reporting (Hi-Track® “call home” service/remote maintenance tool), and several data integrity and availability features. Table 7 provides a summary of the high-availability features for the Thunder 9500 V Series systems.

Table 7. High-availability features of the Thunder 9500 V Series systems.

High-availability Feature





All FRU parts redundant and hot-swappable

Yes Yes Yes Yes

Continuous disk background checks

Yes Yes Yes Yes

Hitachi Dynamic Link Manager™ path manager software


VERITAS DMP support


Supports most other failover software

Yes Yes Yes Yes

Cache battery backup

Yes Yes Yes Yes

Optional UPS battery

Yes Yes Yes Yes

Maximum hot spares

30 15 12 15

LAN maintenance connections

4 4 4 4

Hi-Track® “call-home” service/remote maintenance tool

Mandatory Mandatory Mandatory Yes

39

Chapter 7

Thunder 9500 V Series systems offer an array

of features not usually available in modular

products.

40

Software Products Contribute to High-availability ComputingMany factors can cause unplanned downtime. The Thunder 9500 V Series systems have been designed to eliminate as many of these factors as possible with hardware redundancy and online replaceable components. Data copy software makes copies of data at other locations either locally or remotely so that processing can continue in the event of an outage. Backup and restore procedures and products also contribute dramatically to computer system availability by reducing the time to restore operations in the event of an outage.

Hitachi has teamed with industry-leading storage management software providers, such as CommVault Systems and VERITAS Software, to provide world-class high-availability solutions. These solutions contribute to the fact that customers and analysts alike regard Hitachi storage systems as having the highest availability in the industry. The Hitachi Data Protection Suite, powered by CommVault®, and VERITAS solutions, as well as Hitachi TrueCopy™ Remote Replication, Hitachi ShadowImage™ In-System Replication, Hitachi Copy-on-Write Snapshot (formerly QuickShadow), and Hitachi Cross-System Copy (formerly HiCopy) software are supported on Thunder 9500 V Series systems and discussed in more detail in later in this chapter.

The Thunder 9500 V Series Systems Have an Advanced Availability Profile Compared to Competitive ProductsThe Thunder 9500 V Series systems were designed with maximum emphasis on high-availability computing. Figure 28 highlights some of the many advantages in high-availability design that the Thunder 9500 V Series systems have over other enterprise storage products.

: : Unique Hi-Track® “call home” service/remote maintenance tool

: : Redundant, hot-swappable, active components throughout the system

: : Dual data paths and dual control paths connecting every component

: : Mirrored cache for all write data instead of single image cache

: : Quadruple redundant microcode sparing

: : TrueCopy software for disaster recovery

: : Automatic failover architecture

: : ShadowImage software executes logical backups at fast speeds

: : Fast Copy-on-Write Snapshot copies

: : Continuous disk monitoring automatically adjusts for all hard and soft errors

Thunder 9500 V Series systems reduce unplanned downtime.

41

Figure 28. The Thunder 9500 V Series systems offer higher availability than competitive products.

The Thunder 9500 V Series systems offer enterprise-level

features with a modular package and price.

Cache

Remote Copy

Failover

Hot Spares

NondisruptiveMicrocode Update

OpenSystem

PiT Copy Some Do Not Have

Data Integrityat distance

Most Are Disruptive

Supports Only Someopen systems

CompetitiveProducts

Limited Environments

Less than 15global spares

Some AreDisruptive for Updates

only

Some Are Not Mirrored

Some Are RAID-1only

Some Are Hot-swappablemost are redundant

Some Are Hot-swappablemost are redundant

Nondisruptive

Supports All Majoropen systems

HitachiThunder 9500™ V

Series Systems

Mirrored

Yes

Up to 15global spares

Data Integrity

Hitachi, VERITAS, or server manufacturer

RAID-0, RAID-1,RAID-5, RAID-0+1specially designed for high availability

Hot-swappableredundant

Hot-swappableredundant

Fans

Power Supplies

Disk Drives

The red labels indicate competitive product availability deficiencies compared to theThunder 9500 VSeries systems

Concurrent MaintenanceThe Hitachi Data Systems support center can perform maintenance activities concurrently while users continue to access information. Hardware components, such as disk drives, controllers in dual controller configuration, power supplies, fans, batteries, and disk drives can be replaced nondisruptively.

Microcode SparingThe Thunder 9500 V Series systems each store up to five copies of system microcode—the active one plus four additional copies. This ensures that multiple copies of the microcode are available in the event of disk failure.

Nondisruptive Microcode Upgrades The Thunder 9500 V Series supports both nondisruptive microcode enhancements and nondisruptive LUN expansion. In addition, scaling up capacity can be done nondisruptively, at least from a hardware standpoint. Disk expansion modules can be added to the base module and recognized by a Thunder 9500 V Series system without requiring a system reboot, provided that functionality is supported by the operating system in use.

Automatic Failure Monitoring and Reporting The Hi-Track “call home” service/remote monitoring tool from Hitachi Data Systems allows each Thunder 9500 V Series system to self-monitor its components and provide notification of soft errors via SNMP alerts. Its “call home” capability enables the Thunder 9500 V Series system to automatically initiate a data transmission to the Hitachi Data Systems support center when it detects potential failure, thus enabling the support team to take corrective action before system integrity is compromised. System status is also available down to the unit or component level from any location via a Web browser.

Disk expansion modules can be added and recognized by

the Thunder 9500 V Series system without rebooting.

42

Cache ReliabilityThe Thunder 9500 V Series systems offer important data protection:

: : Mirrored cache—all writes are duplicated for data protection

: : Battery backup (minimum 24 hours, maximum two days for the Thunder 9530V™ entry-level storage deck and the Thunder 9570V™ high-end modular storage system; minimum 48 hours, maximum four days for the Thunder 9585V™ ultra high-end modular storage system)

: : Optional integrated uninterruptible power supply (UPS) for ultimate protection

: : Data consistency checking in memory

Online Verify, Data Assurance Code, and Error Correction CodeThe Thunder 9500 V Series systems are designed to minimize the potential for a fatal data block read error via a robust, system-based, self-analysis patrol program that continually checks the storage environment for potential data integrity issues. During idle periods, the online program reads and checks data blocks to ensure full data integrity throughout the Thunder 9500 V Series system. If a data block exhibits the potential for a fatal error, the Thunder 9500 V Series system automatically reassigns the data to a problem-free data block. If the Thunder 9500 V Series system determines that there are too many potential errors on a given disk drive, the dynamic spare drive is enabled and the data is safely copied to the spare drive. To maintain data integrity, a Data Assurance Code is added at the end of each data block, and the relative block number is confirmed. The Data Assurance Code includes cyclic redundancy checking (CRC) for guaranteed safe and secure data placement. CRC is compared on read and write commands to further ensure data integrity.

Standard Hot-swap and Redundant Power SuppliesThe Thunder 9500 V Series systems provide fully redundant power supplies to ensure uninterrupted power and cooling to all chassis in the system—supporting full system power in the event of a power supply failure. The failed power supply can be “hot swapped” without disruption to the power system.

Standard Redundant Fans for CoolingThe Thunder 9500 V Series systems provide fully redundant fans for uninterrupted cooling to all components of the system. The speed and operation of these fans are monitored by the environmental monitoring system. If a fan should fail, it can be hot swapped without disruption to the cooling system.

Uninterruptible Power SupplyAn optional UPS can also be used for ultimate data protection in the event of power failure.

Thunder 9500 V Series Systems Support Software for Business ContinuityIn addition to the industry-leading high-availability hardware and microcode features discussed thus far in this chapter, Hitachi Business Continuity Solutions for Thunder 9500 V Series systems support an enterprise’s strategic goal of accessing any information, on any computer, located anywhere, at any time.

Hitachi software solutions deliver enterprise-wide coverage of online data copy/relocation, data access/protection, and storage resource management. You have the freedom to choose the precise solution—or combination of solutions—appropriate for your environment. Hitachi Business Continuity Solutions supported on Thunder 9500 V Series systems are shown in Table 8.

During idle periods, the online program reads and checks data blocks to ensure full data integrity.

43

Table 8. Hitachi Business Continuity Solutions supported on Thunder 9500 V Series systems.

Hitachi Business Continuity Solutions





Hitachi TrueCopy™ Remote Replication

Optional Optional No No

Hitachi ShadowImage™ In-System Replication


Hitachi Copy-on-Write Snapshot (formerly QuickShadow)


Hitachi Cross-System Copy11 (formerly HiCopy)


Hitachi Data Retention Utility (formerly Open LDEV Guard)


Hitachi Data Protection Suite, powered by CommVault®

Hitachi Backup and Restore


Hitachi Data Migrator


Hitachi Protection Monitor


Hitachi Data Archiver


Hitachi Quick Recovery


VERITAS NetBackup Optional Optional Optional Optional

Remote Copy, PiT Copy, and Data Migration DefinedIt is important to understand the differences in what has become known as the triumvirate of copy software product categories. The jargon of copy software alternatives is made even more confusing when traditional backup methods are considered. Advances in technology have allowed new words such as “real time,” “point in time” (PiT), and “snapshot” to creep into the language of enterprise-class storage. Copy products allow an enterprise to replicate, protect, and share data in dynamic new ways.

