The Hitachi Freedom Storage Thunder 9500 V Series sets a new standard for modular storage. With the same set of APIs, software tools and management framework as our carrier-class Lightning 9900 V Series, the Thunder 9500 V Series storage systems offer virtualization, flexible configurations, and intelligence for ease of management, plus high performance in a small footprint.

Whatever the nature or the size of your business, we've got a Thunder 9500 V Series storage system that works for you. Our enterprise-class Thunder 9570V system, with over 30TB in raw capacity, is perfect for information-intensive industries like life sciences, healthcare and rich media. The smaller Thunder 9531V, Thunder 9532V and Thunder 9533V models (ranging from 360GB to 1TB) are ideal for retail outlets, business franchises and professional offices.

The Thunder 9500 V Series delivers the intelligence of automated management in an affordable, easy-to-grow package so you can:

Simplify storage management

• Consolidate systems and pool resources with the Thunder 9570V system
• Deploy distributed storage with the Thunder 9531V, Thunder 9532V and Thunder 9533V models
• Centralize system management through a virtualization assist layer


Protect valuable information assets

• Back up data with non-disruptive, real-time copies
• Recover quickly from application failures or disasters with instant, user-defined, point-in-time copies
• Maintain business continuity with redundant, hot-swappable components and no single point of failure


Optimize resources

• Reduce management tasks, improve productivity, and lower staff costs
• Achieve industry-leading performance with our Hi-PER Architecture
• Support multiple open systems, heterogeneous environments

Combined with our sophisticated Hitachi Freedom Storage Software, HiCommand Management Framework, and top-ranked Professional Services, the Thunder 9500 V Series and Lightning 9900 V Series provide the foundation for the Hitachi TrueNorth vision—a strategic direction based on open industry standards, collaboration with strategic partners, policy-based automation tools and the world's finest storage systems.

Incorporating innovative features and functions of the technology- and market-leading Hitachi Freedom Storage Lightning 9900 V Series, the Thunder 9500 V Series systems redefine the notion of modular storage. This new generation of the "Thunder family" inherits the virtual ports concept and shares a common set of APIs and software tools, as well as a common management framework, with the "Lightning family." So you can choose the best solution for your business needs—modular or carrier-class storage systems—and be confident that your investment is protected for the long term. The Thunder 9500 V Series highly versatile storage systems deliver the performance for demanding applications and the intelligence for simplified manage-ment. Starting with the deskside units, these systems smoothly scale or upgrade in an affordable and easy-to-grow footprint, so you can meet your evolving storage requirements without difficulty. The Thunder 9500 V Series storage systems support diverse data-dependent markets, such as life sciences, retail, healthcare, and broadcast. In many instances, success is as easy as plug-and-play for data warehousing, data mining, 24/7 online business transactions, and rich media applications.
The Thunder 9500 V Series storage fits squarely in the widely acclaimed Hitachi TrueNorth vision, offering you a simplified infrastructure for easy management, protection for your critical information, and optimized resource utilization.

Simplify infrastructure for easy management

• Consolidate storage systems and pool resources with the Thunder 9570V system
• Deploy distributed storage with the Thunder 9531V, 9532V, or 9533V models
• Centralize storage management with the HiCommand Management Framework— open, extensible, modular storage-management software based on industry standards:
     Seamless integration of best-of-breed products
     Policy-based automation
     Heterogeneous system management from any location
     Control Hitachi Freedom Storage and partner products with HiCommand Device Manager
  
• Simplify infrastructure through virtual ports and Host Storage Domains
• Reduce licensing and maintenance costs
• Protect investment—Thunder 9570V storage system Expansion Modules; upgrade path for the Thunder 9531V, 9532V, and 9533V models
• Easily support SAN and NAS data access
• Exploit concurrent support for Microsoft Windows NT/Windows 2000, major UNIX platforms, Linux , Novell NetWare, and HP OpenVMS

Protect critical information

• Instant, user-defined point-in-time copies—recover quickly from disasters
• Nondisruptive, real-time copies for backups, application testing, and data warehousing/data mining
• Nondisruptive expansion to over 30TB
• Easy deployment and off-site redundancy for 24/7 data availability
• “Server-less” copies
• Tapeless data vaulting
• Hi-Track service

