Hitachi Data Systems Maximizes Efficiency of VMware Environments With Support For VMware vSphere 4.1 On AMS 2000 Family

SANTA CLARA, Calif.(BUSINESS WIRE) Hitachi Data Systems Corporation today announced integration with the new VMware vSphere 4.1 to help customers streamline their IT infrastructures or cloud deployments. New Hitachi Adaptable Modular Series (AMS) 2000 family support for VMware vSphere 4.1 leverages storage array technology for greater virtual machine (VM) density, increased scalability, higher ROI and better virtualized application performance in VMware vSphere environments.

"Storage plays a key role in virtualized server environments, and this role will only intensify as more applications are virtualized and the scale of deployments increases," said Hu Yoshida, chief technology officer, Hitachi Data Systems. "By integrating with VMware vSphere 4.1 through new VMware vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI), Hitachi Data Systems ensures customers will continue to realize the maximum value of their VMware environments as deployments scale. Additionally, the feature set of the AMS family is naturally suited to virtual environments, providing customers with a foundation to flexibly and cost-effectively operate their data centers."

"Integration with VMware vSphere 4.1 has important benefits to customers, helping enterprises operate with greater efficiency and agility, while simultaneously laying the foundation for cloud computing," said Parag Patel, vice president, Global Strategic Alliances, VMware. "Hitachi Data Systems has been a valued, trusted technology alliance partner, and together, we will continue to help customers deliver adaptive, high-performing, and reliable IT services."

Customers can further improve their VMware experience by taking advantage of key functionality specific to hardware platforms, beginning with the Hitachi AMS 2000 family. Hitachi storage integration with VAAI includes:
    * Hardware-assisted Locking: Provides an alternative means to protecting the VMFS cluster file system's meta data
    * Full Copy: Enables the storage arrays to make full copies of data within the array without the VMware vSphere host reading and writing the data
    * Block Zeroing: Enables storage arrays to zero out a large number of blocks to enhance the deployment of large-scale VMs.

Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning allows organizations to create a storage pool from which capacity can be used as-needed to improve performance and utilization. Additionally, Hitachi Load Balancing active-active symmetric controllers distribute VMware workloads across all paths to ensure optimal performance by eliminating I/O path thrashing, which leads to performance degradation. This integration significantly enhances the customer experience through:
    * Improved scalability: More VMs per data store; better storage utilization
    * Improved performance: VMware vSphere offloads storage specific tasks to the arrays, freeing up cycles on the host for other workloads
    * Improved ROI: Faster time to deployment means less coordination between VMware and storage administrators
    * Reduced OPEX and CAPEX costs
    
The integration between the Hitachi AMS 2000 family and VMware vSphere 4.1 is an important enhancement to the evolving relationship between Hitachi and VMware. Since 2002, Hitachi Data Systems and VMware have delivered innovative, end-to-end virtualization for storage consolidation, backup and archiving, business continuity and storage management.As the leader in storage virtualization and a Premier-level partner in the VMware Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program, Hitachi Data Systems can uniquely bridge the gap between server and storage infrastructures in customers' data centers and help customers optimize the operational efficiency and resiliency of their IT environments and achieve significant cost savings.