Of the literally hundreds of solutions that vendors have devised, only three basic functions are actually being performed:

: : Remote copy

: : PiT copy

: : Data migration

Remote CopyThis term refers to the operations procedure of continuously sending updates to a remote geography in order to provide a time-consistent copy of that data. Synchronous remote copy is typically used over short distances and careful consideration of performance requirements is required. Asynchronous communication techniques with methods of ensuring data sequencing by time stamping are used for longer distances. The purpose of remote copy is to protect the data in the event of a business interruption.

11 Although Cross-System Copy software moves data bidirectionally between the Thunder 9500 V Series systems and the Hitachi TagmaStore™ Universal Storage Platform, the software resides on the Universal Storage Platform.

Of the literally hundreds of solutions that vendors

have devised, only three basic functions are

actually being performed.

44

PiT CopyThis process creates a “static” image within a storage system of data at a specific time (such as in backups) that is generally referred to as a point-in-time or PiT snapshot.

Data MigrationData Migration software moves data permanently from one storage device to another. This feature is different from data duplication in that at the end of the process there is only one copy of data. The purpose of data migration is to consolidate storage or upgrade to new systems.

There are many reasons for the proliferation of products and techniques, but the primary motivation is to improve on an existing design or technique. If an existing product is insufficient in some form, that deficiency becomes the impetus for creating a newer product. For example, early implementations of copy software would reduce backup windows from hours to minutes by not requiring the application to endure an outage for the duration of the PiT copy process. The application would still require an outage (or quiesce), but merely for the duration necessary to initiate the process (seconds or minutes). Using these products, however, the backup is not guaranteed and could subsequently fail. This situation led to the development of such products as Snapshot (StorageTek), TimeFinder (EMC), and ShadowImage software.

Business Goals Served by Copy SolutionsWorldwide commerce and industry have become increasingly dependent on IT resources to conduct business. Even a temporary loss of critical applications or data access can cause serious economic impact to a company, and an extended outage can threaten a company’s existence. Regulatory and competitive pressures, coupled with the potential financial impact of unavailable systems, have motivated IT executives to address availability as one of their top priorities. Primarily because of these strict requirements on availability, storage systems have been enhanced over the years to include “copy service” functions. These hardware-assisted functions have allowed organizations to minimize outages associated with copying data for backups, maintain disaster recovery sites for critical data, create business intelligence applications that use copies of production data, or simply move data to newer hardware with a minimum of outage times.

Real-time or PiT copies heighten both data security and mobility for a variety of critical activities, including protection, application testing, disaster recovery, and data warehousing. No matter where the data is located, it can be replicated quickly and safely within the same data center or between different data centers. This ability to share data within the enterprise positions a business to respond quickly to competitive pressures and meet the fundamental business goal of business agility. As shown in Table 9, software products provide the functions of data migration, data duplication (or in-system replication), and remote copy (or remote replication). These functions are critical to perhaps the two most important business objectives of the enterprise: 1) to maintain business continuity in the face of adversity, such as disaster; 2) to rapidly deploy new IT applications for business intelligence, data warehousing/online analytical processing, data center relocation, or new application testing.

Real-time or PiT copies heighten both data security and mobility for a variety of critical activities, including protection, testing, disaster recovery, and warehousing.

An extended outage can threaten a company’s existence.

45

Table 9. Hitachi copy products provide data migration, in-system replication, and remote replication support.

Hitachi Copy Products for the Thunder 9500™ V Series Modular Storage Systems

Data Migration In-System Replication

Remote Replication

Hitachi TrueCopy™ Remote Replication software (for Thunder 9570V™ and Thunder 9585V™ systems only)

† †

Hitachi ShadowImage™ In-System Replication software (for Thunder 9500 V Series systems)

†

Hitachi Copy-on-Write Snapshot software (formerly QuickShadow, for Thunder 9500 V Series systems)

†

Hitachi Cross-System Copy software (formerly HiCopy, for Thunder 9500 V Series systems)

† †

Hitachi TrueCopy™ Remote Replication SoftwareTrueCopy software provides remote copy capabilities for open systems computers. This allows remote copies over virtually unlimited distances. TrueCopy software for the Thunder 9500 V Series systems is illustrated in Figure 29.

Figure 29. TrueCopy software copies data to remote sites for business continuity and disaster recovery.

Primary Site

Remote Site

P

S

Server A

Server B (optional)

Switch

SwitchCopy

12

3

Pair Split issued.

1 Pair Create issued. P-Volcopied to S-Vol automatically byHitachi Thunder 9500™ V Series.New write data stored in bothprimary and secondary volumes.

3 Remote VolumeReplication command issued.Executing remote volumereplication driven completelyby Hitachi Thunder 9500 V Series.

46

Hitachi ShadowImage™ In-system Replication SoftwareAmong the powerful products created to complement the robustness of the Thunder 9500 V Series systems, ShadowImage software enables open systems information to be replicated in innovative ways to meet ever-changing business challenges. With this PiT copy facility, it is now possible to execute logical backups at faster speeds and with less effort than before. In addition, backups can be easily configured across a SAN, and can be managed from a central location. ShadowImage software and other Thunder 9500 V Series copy solutions are shown in Figure 30.

Figure 30. ShadowImage, Copy-on-Write Snapshot, and Cross-System Copy software solutions for the Thunder 9500 V Series systems.

Snapshots only store changed data blocks.

Hitachi Cross-SystemCopy Software

(formerly HiCopy)Hitachi Copy-On-Write

Snapshot Software(formerly QuickShadow)

Hitachi ShadowImage™In-System

Replication Software

In-systemReplication

Snapshot

Cross-system Replication

Hitachi Copy-on-Write Snapshot SoftwareCopy-on-Write Snapshot (formerly QuickShadow) software provides nondisruptive, high-speed, logical snapshot data replication within the Thunder 9500 V Series systems for immediate use in decision support, software testing and development, data backup or rapid recovery operations. The high-speed, nondisruptive, point-in-time snapshot technology of Copy-on-Write Snapshot software rapidly creates up to 14 point-in-time snapshot copies of any data volume within the Thunder 9500 V Series systems, without impacting host service or performance levels. Since Copy-on-Write Snapshot software only stores the changed data blocks in the Copy-on-Write Snapshot storage pool, the amount of storage capacity required for each Copy-on-Write Snapshot copy is substantially smaller than the source volume. As a result, significant savings are realized when compared to full cloning methods.

Hitachi Cross-System Copy Software Cross-System Copy software (formerly HiCopy) is a powerful module that enables data to be quickly and easily copied, in either direction, between Hitachi TagmaStore™ Universal Storage Platform or Hitachi Lightning 9900™ V Series enterprise storage systems and Thunder 9500 V Series systems without the use of server cycles. Cross-System Copy software can copy data over a SAN or WAN to meet a variety of business needs, including content distribution, disk backup, and disaster recovery.

47

Open Systems High-availability Middleware SupportOpen systems server vendors and third-party software vendors such as VERITAS Software have developed a class of software known as “high-availability middleware” to help reduce downtime by automatically detecting faults and recovering data services on a redundant set of hardware. Without high-availability middleware, time is lost while a fault goes undetected. Once the fault is detected, a diagnose/repair/replace action must take place before data-service recovery can begin. High-availability middleware can begin an automated recovery process immediately on the redundant hardware. The recovery process without high-availability middleware involves time-consuming and error-prone manual operations, which may include resetting the SCSI bus, restarting drivers, reassigning IP addresses, recovering and restarting applications and transactions, and even rebooting.

There are four basic types of high-availability middleware that can reduce downtime in the event of a data path or host failure. The Thunder 9500 V Series systems support each classification of middleware:

Alternate-pathing Middleware Switches the I/O Load in the Event of Path Failure This type of middleware automatically switches the I/O load on a failed primary path to an alternate path on the same host system.

Hitachi Dynamic Link Manager™ Path Manager Software Provides Path Failover and Load Balancing Hitachi Dynamic Link Manager is a family of Hitachi-provided middleware software utilities that are server-based, as shown in Figure 31. Dynamic Link Manager software enhances the availability of RAID systems by providing automatic error recovery and path failover from server-to-RAID connection failures.

Just because a system is RAID-protected doesn’t mean it is protected against bus connection failures, which is why Dynamic Link Manager software is required for truly nonstop operations. This product allows systems administrators to take advantage of the multiple paths on a Thunder 9500 V Series system by adding redundant connections between application servers and RAID systems. Dynamic Link Manager software therefore provides increased reliability and performance. Supported platforms include AIX, Solaris, Red Hat Linux, SuSE Linux, Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Windows Server 2003.

Host Failover Host failover software supports a cluster of host processors in which one of the hosts automatically takes over the workload of any failed host in the cluster. This “takeover” includes the reassignment of networks and peripherals, as well as the restarting of applications. Host clustering can also be used to create redundant workloads and scale processor capability while sharing network and disk resources. The Thunder 9500 V Series systems support all major open systems clustering schemes including: HP TruCluster, MC/ServiceGuard and MC Lock Manager, IBM RS6000 and SP HACMP, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, Microsoft Cluster Server, and VERITAS ClusterServer for Sun Solaris.