Optimize resource utilization

• Multidimensional scalability, including capacity, bandwidth, and connectivity
• Vertical market requirement compliance for embedded applications, from entry-level to high-capacity
• Industry-leading performance—over 4GB/sec aggregate internal system bandwidth—driven by our Hi-PER Architecture
• Choose from four models—scale to over 30TB

Maintain peace of mind

Hitachi Data Systems delivers consistently exceptional service and support
• Surveys by FIND/SVP place Hitachi Data Systems Number One in overall service and support as well as in technical performance—two years in a row (2001-2002).
• Comprehensive professional planning and enablement services are available through Hitachi Data Systems Global Solution Services

The Hitachi Freedom Storage Thunder 9500 V Series storage systems shake up the status quo by giving today’s businesses exactly what they want

It’s the "V" generation—for virtualization-enabled! Building on the capabilities of the carrier-class Hitachi Freedom Storage Lightning 9900 V Series systems, Thunder 9500 V Series storage systems reduce complex connectivity with a virtualization assist layer that eases management, simplifies infrastructure, and better utilizes resources. Sharing common APIs and software tools, as well as a common management infrastructure with the Lightning 9900 V Series systems ensures that the Thunder 9500 V Series systems reflect the intelligence of our leading enterprise-level systems.

Each Thunder 9500 V Series model is based on the same innovative Hi-PER Architecture for high performance and common components, such as cabinetry and microcode, for trouble-free integration. The Hi-PER Architecture supports the information management demands of dynamic enterprises—from collaborative business applications to business-process automation applications. Supporting your business objectives with increased bandwidth, capacity, availability, and ease-of-use, the Thunder 9500 V Series systems offer you high-performance, easy-to-manage open modular storage in a small footprint. With a broad range of models, these advanced modular systems are also quickly installed, configured, and expanded to enhance fundamental continuity and make your life easier.

Deploy the information infrastructure and management tools your business needs to thrive

With the Hitachi TrueNorth vision working for you and Hitachi-engineered technology and solutions at hand, you’re positioned to launch exceptional storage management solutions. Getting started is easy with the Thunder 9500 V Series storage platform, which combines power and intelligence to simplify infrastructures for easy manage-ment, protect critical information, and optimize resource utilization.

Consider your storage system options: the enterprise-class Thunder 9570V model, or smaller, preconfigured Thunder 9531V, Thunder 9532V, or Thunder 9533V models. Simply select the storage system that best supports your objectives. You’ll be surprised at how quickly you can achieve new levels of availability and performance with highly productive solutions such as storage area networks (SANs) and network attached storage (NAS).

Distributed retail outlets, business franchises, professional offices—no matter what your enterprise—the modularity of Thunder 9500 V Series storage allows you to easily identify and install the ideal system to help you to reduce total cost of ownership and achieve a more rapid return on your investment.

Simplify Your Infrastructure
The Thunder 9570V storage system— an easy-to-manage option for data-intensive industries and consolidation strategies The enterprise-class Thunder 9570V storage system is the perfect fit for extremely data-dependent industries, such as life sciences, which require capacity and performance for database management, visualization, and analytical tools. It’s also an excellent choice for healthcare industries relying on rapid access to patient records and billing, for broadcast/rich media applications such as audio/video editing, and for frequently used business applications such as Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes.

With Thunder 9570V storage, you can consolidate existing storage systems into one footprint. Not only do you reduce the initial purchase costs for your organization, but you also lower your total cost of ownership over each system’s lifetime. By simplifying your information infrastructure and management responsibilities, you continue to save on operating and resource expenditures.

In many instances, you can replace your existing storage systems with a single Thunder 9570V storage system. In this virtualization-enabled system, Host Storage Domains allow host pooling at the LUN level, optimizing connectivity and reducing the network infrastructure, while Hitachi SANtinel software ensures authorized access. Ultimately, this lowers your IT costs and extends your capital investment by consolidating storage resources and sharing information across disparate platforms.