Parallel Database Clustering This type of middleware is a special version of host failover middleware, which supports major parallel database servers like Oracle Parallel Server, or Sybase MPP. Clustering middleware supports distributed lock management, a feature that enables parallel database software running on separate cluster nodes to share access to the same database. If one host fails, the other hosts can take over its work. Database clusters allow a customer to grow a database incrementally simply by adding additional nodes. With nonparallel database servers, the server has to be replaced or an additional server with another database instance has to be purchased and installed when the capacity of the original system is exceeded.

The recovery process without high-availability

middleware involves time-consuming and error-prone

manual operations.

Alternate-pathing automatically switches the I/O load on a failed

primary path.

One of the hosts automatically takes

over the workload of any failed host in the cluster.

Clustering middleware supports distributed

lock management.

48

Figure 31. Dynamic Link Manager software automatically provides path failover and load balancing for open systems connected to all Hitachi storage systems.

Application Software

Hitachi Dynamic Link Manager™ software

MicrosoftWindows

WindowsUNIX

UNIX

FC FC FC FC

Hitachi Lightning 9900™ V Series Systems or Hitachi TagmaStore™ Universal Storage Platform

Hitachi Thunder 9500™ V Series Systems

Note: FC = Fibre Channel

49

Hitachi Data Retention Utility Software (formerly Open LDEV Guard)The Data Retention Utility module allows your open systems and mainframe environments to lock down archived data on Hitachi storage systems, making it non-erasable and non-rewritable for prescribed periods, and facilitating compliance with governmental or industry regulations.

Hitachi Data Protection SuiteThe Hitachi Data Protection Suite, powered by CommVault, is a unified platform comprising solutions for data backup and recovery, migration, archiving, and replication—all through a single, easy-to-use point of control. Using the CommVault Common Technology Engine (CTE) as its foundation, the Data Protection Suite enables organizations to select the combination of products that best meet their needs.

The unified platform of the Data Protection Suite helps ensure outstanding data protection, high availability, and rapid access to information through the integration of backup and recovery, migration, archiving, replication, third-party disk-based copy capabilities, and a single point of control. Designed for disk-to-disk storage area network (SAN)–based data protection, the Data Protection Suite avoids the performance issues of products that have evolved from local area network (LAN)–based disk-to-tape infrastructures. Its CTE foundation enables the Data Protection Suite to help organizations implement the right mix of components without adding complexity. The Data Protection Suite includes the following software modules:

: : Hitachi Data Migrator

: : Hitachi Quick Recovery

: : Hitachi Data Archiver

: : Hitachi Data Protection Monitor

: : Hitachi Backup and Recovery

VERITAS Foundation Suite Software and VERITAS NetBackupThe VERITAS Foundation Suite supports the Universal Storage Platform and Thunder 9500 V Series storage systems. The suite combines VERITAS Volume Manager and VERITAS File System to simplify storage management while ensuring high availability for critical systems. VERITAS Volume Manager is an easy-to-use, online disk and storage management tool for enterprise computing environments. VERITAS File System is an enterprise-class, journaling file system that facilitates high performance, quick recovery, and easy scalability. The VERITAS Foundation Suite provides a strong foundation, not only for managing current storage requirements, but also, via its open architecture, for leveraging future technologies and opportunities. Downtime, whether scheduled or unscheduled, is costly. The VERITAS Foundation Suite helps decrease the total cost of operations and brings greater stability to vital information systems.

Complementary to the Foundation Suite, VERITAS NetBackup software provides quick, reliable backup and recovery solutions for heterogeneous environments. This product is offered through the strategic alliance of Hitachi Data Systems and VERITAS Software Corporation.

VERITAS File System facilitates high

performance, quick recovery, and

easy scalability.

Optimizing Performance, Availability, and Cost for the Hitachi Thunder 9500™ V Series SystemsUnderstanding the Target Workload Is Critical to Optimizing ObjectivesMoving beyond the old model of answering business challenges by applying solutions based on an organization’s storage system level (high-end, mid-range, or low-end) Hitachi Data Systems steps forward to provide Application Optimized Storage™ solutions. This approach closely aligns IT and business objectives to obtain optimum business value for your organization, whether you are at the enterprise or the SMB level.

Before implementing an Application Optimized Storage solution and determining which Hitachi Thunder 9500™ V Series modular storage system configuration is optimal for a particular application, it is important to understand the workload and the computing environment. In this way, general rules can be applied to optimize the cost/performance/availability equation. Although a variety of environments are simulated, it is impossible in reality to know in advance each and every application workload or the mix that will be generated by all users of the system. The items of most importance are as follows:

: : What business problem are you trying to address?

: : What applications will you be deploying?

: : What are your current and projected workload statistics?

: : If none, then try to characterize the workload based on several models.

: : What server platform(s)—CPUs, memory, host bus adapters, operating system levels (including patches) will be attached?

: : What database(s) is being used, if any?

: : What is the current network infrastructure and average number of users? Will a new infrastructure be deployed?

: : What are the high-availability requirements—clusters, DMP, disaster recovery, etc.?

: : What are the performance requirements?

: : What are the capacity requirements?

Possibly the most important selection criteria for performance are the type of drive to deploy and the type of RAID to deploy for that application.

Guidelines for Performance and Capacity Optimization of Thunder 9500 V Series SystemsAs discussed in Chapter 4, the Thunder 9500 V Series systems support both Fibre Channel and SATA disk drives, providing very high-performance options to serve high-transaction applications, other high-performance choices, and low-cost options that serve low-access applications.

To configure high-performance systems to serve high-transaction applications, choose from the following two high-speed Fibre Channel drive options:



51

Chapter 8

Rules can be applied to optimize the cost/

performance/availability equation.

Configure high-performance systems with high-spin drives

and RAID-1 or RAID-1+0.

52

For other high-performance needs choose from the following three high-capacity Fibre Channel drive options:




To address archiving, low-access application, and low-cost storage needs, choose from the following two SATA options:



RAID SelectionThe selection of RAID type is critical for each application to be supported. The flexibility of the Thunder 9500 V Series systems in allowing the intermixing of RAID configurations and disk types within a particular system allows high-capacity and high-performance applications to coexist in the same installation.

Unique Fast RAID-5 from Hitachi Is Often the Perfect Fit for Modular ApplicationsMany storage providers claim that their RAID-1 provides the best information protection and performance. The Thunder 9500 V Series systems offer superior RAID-5 performance, which approaches that of competitors’ RAID-1 performance but with RAID-5 value. Using an innovative combination of compatible technologies and management techniques, Hitachi Data Systems brings remarkable performance to the Thunder 9500 V Series RAID-5 implementations, reducing both operating costs and management complexity. For mission-critical applications, the Thunder 9500 V Series RAID-5 offers a real choice for cost-effective, high-performance, fully protected storage. In addition, with the Thunder 9500 V Series systems, ultimate RAID-5 flexibility and performance can be achieved through the ability to configure RAID-5 using up to 16 drives, with rotating parity. Hitachi RAID-5 utilization on disks is 94 percent compared to competitive implementations of RAID-5 at only 80 percent.

Optimizing Cost with the Storage Economics Strategy ServiceThe Storage Economics Strategy Service helps you better assess, analyze, design, and economically justify the most appropriate storage architecture and management tools to meet your organization’s requirements. Hitachi Data Systems Global Solution Services consultants help you to objectively consider your current storage environment (host connected or via a network) and make tactical/strategic plans to take advantage of new storage architectures. Consultants employ a workshop approach to rapidly review your business and IT infrastructure, management practices, operational capabilities, and risk areas. Within this workshop and discovery process, consultants evaluate your storage assets, assess and document your requirements and business drivers, provide a logical design for your storage solution, and provide economic modeling for the resulting design. This assessment provides expert technical and thought leadership that can be used to promote new storage initiatives. (See Chapter 9 for more information regarding this service.)

With the Hitachi implementation of RAID-5, up to 94 percent of capacity is useable.

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Competitively Unique Financial Benefits and Large-enterprise Applications of Hitachi Thunder 9500™ V Series SystemsRedefining the Industry Standard, Once AgainThere is a widespread recognition today of the importance of aligning IT and business for enterprise growth and ultimate survival. Against this backdrop, the new Hitachi TagmaStore™ Universal Storage Platform and Hitachi Thunder 9500™ V Series modular storage systems provide multiple tiers of storage that can result in business benefits not available anywhere else. The emerging discipline of business technology optimization is catalyzing many corporations to maximize the business value of IT by aligning IT with business goals, creating new revenue streams through newfound IT/business agility while lowering TCO and minimizing risks. This chapter provides a guideline for building a business case for a Universal Storage Platform and Thunder 9500 V Series approach within the Application Optimized Storage™ solutions framework from Hitachi Data Systems.

Building a Business Case for the Thunder 9500 V Series in a Tiered ArchitectureIt is important start with realistic assumptions about the modern IT enterprise environment and then systematically evaluate all elements of ROI, including hardware, software, and services. It will then be easy to compare the ROI to competitive alternative projections to determine whether an investment in the Hitachi Thunder 9500 V Series will provide the best financial return for your enterprise.

Start with Realistic Assumptions Most organizations have storage platforms from a number of different vendors in the data center. Each platform has its own set of management tools, data replication engines, business continuity procedures and supporting software utilities, and management tools. The platform differences often result in “islands of storage management” with significant operational inefficiencies through duplication of skills, training, and operational expense.

Often, a manual approach is required to keep track of and manage these disparate systems and to attempt to provide the storage quality of service (QoS) that business applications demand. In addition, data for a given application cannot easily be moved between the heterogeneous vendor systems to fit the availability and performance requirements of different business applications.

This is in sharp contrast to the structured, standardized, and seamless approach possible on a Thunder 9500 V Series system. Since the Universal Storage Platform is the anchoring element of the Application Optimized Storage solutions framework from Hitachi Data Systems, it is critically important to provide common management and procedures to match business application requirements to storage attributes to achieve true IT and business agility as ongoing events demand. Aligning IT with business goals and creating new revenue streams while lowering costs and minimizing risks becomes much easier with a Universal Storage Platform and Thunder 9500 V Series tiered architecture.

Complete solutions depend on many variables, including hardware design, connectivity infrastructure, application software, storage management software, and business continuity software, as well as operators and services, whether outsourced or in house. The Universal Storage

Chapter 9

Hitachi offers business benefits not available

anywhere else.

It is important to evaluate all elements of ROI.

Most multivendor IT shops suffer from operational

inefficiencies.

54

Platform and Thunder 9500 V Series systems are more than just breakthrough hardware innovations. They are wrapped in industry-leading software and service solutions to solve the to the top two business problems facing the enterprise today:

: : Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

: : Simplification

Table 10. The Universal Storage Platform and Thunder 9500 V Series systems help customers address the top two business problems facing the enterprise today.

Business Solution

Solution Category

Solution Elements Storage Challenges Addressed

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

System Design Tiered architecture: Hitachi TagmaStore™ Universal Storage Platform and Thunder 9500™ V Series, including SATA Intermix Option

Internal processing power, bandwidth, high transaction rate, fault tolerance

Business Continuity Software

Remote replication/disaster recovery: Hitachi TrueCopy™ Remote Replication and Hitachi Universal Replicator software; Hitachi Compatible Replication for IBM® XRC software; Hitachi ShadowImage™ In-System Replication and Hitachi Copy-on-Write Snapshot (formerly QuickShadow) software; Hitachi Serverless Backup Enabler software; Compatible Mirroring for IBM® FlashCopy® software; and Hitachi Dynamic Link Manager™ path manager software

Disaster recovery, replication, application availability, risk reduction, service level agreements (SLAs), data protection, performance, QoS

Regulatory Compliance

Message Archive for E-mail, Message Archive for Compliance

Regulatory requirements, document archiving, audit trails, disaster recovery

Data Availability Services

Risk Analysis Workshop, Hitachi SplitSecond™ Solutions, Remote Copy Planning and Design Services, Continuity Software Services

Total cost of ownership (TCO), return on investment (ROI), risk management, business continuity planning, outsourcing

Simplification

Storage Area Management (SAM)

Hitachi HiCommand® Suite and Storage Area Management (SAM) software, Universal Storage Platform external and internal storage virtualization, common software, common management

Explosive data growth, fast-moving technology and business landscape; management of heterogeneous environments; complex and costly management infrastructure; failure to meet application QoS and SLAs, reduced operating expense

Consolidation, Aggregation, and Virtualization

Hitachi Universal Volume Manager, Hitachi Virtual Partition Manager, Hitachi Volume Migration software, and Hitachi Cross-System Copy (formerly HiCopy) software; Host Storage Domains; NAS Blades

Consolidation; manageability of storage and assets; data growth; integration, migration, and file services; reduced mainframe capital and operating expense

Common Management Services

Storage Consolidation Services, External Storage Implementation Service, Storage Economics Strategy Service, etc.

TCO, ROI, outsourcing, consulting

A standardized seamless approach can foster true IT and business agility.

55

Define and Align Storage Objectives with Business ObjectivesClearly, IT knows that its purpose is to support business objectives. But most vendors push an information lifecycle management approach to storage that is designed simply to achieve operational efficiency in the infrastructure. The opposing view and the one that truly links IT with business objectives, is that storage infrastructure is instrumental in the success of the applications that directly serve business needs and in turn drive growth and corporate prosperity.

A Powerful Mix of Unique Features and BenefitsThe new Universal Storage Platform and Thunder 9500 V Series tiered architecture is a unique combination of revolutionary advances in hardware, software, and services that creates IT and business benefits not previously thought to be available from storage vendors. The architecture not only extends Hitachi leadership in storage system availability, performance, and capacity, but it also powers new software virtualization breakthroughs, including logical partitioning, management of externally attached heterogeneous storage systems, and universal storage-agnostic replication. This new architecture is based on external virtualization software— Hitachi Universal Replicator for TagmaStore Universal Storage Platform—and is illustrated in Figure 32.

Figure 32. The Universal Storage Platform and the Thunder 9500 V Series systems can provide a consistent data management and storage services platform for up to 32PB of internal and externally attached heterogeneous storage.

Use Hitachi Data Systems customer solutions to build

your business case.

A two-tier Hitachi storage architecture is a unique

combination of hardware, software, and services.

Hitach TagmaStore™Universal Storage Platform

SAN

Hitachi Lightning9900™ V Series

Hitachi Thunder9500™ V Series

Third-partyStorage

SATA Intermix Optionfor Hitachi Thunder

9500 V Series

Sun HP IBM®

IBMMainframe

MicrosoftWindows

56

Virtualization and Logical Partitioning FeaturesThe objective of storage virtualization is to “melt” groups of heterogeneous storage systems into a common pool of storage resources. This simplifies management, enables increased utilization of storage resources, provides seamless migration across tiers of storage, removes interoperability barriers, and integrates common functionality across the pool of heterogeneous storage.

Virtualization is embedded in the controller architecture of the Universal Storage Platform, an approach that has been praised by industry analysts as innovative. Indeed, IDC has created a new storage category, the Networked Storage Controller, for systems like the Universal Storage Platform. Unlike virtualization approaches by other companies, the Hitachi approach does not introduce another layer of complexity between the application server and storage. Further, it does not reside in the Fibre Channel SAN and is not dependent on the SAN for virtualization. Therefore, it is not limited to virtualization of open systems Fibre Channel-based storage. It can support direct-attached Fibre Channel hosts as well as ESCON/FICON-attached mainframes. As a result, mainframe LDEVs can be mapped to lower-cost external ATA or SATA storage.

Business Continuity BenefitsEconomic events from the late 1990s to the present have brought an increased focus on improving business resilience for most enterprises. These trends include not only the tragedy of September 11, 2001, but also the maturing of e-commerce and the trend toward centralized management and consolidation of IT assets. Both enterprises and SMBs alike find an increasing reliance on IT infrastructure for revenue generation and competitive advantage, not to mention government regulations that mandate disaster tolerance and data protection. All these events have combined to make data availability the most important storage challenge for many enterprises. This has put business continuity projects “front and center” on the agenda of many businesses, with IT management being asked to document, evaluate, and implement appropriate solutions.

Organizations worldwide are rushing to get their business continuity planning and disaster recovery strategies in order. By using a tiered Universal Storage Platform and Thunder 9500 V Series architecture with common software to manage heterogeneous disk storage resources for business continuity planning, your enterprise can apply consistent procedures, skills, and training across all your storage platforms. Rather than maintaining separate procedures and skills for data replication and recovery on each storage platform, you can apply one powerful and consistent set of replication capabilities and storage management tools to all its disk storage resources. In a disaster recovery scenario, the risks of error are lower when the procedures are consistent across all platforms. It is also easier to ensure when needed, the recovery of critical business applications and data.

Regulatory Compliance BenefitsAny enterprise doing business in the United States must deal with pending federal, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulations for out-of region disaster recovery. Similar concerns arise from the Basel II Accord, which will require as much as an 18 percent corporate-wide capital reserves for “operational risk” if appropriate data resiliency measures are not taken. Regulations also apply to health care and other industries, often with an emphasis on protecting privacy as in the UK’s Data Protection Act. In all industries, insurance rates can increase dramatically if disaster recovery and business continuity planning processes are not in place.

Beyond the e-mail application’s growing share of mission-critical storage needs, retaining e-mail in archival storage is becoming standard practice. Government regulations now recognize that e-mail and attached documents have largely replaced paper-based communications as records of business transactions and corporate behavior. In response, lawmakers and regulatory agencies have imposed new regulations that require the retention and protection of electronic messages and data, and organizations are scrambling to understand and comply with these new and evolving rules. The good news is that an effective tiered storage solution can reduce e-mail server and storage costs, improve e-mail server performance and employee productivity, satisfy regulations, protect valuable company intellectual property, and mitigate the huge and

unbudgeted costs of legal discovery involving e-mail that’s available only on backup tape.

Industry analysts call the Hitachi virtualization approach “innovative.”

Recent events have put the spotlight on business continuity.

The risks of error are lower when the procedures are consistent across all platforms.

Advanced Hitachi tiered storage solutions reduce regulatory risk.