The Thunder 9531V, 9532V, and 9533V storage systems— you have the freedom to choose
The Thunder 9531V, Thunder 9532V, and Thunder 9533V storage systems, ranging from 360GB to 1TB in raw capacities, make a practical addition to retail operations that seek to supply seamless service to their customers (electronic or brick-and-mortar), as well as professional offices that require business continuity on a small, but upgradeable scale. You determine capacity required now—then, expand as needed. In these smaller, preconfigured advanced modular options, we offer you the same high-speed characteristics in each of today’s Thunder 9500 V Series storage systems, including a hot-swappable component design and innovative Hi-PER Architecture. These attributes allow each system to assume key responsibilities in support of sustained growth. Or, you can set up distributed strategies for reliable information sharing.

Manage it all with HiCommand Management Framework
HiCommand Management Framework software provides open and intuitive tools for streamlined storage management of distributed enterprise applications. It’s built on industry standards, including the Common Information Model (CIM), the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), and eXtensible Markup Language (XML), and will adhere to the Storage Networking Industry Association’s (SNIA) Bluefin Storage Management Initiative. Compliance to these standards enables the snap-in of software developed by Hitachi or complementary independent software vendors. As a result, the HiCommand Management Framework is customizable and easily integrates with existing infrastructures to optimize storage management.

HiCommand Management Framework:

• Reduces storage administration staff training time and enables faster response to change
• Lowers total cost of ownership by simplifying storage management, streamlining processes, and increasing productivity
• Delivers real freedom of choice—HiCommand seamlessly integrates with a variety of independent software vendor products

The HiCommand Device Manager module enables you to configure, monitor, manage, and tune Thunder 9500 V Series, Hitachi Freedom Storage Lightning 9900 V Series, and Lightning 9900 Series systems, as well as Sun StorEdge 9900 Series and T3 systems, through a single graphical user interface over an IP connection device.

Connectivity simplified for the future: ready for SAN, NAS, and iSCSI
A number of storage network protocols and connectivity methods are available to match application requirements. Whether Fibre Channel SANs, gigabit Ethernet NAS, or iSCSI for open systems and SAN interconnect are required, the Thunder 9500 V Series will inherently support them all. Backed by the our highly integrated Hi-PER Architecture, end-to-end Fibre, and high-performance disks, the Thunder 9500 V Series systems easily handle simultaneous information access through multiple protocols and connections.

Protect Your Business-critical Information
Thunder 9500 V Series storage systems are designed to satisfy numerous requirements, including availability, capacity, and scalability. Not only do the Thunder 9500 V Series systems consolidate and upgrade easily, but they also scale nondisruptively, which means your collaborative business applications— Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes—and your data warehousing, data mining, decision support and business process automation applications—SAP, BAAN, PeopleSoft— stay online and accessible.

With no single point of failure, the Thunder 9500 V Series systems provide business continuity capabilities through seamlessbackup and rapid recovery. The Hi-PER Architecture, redundant, online replaceable active components, and mirrored cache set the stage for nondisruptive service and data protection. Our advanced Business Continuity Software Suite further ensures that your Thunder 9500 V Series systems will keep data available and your business applications running without pause.

Additionally, Thunder 9500 V Series storage supports open systems in direct attached or networked configurations, allowing you to choose the optimal information infra-structure for your applications.

Maximum data availability—Thunder 9500 V Series solutions protect your data and your IT investment
The Thunder 9500 V Series systems allow you to fulfill new application commitments and surges in demand—problem-free. Features that protect your information and your IT investment include:

• Virtualization-enabling layer
• Web-based management and Java serial peripheral interface/remote method invocation
• Extended RAID group support
• High-throughput10,000RPM and 15,000RPM dual-ported Fibre Channel disk drives
• Fully addressable 4GB cache with dual controllers
• Permanently assignable LUNs to cache
• Extremely fast and intelligent cache algorithms
• Flexible LUN support
• Performance tuning
• Separate, redundant data and command paths

Optimize Resource Utilization
With the Thunder 9500 V Series systems, optimizing your resources ensures reduced total cost of ownership

Install the Thunder 9570V system to consolidate and centralize for simplified storage networking environments. Or, deploy dedicated strategies with our smaller modular models. Whatever your plan, you’ll spend less time managing storage and gain more time for new busi-ness efforts. Leverage your IT investment. Reduce the amount of software.Spend less money on licensing and maintenance fees. The payback is clear.

• Fewer connections
• Fewer storage management activities
• Easy-to-handle, automated tools—staff can be assigned to more productive tasks
• Aggressive use of intelligent management
• Improved capacity utilization—less equipment required, lower total cost of ownership