57

Most organizations’ storage strategies continue to focus on risk avoidance through improved business continuity planning. A proliferation of terrorist threats has also brought risk avoidance to the forefront. Organizations now face increasing threats of wide-area disruption, ranging from frail power grids to terrorism to virulent computer security attacks. The enterprise’s reliance on technology concentrates and magnifies exposures to fraud and outages. And since applications are integrated in supply chains and business processes, any problem can easily ripple through an entire operation.

Storage Area Management BenefitsManaging, much less optimizing storage to serve the needs of applications may seem difficult. Many organizations have enough trouble just providing an accurate inventory of the storage infrastructure from a set of manually updated spreadsheets. Even organizations with relatively sophisticated storage management software architecture can have their hands full just coping with the need to manage this explosion of data, particularly when an uncertain economy has led to caution in IT investment. Yet new regulations demand that an ever-larger amount of data must be replicated or archived for retention and protected in a very structured process. How do you continue to grow when you have to do so much more on flat budgets? A good way to accomplish this is to work smarter, not harder!

The Application Optimized Storage solutions framework, with its tiered Universal Storage Platform and Thunder 9500 V Series architecture and surrounding software and services, provides a common-sense approach. This framework enables a true business agility advantage by easily matching business application requirements and storage attributes.

Storage Consolidation BenefitsEven with the complicating factors of terrorism and increased regulation, business efficiency remains the largest IT issue. In today’s competitive environment, the savvy enterprise should leverage the inherent value of a business to its fullest. Doing so always means making better use of data for cross-selling, up-selling, unlocking value isolated in individual business units, and increasing agility in addressing new markets.

Consolidation is one way to get organizational data under control while also controlling costs, although the recent high levels of merger and acquisition activities make consolidation problematic, at least at the application level. It’s difficult to get the consolidation done even at the storage infrastructure level, much less to the point of finishing consolidated financials fast enough to meet the tight reporting deadlines introduced by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the United States.

Sometimes the only way to continue to improve or maintain a competitive edge is through upgrading technology, but that can be problematic when the pace of technological change is faster than your equipment’s depreciation schedule. In most organizations, it’s very difficult to replace equipment that hasn’t yet lived what the Chief Financial Officer would consider a useful life span. In spite of this fast pace, IT solutions must reflect new concerns for integration, effective utilization, manageability, and availability while not forgetting the need for investment protection. All of these business issues drive organizations toward more effective storage consolidation strategies. If anything, it’s more important than ever to lower infrastructure and operational costs by reducing the number of systems to manage while at the same time improving overall storage resource utilization. Yet many customers are finding that they have reached the limits of consolidation with their existing storage systems.

Clearly, Hitachi Data Systems customers have shown and are enjoying the benefits that large-scale storage consolidation brings to address many of these problems. But organizations that have already completed a level of consolidation may find that they lack the scalability to go further on their existing infrastructure. Some storage systems that have room to accommodate additional capacity lack the internal throughput to drive business performance effectively with more data migrated to them. Hitachi Data Systems takes a step beyond consolidation (see Storage Aggregation and Virtualization sections below) to help organizations fully exploit their current storage investments.

With the Application Optimized Storage

solutions framework you work smarter,

not harder.

Unique Hitachi consolidation software extends the useful

life of all multivendor storage assets.

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Storage Aggregation BenefitsStorage aggregation is what Hitachi Data Systems terms the hyper-consolidation available for all heterogeneous storage in the enterprise, and it is not available from any other vendor. Competitive consolidation schemes involve the actual movement of data to the vendor’s storage system. To avoid the cost of data migration and the premature retirement of storage systems not yet fully depreciated, a tiered Universal Storage Platform and Thunder 9500 V Series architecture can allow for the attachment and common management of external storage systems. Aggregation, therefore, is a more comprehensive (hyper) form of consolidation and yet less costly.

With Hitachi HiCommand® Suite and Storage Area Management (SAM) software the external storage systems are presented to the administrator as part of the Universal Storage Platform’s own tiered storage pool. This is the definition of storage aggregation. The ability to attach other storage directly to a Universal Storage Platform not only protects an investment in installed storage, but also adds value through extended life to all multivendor external systems. Thus, the attached storage is handled through the same single, common point of management used for internal storage. This leverages the advanced replication and enhanced business continuity tools that a two-tier Universal Storage Platform and Thunder 9500 V Series architecture offers.

One clear benefit of Hitachi aggregation capabilities goes back to the value of consolidation and the difficulty and expense of data migration. With the tiered Universal Storage Platform and Thunder 9500 V Series architecture, data migration can be handled more simply and easily if other storage systems are directly attached and universal replication moves the data to the Universal Storage Platform. At that point, you would be able to move out the attached storage (if it’s older and fully depreciated). Alternatively, you could repurpose it as a lower tier of storage in the shared, virtualized storage pool described in the next section on virtualization.

The simplified data migration capability of Hitachi software obviously facilitates the matching of different tiers of storage to application requirements over a wide range of business requirements. This makes the notion of attaching external and Thunder 9500 V Series storage to a Universal Storage Platform especially attractive. Even older storage systems can act as third- or fourth-tier storage.

Storage Virtualization BenefitsAn extremely important value of tiered Universal Storage Platform and Thunder 9500 V Series architecture can be viewed in light of IT administrators looking for ways to mask the management complexity of existing networked storage environments while scaling their environments to meet dramatic growth. At a time in which technology lifecycles are shorter than capitalization rates, the breakthrough Hitachi multitier virtualization approach enables new functionality to be mapped across older assets, optimizing the benefits of simplified common management for multivendor storage.

Continued business uncertainty has IT still wary and looking to maximize returns on previous investments rather than strike out in new and unproven directions. One of the unintended results is that IT may see some of the very technologies that could best help them deal with these challenges as too risky. A good example is storage virtualization. IT clearly has to reduce storage complexity to cope with rising volumes of data on multiple tiers and brands of storage. But enterprises hesitate to insert an unproven virtualization platform into the data stream that delivers the lifeblood of the organization. Some even think that virtualization needs to become more mainstream before it can have a real impact on solving the complexity problem. However, effective virtualization has arrived in the Universal Storage Platform.

Although the meaning of the phrase varies from speaker to speaker, the Enterprise Strategy Group defines virtualization as “a technology that gathers data location information from physical storage devices, network services, and applications, and then abstracts the locations into logical views for end users.” The ideal virtualization in a tiered Universal Storage Platform and Thunder 9500 V Series architecture extends the Hitachi Data Systems innovative port-virtualization technology to all enterprise storage assets. The ultimate goal is the abstraction of physical storage systems as Private Virtual Storage Machines, including ports and cache for each client (application, server, or group of users), in order to guarantee QoS and to shield clients from the complications of sharing storage.

Storage aggregation avoids the costs of data migration and the premature retirement of assets.

Even older storage systems can act as third- or fourth-tier storage.

Hitachi provides the first true global virtualization solution for the entire enterprise.

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The industry has seen some attempts at virtualization12 via dedicated, add-on appliances or through server- or switch-hosted virtualization software that sits in the data stream between client systems and storage. However, these approaches haven’t gained much momentum. Hitachi Data Systems believes that implementing storage virtualization within controllers of a Universal Storage Platform would take advantage of the redundancy and scalability that underpin its inherent high availability and massive storage consolidation capabilities. Having virtualization in the storage fabric improves performance through tight integration with physical storage operations (including cache allocation), and creates an optimal balance of economy and functionality. You can have the same confidence in the availability and scalability of the breakthrough virtualization solution as current Hitachi Data Systems customers have in high-end Hitachi storage architecture. In fact, the Hitachi virtualization approach simplifies your environment rather than adding questions about scalability, a single point of failure, and another layer of complexity.

Hitachi Universal Volume Manager SoftwareUniversal Volume Manager software enables the virtualization of up to 32PB of internal and external storage, which allows it to be aggregated into one common pool and managed by a single set of tools and software. Once external storage is virtualized, you can use Hitachi battle-tested software to make point-in-time copies within a system, make remote copies across the metropolitan area or the globe, or migrate data across tiers of storage. For example, using Hitachi ShadowImage™ In-System Replication software you can make copies of data volumes from one attached storage system to another. These volumes can then be used for data mining, application development, or backup and recovery.

Further, Universal Volume Manager software, in conjunction with Hitachi Universal Replicator or Hitachi TrueCopy™ Remote Replication software, also allows data replication and migration capabilities across heterogeneous storage systems, while enabling efficient integration and utilization of older storage systems. Combined with Hitachi Volume Migration software (formerly CruiseControl), Universal Volume Manager software enables data lifecycle management across multiple tiers of storage. For example, in mainframe environments you can replace tape with SATA storage for more reliable and faster backup and recovery, or you can make more frequent point-in-time copies to less costly SATA storage for more up-to-date recovery from application crashes or disasters.

Hitachi Virtual Partition Manager SoftwareVirtual Partition Manager software allocates Universal Storage Platform resources, including ports, cache, and disk (internal and externally attached) into independently managed Private Virtual Storage Machines (up to 32). Partitions can be dynamically modified to meet application QoS requirements based on changing business and application priorities. To the host, each Private Virtual Storage Machine appears as if it were its own storage system and, as such, allows efficient utilization of storage across the platform, enabling chargeback and utility-like operations through a virtual serial number.

Storage Utility Chargeback BenefitsWith the storage virtualization, logical partitioning, and tiering capabilities of the Universal Storage Platform and the Thunder 9500 V Series architectures’ advanced SAM capabilities, any IT organization can accurately provide storage as a utility. This financial tactic can enable internal chargeback for storage usage by department to achieve more efficient storage management processes, or to provide storage on a metered basis to a variety of businesses. Logical partitioning of storage, including cache, ports, and capacity has obvious advantages. So does the ability to delegate management permissions to individual administrators for their assigned Private Virtual Storage Machines. In addition, it is easy to centrally manage business processes, such as data replication and transferring production processing to a secondary site (either for disaster recovery or nondisruptive maintenance of your primary system), with common tools to make the processes less error prone and more efficient.

12 For a definitive technical economic discussion of the pros and cons of different approaches to virtualization and the evolution of the Hitachi approach, see the white paper “Hitachi TagmaStore Universal Storage Platform: Virtualization without Limits.” This paper is authored by Naoya Takahashi, Ph.D., Chief Operating Officer Information & Telecommunication Systems at Hitachi, Ltd., and Hu Yoshida, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Hitachi Data Systems, and can be found on the Hitachi Data Systems Web site at: http://www.hds.com/pdf/wp168_tagmastore_virtualization.pdf#view=FitH&pagemode=bookmarks

Add-on appliances or server/switch hosted virtualization

software are less than optimal choices.

Charging storage back to users based on actual use is

now possible.

The Hitachi virualization approach simplifies

storage environments.

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Total Cost of Ownership and Return on Investment BenefitsAlthough Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is an overused label in the financial analysis of storage investments, it is clear that one measure of a good investment is to view the total cost of owning storage on an annual basis. Hitachi Data Systems believes that in developing a business case for the tiered Universal Storage Platform and Thunder 9500 V Series architecture, it will become apparent that there are significant lower TCO benefits to be gained.

The complete Hitachi Data Systems solution can reduce the TCO for enterprise users by as much as 40 percent. Cost reductions can be achieved not only through much improved administrator productivity, but also by significantly reducing the software licensing costs traditionally associated with maintaining multiple copy and management point products. In the short term, Hitachi Data Systems solutions enable cost efficiencies for your entire heterogeneous infrastructure. In the long term, Hitachi Data Systems expects you to see the advantages of a homogeneous Hitachi storage environment for future growth. The efficiency of a pure Hitachi environment is not just marketing puffery, but rather is based on actual data collected over the past three years. This is shown in Figure 33.

Figure 33. Actual average deployed capacity of Hitachi systems exceeds that of competitive systems by a factor of 2.5X.

Hitachi Data Systems solutions can reduce TCO by as much as 40 percent.

READY

ALARM

MESSAGE

POWER

HitachiStorage

OtherVendor Storage

0

1X

2X

2.5X

Ave

rag

e Te

rab

ytes

Dep

loye

d

2.5X Average TB Deployed

Average TB Deployed

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A recent SNIA (Storage Networking Industry Association) survey of customer pain points ranked “Total Cost of Ownership,” number one. According to ITCentrix, an independent software and services firm, customers can expect the Universal Storage Platform to deliver significant TCO benefits.

Clearly there are major savings to be achieved through the Universal Storage Platform’s ability to aggregate up to 32PB of internal and external storage into a single virtual storage pool, with common functionality and application QoS managed from a single console. The Universal Storage Platform will dramatically reduce management overhead and software-licensing costs, while at the same time extending the latest software advances to older or depreciating storage assets. By adopting this unified management structure, Hitachi removes the need for, and cost of, multiple and overlapping software products.

Services Supporting TCO and ROIThe Hitachi Data Systems Global Solution Services group provides professional services to help you manage data from a common console, regardless of where the actual physical storage resides. This allows you to gain significant TCO and ROI advantages while maintaining flexibility in storage management outsourcing and consulting. Global Solution Services leverages unique Hitachi Data Systems experience acquired in implementing the most demanding data and application management solutions for a broad range of businesses.

Storage Consolidation Planning and Design ServiceThe Storage Consolidation Planning and Design Service helps you consolidate your current storage systems to achieve greater capacity, performance, and scalability. Global Solution Services professionals will help you analyze your existing storage environment, application characteristics, and capacity requirements to determine the best way to proceed. This analysis is then used to create a set of implementation plans that will guide your system transition to a consolidated storage or new SAN environment. The objective of this service is to ensure successful planning and design of your new consolidated storage environment.

Storage Economics Strategy ServiceBeing able to prove the value of a Universal Storage Platform, weighed against your current infrastructure and other alternatives, is perhaps the most practical way to build a business case for purchase. One route, offered by Global Solution Services, is the Storage Economics Strategy Service. Consultants will work with your storage and IT executives to determine the financial returns that a unified enterprise-wide storage infrastructure can have on optimizing business applications, simplifying data lifecycle management strategy, and implementing an effective storage area management solution. A unique benefit: unlike the competition, Hitachi Data Systems takes an approach that avoids the early retirement of existing storage assets before full depreciation.

The Storage Economics Strategy Service will graphically demonstrate to executives within your organization the bottom-line impact of spending on any new storage you might acquire plus the ongoing cost of storage ownership. Included are:

: : Assessment of your enterprise storage infrastructure and needs

: : Design of a new multitier, multivendor centrally managed architecture in a collaborative workshop

: : Analysis of ROI for multiple design options and multiple payback elements

: : Justification and quantification of your storage direction in a custom, detailed report

The Universal Storage Platform dramatically reduces overhead and

software-licensing costs.

A practical way to build a business case for purchase.

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Ultimately, a business case for an appropriately sized Universal Storage Platform investment will cover the comprehensive set of hardware, software, and services that creates an ideal storage infrastructure solution, which:

: : Unifies data and storage services across its own storage and attached storage systems

: : Makes everyone more efficient, enterprise-wide, by optimizing the storage service provided to applications

: : Significantly reduces storage management complexity

: : Reduces operational costs

: : Enables best storage practices

: : Helps align IT practices with business requirements

The Hitachi TagmaStore Universal Storage Platform Architecture Guide provides additional information on the enterprise storage market for the Universal Storage Platform and Thunder 9500 V Series systems. This document is downloadable in PDF format from www.hds.com. The Architecture Guide contains an in-depth assessment of Hitachi Data Systems hardware, software, and business solutions. For more information on Hitachi software and platform-specific feature availability, please contact your account representative.

Global Solution Services will help you create an ideal storage infrastructure solution.

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GlossaryAlternate PathingAlternate pathing is a type of middleware that automatically switches the I/O load on a failed primary path to an alternate path on the same host system.

AvailabilityIn computer science, availability refers to the degree to which a system or resource is capable of performing its normal function. Availability is measured in terms of Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) divided by MTBF plus the Mean Time to Repair (MTTR). The availability equation is expressed as follows:

AVAILABILITY = MTBF / (MTBF+MTTR).

For example, a server that fails on average once every 5,000 hours and takes an average of two hours to diagnose, replace faulty components and reboot, would have an availability rating of 5,000/(5,000 + 2) = 99.96%. This would correspond to a Level 3 rating using the Scale of 9s.

Back EndIn reference to storage systems, the back end includes the controllers, disk drives, and paths to the disk drives.

Common Information Model (CIM)This open data model provides for the collection, storage, and analysis of management data for systems, networks, applications, and storage in a common format. CIM is being developed by the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) and provides a means for vendors to present management data about their products, independent of their underlying interfaces and data formats.

Command ModuleA basic building block of the Hitachi Thunder 9500™ V Series systems consists of a controller and 15 disks. Together with Expansion Modules containing 15 disk drives each, storage systems as large as 173.6TB in raw capacity can be created using 400GB SATA drives. See also Expansion Module.

Data DuplicationData duplication concerns a class of software that duplicates data as in remote copy or point-in-time (PiT) snapshots. Data duplication is differentiated from data migration in that with data duplication, at the end of the process there are two copies of data, and with data migration there is only one.

Data MigrationData migration concerns a class of software that migrates data from one storage device to another. This feature is different from data duplication in that at the end of the process there is only one copy of data.

Disaster RecoveryDisaster recovery is the set of processes for restoring services after a disaster. It also indicates the level of preparedness to respond to an interruption in services by implementing a disaster recovery plan to restore an organization’s critical business functions.

DowntimeDowntime refers to either a planned or unplanned interruption in system availability. Planned downtime is usually for scheduled system maintenance, and unplanned downtime usually includes business interruptions or disasters. See also Disaster Recovery and Availability.

Expansion ModuleA basic building block of the Hitachi Thunder 9500 V Series systems, an Expansion Module has up to 6TB raw capacity using 15 400GB SATA drives. Combining Expansion Modules with Command Modules containing a controller and 14 disk drives each, storage systems as large as 173.6TB in raw capacity can be created using 400GB SATA drives. See also Command Module.

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FabricIn networking terminology, fabric refers to a group of switches that interconnect storage systems and servers to form storage networks that are arranged in such a way as to enhance scalability, availability, and connectivity.

FailoverHost, host bus adapter, cable, or controller failover is the routing of all transactions to a second host or controller when the first component fails.

Fibre ChannelFibre Channel is an ANSI standard designed to provide high-speed data transfers between workstations, servers, desktop computers, and peripherals. Fibre Channel makes use of a circuit/packet switched topology capable of providing multiple simultaneous point-to-point connections between devices. Widely deployed in SAN implementations today. Fibre Channel can be deployed in point-to-point, arbitrated loop (FC-AL), or switched topologies.

Fibre Channel-Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL)FC-AL is the most dominant of the three topologies of Fibre Channel. Arbitrated Loops are a cost-effective way of connecting ports in a network without the need for a switch.

Front EndIn reference to storage systems, the front end includes the host adapter boards and directors to transfer data to the host from shared memory. On the Thunder 9500 V Series systems, the front end consists of Host Interface Cards and/or the interface logic on the controller board.

High-density Disks (HDDs)High-density disks or HDDs are used in the Hitachi Lightning 9900™ V Series enterprise storage systems, the Thunder 9500 V Series modular storage systems and the Hitachi TagmaStore™ Universal Storage Platform.

Hitachi Cache Residency Manager Software (formerly FlashAccess)Cache Residency Manager software allows specified (usually high-access) data sets to be “pegged” or permanently placed in cache memory so they are not managed by the data movement algorithms of the Hitachi storage system.

Hitachi Copy-on-Write Snapshot Software (formerly QuickShadow)Copy-on-Write Snapshot software provides nondisruptive, high-speed, logical snapshot data replication within the Thunder 9500 V Series systems. Snapshots taken by Copy-on-Write Snapshot software store only the changed data blocks in the Copy-on-Write Snapshot storage pool, thereby resulting in significant capacity savings when compared to full cloning methods.

Hitachi Cross-System Copy Software (formerly HiCopy)Cross-System Copy software provides cross-system data replication between Thunder 9500 V Series systems, Lightning 9900 V Series systems, and Universal Storage Platform.

Hitachi Data Protection Suite, powered by CommVault®The Hitachi Data Protection Suite, powered by CommVault, is a unified platform comprising solutions for data backup and recovery, migration, archiving, and replication—all through a single, easy-to-use point of control. Using the CommVault Common Technology Engine (CTE) as its foundation, the Data Protection Suite enables organizations to select the combination of products that best meet their needs.

Hitachi Data Retention Utility Software (formerly Open LDEV Guard)Data Retention Utility software provides tamperproof “write once, read many” (WORM) functionality for disk media on open systems on the Lightning 9900 V Series systems, Thunder 9500 V Series systems, and the Universal Storage Platform.

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Hitachi Dynamic Link Manager™ Path Manager SoftwareDynamic Link Manager path manager software is server-based and enhances RAID systems by providing automatic failover and load balancing from server-to-RAID channel-connection failures. Dynamic Link Manager software provides increased reliability and performance. Supported platforms include IBM AIX, Sun Solaris, Red Hat Linux, SuSE Linux, and Microsoft Windows 2000/Windows Server 2003/Windows NT.

Hitachi HiCommand® Backup Services Manager Software, powered by APTARE®HiCommand Backup Services Manager software manages the entire backup environment to actively avoid data loss, improve backup performance and success rates, provide rapid troubleshooting capability, and lower operational costs.

Hitachi HiCommand Chargeback SoftwareHiCommand Chargeback software is a fully integrated chargeback module that employs the rich database of HiCommand Storage Services Manager software to enable association of cost with usage.

Hitachi HiCommand Device Manager SoftwareHiCommand Device Manager software provides a single platform for centrally managing the Universal Storage Platform, the Thunder 9500 V Series, Lightning 9900 V Series, Lightning 9900 Series systems, and Sun StorEdge 9900/9990 series and T3 systems.

Hitachi HiCommand Global ReporterHiCommand Global Reporter software provides integrated reporting from separate servers managed by HiCommand Storage Services Manager software.

Hitachi HiCommand Path Provisioning SoftwareHiCommand Path Provisioning software automates the end-to-end provisioning of hosts, SAN switches, and storage systems, which saves time and ensures that mission-critical applications and projects have the storage resources they need to deliver business value.

Hitachi HiCommand Protection Manager SoftwareBy automating a rapid disk-to-disk backup/recovery solution for Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server, HiCommand Protection Manager software decreases Exchange and SQL Server downtime.

Hitachi HiCommand QoS for File Servers SoftwareHiCommand QoS for File Servers software seamlessly integrates traditional SRM file scanning and reporting capabilities with active SAN management features to deliver an end-to-end capacity, performance, and user consumption management solution for file servers.

Hitachi HiCommand QoS for Microsoft Exchange SoftwareHiCommand QoS for Microsoft Exchange software extends integrated HiCommand SAN management, SRM, and storage operations management capabilities inside Microsoft Exchange, helping ensure the availability and performance of messaging and collaboration applications, enable more efficient response to help desk calls, and plan for effective disaster recovery.

Hitachi HiCommand QoS for Oracle SoftwareHiCommand QoS for Oracle software extends integrated HiCommand SAN management, SRM, and storage operations management capabilities inside Oracle databases, helping ensure the availability and performance of Oracle-based applications, enable more efficient response to help desk calls, and plan for effective disaster recovery.

Hitachi HiCommand QoS for Sybase SoftwareHiCommand QoS for Sybase software extends integrated HiCommand SAN management, SRM, and storage operations management capabilities inside Sybase databases, helping ensure the availability and performance of Oracle-based applications, enable more efficient response to help desk calls, and plan for effective disaster recovery.

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Hitachi HiCommand Replication Monitor SoftwareWith a single, easy-to-use display for monitoring and visualizing volume replication configurations and status information, HiCommand Replication Monitor software simplifies administration of the entire suite of Hitachi replication products for open systems environments.

Hitachi HiCommand Storage Services Manager SoftwareHiCommand Storage Services Manager software is a comprehensive application-oriented platform for multivendor storage infrastructure management. HiCommand Storage Services Manager modules provide organizations with a single, common repository for discovering and tracking all storage resources.

Hitachi HiCommand Suite and Hitachi Storage Area Management (SAM) SoftwareThe HiCommand Suite and Hitachi SAM software provide application-centric capacity and performance management of the entire storage infrastructure. These solutions tune delivery of storage system performance, availability, recoverability, and functionality attributes to the requirements of vital business applications.

Hitachi HiCommand Tiered Storage Manager SoftwareBy transparently and interactively migrating data between heterogeneous storage tiers, HiCommand Tiered Storage Manager software enables IT administrators to match application quality of service requirements to storage system attributes.

Hitachi HiCommand Tuning Manager SoftwareHiCommand Tuning Manager software provides intelligent and proactive performance and capacity monitoring including reporting and forecasting capabilities of Hitachi storage resources.

Hitachi Lightning 9900™ V Series The Lightning 9900 V Series was announced in May 2002 (Lightning 9980V™ and Lightning 9970V™ systems). It represents a major advance in enterprise-class storage systems with its second-generation Hi-Star™ crossbar switch architecture, which provides for many times more simultaneous transfers to and from the host compared to shared-bus architectures.

Hitachi Resource Manager™ Utility PackageThe Resource Manager utility package is a powerful and comprehensive package of device level management software utilities. See also Table 6.

Hitachi ShadowImage™ In-System Replication SoftwareShadowImage software is a firmware-based software copy utility that uses command-line interfaces to create multiple copies of a volume for the Universal Storage Platform and Thunder 9500 V Series systems. Graphic or command-line interfaces control data replication and fast resynchronization of logical volumes.

Hitachi TagmaStore™ Universal Storage PlatformThe Universal Storage Platform is the world’s most scalable and high-performance storage system. The Universal Storage Platform is both an enterprise storage system, with 332TB of internal capacity, and a virtualization engine, managing up to 32PB of heterogeneous storage and providing up to 32 Private Virtual Storage Machines through logical partitioning.

Hitachi Thunder 9500™ V Series Modular Storage SystemsThe Thunder 9500 V Series modular storage systems were announced in December 2002 in both rackmount and deskside packages. This series represents the first modular storage systems with virtual Fibre Channel Ports and enterprise-level hardware and software features.

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Hitachi TrueCopy™ Remote Replication SoftwareTrueCopy software provides synchronous or asynchronous remote copy capability and is available for Universal Storage Platform and Thunder 9500 V Series systems.

Hitachi Volume Security Port Option (formerly SANtinel Port Security Option) Volume Security Port Option software for open systems, running on the Universal Storage Platform, allows administrators to define multiple Host Storage Domains or virtual private storage, for each physical Fibre Channel port on the system. A Host Storage Domain consists of a virtual (logical) Fibre Channel port and an associated set of LUNs visible only via that logical Fibre Channel port.

Host Storage Domains Host Storage Domains or virtual private storage are a collection of LUNs matched to assigned open systems hosts based on World Wide Names (WWNs). Each host has its own secure domain and LUN0 for booting with no threat of exposure to other hosts.

Hot SiteA hot site is an alternate facility that has the equipment and resources to recover the business functions affected by the occurrence of a disaster or business interruption. Hot sites may vary in type of facilities offered (such as data processing, communication, or any other critical business functions needing duplication). Location and size of the hot site will be proportional to the equipment and resources needed. Similar terms include backup site, recovery site, recovery center, and alternate processing site. See also Disaster Recovery.

Hot SpareA hot spare is an extra disk that is kept running (hot) but not populated with data until another disk in the storage system fails. If a disk fails in an array, the data is mapped by copying (RAID-1) or by rebuilding from parity (RAID-5) at priorities selectable by the user. This feature is supported by the Thunder 9500 V Series systems, Lightning 9900 V Series systems, and the Universal Storage Platform.

iSCSIiSCSI is a standard of the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) standards committee that defines the sending of SCSI commands over IP networks. The Hitachi TrueNorth™ iSCSI SAN Solution includes the Hitachi Thunder 9570V high-end modular storage system, the McDATA Eclipse 1620 SAN internetworking switch, and the Hitachi Data Systems Global Solution Services Quick Start Implementation Service for Hitachi iSCSI SAN solutions. This product bundle allows small- and medium-sized businesses to gain the benefits of networked storage, while lowering total cost of ownership through storage consolidation, improved capacity utilization, centralized backup, and unified storage management over IP networks.

Logical UnitThe SCSI term for a logical disk drive.

Logical Unit Number (LUN)Logical unit number, or LUN, is a SCSI term for the field in an identifying message that is used to select a logical unit on a given target.

Logical VolumeA logical volume is the storage medium associated with a logical disk drive. A logical volume typically resides on one or more storage devices. A host system sees a logical volume as a physical volume, although it does not correlate directly with a physical disk drive.

Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF)Mean Time Between Failure or MTBF is a commonly used measure of system reliability, usually expressed in hours.

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Mean Time To Repair (MTTR)Mean Time To Repair or MTTR includes the time taken to diagnose the failure, replace or repair faulty component(s), and restart the system so it is available to users.

Message Archive for Compliance SolutionThe Message Archive for Compliance is a Hitachi Data Systems solution that was developed to help optimize e-mail systems while providing message indexing, search and retrieval capabilities, audit trails, and policy management to preserve messages for mandatory retention periods.

Message Archive for E-mail SolutionMessage Archive for E-mail is a Hitachi Data Systems data lifecycle solution that archives e-mail messages for security, regulatory, and other reasons.

MirroringThis term describes the process of writing data to two disk volumes, usually to ensure high availability in case one of the disks fails. Mirroring can be hardware or software based.

Network Attached Storage (NAS)Network-attached storage or NAS servers are a special class of server that allows files to be stored over networks using the UNIX or Microsoft Windows remote file system standards.

Open SystemAn open system has characteristics that comply with de facto standards made available throughout the industry, and therefore can be connected to other systems that comply with the same standards.

Out of BandA communication that does not use the same bandwidth that carries data in a system runs out of band.

ParityThis data-checking scheme used in a computer system to ensure the integrity of the data. The RAID implementation uses parity to recreate data if a disk drive fails.

Path FailoverSee Alternate Pathing.

PiTA point-in-time (PiT) copy is a copy of data that is taken at a specific point in time. PiT copies are used in many ways, including serving as backups and checkpoints.

Quality of Service (QoS)Quality of service or QoS refers to service level agreements (SLAs) between users and the IT organization.

Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID)Redundant Array of Independent Disks or RAID is term that refers to disk drive organization schemes that increase reliability of disk storage systems by providing redundancy. Redundancy is provided either through complete duplication of the data (RAID-1, RAID-1+, also known as mirroring) or through construction of parity data for each data stripe in the array (RAID-3, RAID-4, RAID-5, and RAID-6). RAID-5 and RAID-6, which distribute parity information across all disks in a storage system, are among the most popular means of providing parity.

Remote CopyRemote copy refers generically to software or hardware utilities that provide the capability to copy data from one online volume to remote volumes without disruption. Synchronous techniques are used for short distances (typically less than 25 miles), and asynchronous techniques over LAN/WAN/MAN are used at any distance.

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Risk ManagementRisk management is the discipline that ensures that an organization does not assume an unacceptable level of risk.

Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)Simple Network Management Protocol or SNMP is a protocol used for communication between simple, server-resident SNMP agents that respond to network administration requests from simple-to-sophisticated SNMP management tools running on remote workstations. This feature is supported by the Lightning 9900 V Series and Thunder 9500 V Series systems.

Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)Simple Object Access Protocol or SOAP is an industry standard supported by Hitachi that provides a standard envelope for a messaging bus that enables simple plug-in of functional modules. This model provides a clear set of information content for management and monitoring of the entire storage and system environment. SOAP goes a long way toward promoting vendor interoperability.

Small Computer System Interface (SCSI)Small Computer System Interface or SCSI is an intelligent bus-level interface that defines a standard I/O bus and a set of high-level I/O commands. There are currently many flavors of SCSI defined by different bus widths and clock speeds. The seven major variations of SCSI are SCSI 1, SCSI 2 (Fast/Narrow), SCSI 2 (Fast/Wide), Ultra SCSI (Fast/Narrow), Ultra SCSI (Fast/Wide)—also called SCSI 3, Ultra 2 SCSI (Narrow), Ultra 2 SCSI (Wide). See also Fibre Channel.

SnapshotThis term refers to a copy of a file system at a certain point in time. Snapshots are used for backup and recovery, application testing, or data warehousing/data mining applications.

Storage Area Network (SAN)Storage area networks (SANs) connect storage systems to servers through Fibre Channel or Ethernet switches. Major benefits of SANs include outboard backup, sharing of resources, pooling, and reduced cost of storage management. SANs are also defined as high-speed subnetworks of shared storage devices. SAN architecture works in a way that makes all storage devices available to all servers on a LAN or WAN. See also Fibre Channel.

Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S)The Storage Management Initiative Specification or SMI-S is a standard developed by the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) designed to make it easier for storage hardware and management software from different vendors to work together. SMI-S uses the Common Information Model (CIM) and Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) specifications to create common models describing storage hardware and storage functions. Vendors then write interfaces that allow their hardware and software to share data with other vendors’ products using these common models. The Hitachi HiCommand Storage Services Manager software complies with the SMI-S standard, enabling it to manage a broad range of heterogeneous storage devices.

StripeIn RAID terminology, a stripe is when data is read or written in parallel to or from multiple disks instead of reading or writing all data to one disk. Striping provides much higher performance through its parallel design.

Uninterruptible Power SupplyAn uninterruptible power supply or UPS is a power supply that includes a battery to maintain power in the event of a power outage.

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Virtual Storage PortVirtual Storage Port, a name for a unique Hitachi feature that refers to virtual Fibre Channel ports that are logically managed by intelligent Fibre Channel controller cards. Each physical Fibre Channel port may have multiple Virtual Storage Ports, each supporting a different open systems server. Each server is assigned a Host Storage Domain each with its own LUN0 and set of logical unit numbers. Hosts are matched to their assigned Host Storage Domain based on a unique World Wide Names (WWNs) identifier.

VolumeAn IBM ESA/390 term for the information recorded on a single disk unit or recording medium, volume can also refer, indirectly, to the unit of recording medium itself. On a nonremovable medium storage device such as a disk drive, the terms may also refer, indirectly, to the storage device that is associated with the volume. When a user stores multiple volumes on a single storage medium transparent to the program, the volumes are referred to as logical volumes.

WorkloadI/O workload refers to the pattern of I/Os presented to a storage system or to a disk drive. Processor workload refers to the pattern of machine instructions presented to a microprocessor.

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Hitachi Data Systems is registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a trademark and service mark of Hitachi, Ltd. The Hitachi Data Systems logotype is a trademark and service mark of Hitachi, Ltd. HiCommand is a registered trademark of Hitachi, Ltd.

Hi-Track is a registered trademark and Application Optimized Storage, Thunder 9500, Lightning 9900, TagmaStore, Thunder 9520V, Thunder 9530V, Thunder 9570V, Thunder 9585V, TrueCopy, ShadowImage, Universal Storage Network, TrueNorth, SplitSecond, and Hi-PER Architecture are trademarks of Hitachi Data Systems Corporation.

CommVault is a registered trademark of CommVault Systems, Inc.

APTARE is registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a trademark and service mark of APTARE, Inc.

All other product and company names are, or may be, trademarks or service marks of their respective owners.

Notice: This document is for informational purposes only, and does not set forth any warranty, express or implied, concerning any equipment or service offered or to be offered by Hitachi Data Systems. This document describes some capabilities that are conditioned on a maintenance contract with Hitachi Data Systems being in effect, and that may be configuration-dependent, and features that may not be currently available. Contact your local Hitachi Data Systems sales office for information on feature and product availability.

Hitachi Data Systems sells and licenses its products subject to certain terms and conditions, including limited warranties. To see a copy of these terms and conditions prior to purchase or license, please go to http://www.hds.com/products_services/support/warranty.html or call your local sales representative to obtain a printed copy. If you purchase or license the product, you are deemed to have accepted these terms and conditions.

©2005, Hitachi Data Systems Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

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