At Hitachi Data Systems, we understand the challenges of
today's business environment because we listen to our
customers and IT users. You need access to information
globally, no matter where that information
resides—office, shop floor, warehouse, or storefront.
You need a single point of control for your distributed
information, and you need to ensure its safety and
availability around the clock and around the world. Most
important, in today's fast-paced environment, you need
business agility to respond quickly to changes in your
marketplace.
Hitachi Freedom Storage™ offers a "no-limits" approach to
your IT challenges—no limits on information
access, centralized management, information protection, and business agility.
The latest addition to the Hitachi Freedom Storage Family
epitomizes this approach by
satisfying open systems requirements for high availability
and high performance across a broad spectrum of
environments including clustered NT and
UNIX® servers, parallel databases, and
open storage area networks (SANs). By capitalizing on the
connectivity of SANs and Fibre Channel architecture, the
Hitachi Freedom 5800 helps enterprises improve global
information access and heighten business agility.
The Hitachi Freedom 5800 combines the broadest range of
advantages: built-in high availability, a SAN-Ready
Architecture, industry-leading connectivity, stellar
performance and throughput, extensive storage management
features, storage replication support, and a comprehensive
suite of software, tools, and professional services. These
advantages are backed solidly by the industry's top-ranked
service and support team.
Hitachi Freedom Storage provides "no-limits" solutions for
open systems users. You can place your information where
it can best be used, while managing it from a central
location—with ease, efficiency, and the lowest total
cost of storage.
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Industry-leading connectivity
The distribution of mission-critical information across
multiple environments underlines the IT imperative to
provide users across the world with ready access to that
information. Global access demands unhampered connectivity
and information sharing among disparate platforms and
multivendor systems. Clustered servers and storage area
networks hold great promise for the cost-efficient
deployment and sharing of information.
The future of connectivity lies in the high-speed Fibre
Channel serial technology employed in storage area
networks. Thanks to its high bandwidth, long-distance
coverage, extensive scalability, and broad support for
multiple protocols, Fibre Channel offers a compelling
architecture for the creation of storage area networks.
The Hitachi Freedom 5800 features a SAN-Ready Architecture
that positions you to take full advantage of the promise
of storage area networks based on Fibre Channel
technology. Engineered for the highest connectivity, the
5800 supports Hitachi Multipath Data Access (MPDA) and
storage consolidation across open systems operating
environments.
Broadest choice of SCSI and fibre paths: The
Hitachi Freedom 5800 dual controller subsystem offers
eight SCSI paths and four fibre paths. In a full rack-
mount configuration, you can double this to sixteen SCSI
and eight fibre paths—the highest in the industry.
These extensive connectivity options facilitate greater
throughput, better access to information, and higher
availability in clustered server and SAN environments.
Hitachi Multipath Data Access: The Hitachi Freedom
5800 gives you greater agility in meeting the challenges
of today's IT environment by managing access to
information. Each controller in the 5800 subsystem
intelligently controls host interface access to the
logical unit (LUN) configurations attached to that
controller. The 5800 also intelligently manages access to
information on any LUN from any host path in a dual
controller configuration. This capability enables greater
ease of operation in Oracle Parallel Server environments
and UNIX and NT clustered server environments.
SAN-Ready Architecture: Responding to the need to
consolidate storage across open systems operating
environments, Hitachi has designed scalability, high
throughput, cost-efficiency, and centralized management
capabilities into the 5800. Since the 5800 features a SAN-
Ready Architecture, including a built-in IP address, your
opportunities to bring together storage are now boundless.
With up to eight active fibre interfaces within a SAN-
Ready rack-mount enclosure, you gain the freedom to make
open storage consolidation decisions without spending your
entire storage budget.
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Scalable performance and capacity
The requirement for connectivity in UNIX and NT clustered
server environments has accelerated the demand for higher
bandwidth, performance, and throughput. Today's enterprise
needs both the power and the capacity to provide fast
response to its worldwide customers. In addition, IT users
seek flexibility in choosing exactly the right mix of
performance and capacity to ensure the best business
value.
The 5800 offers unrivaled performance and capacity to open
systems environments. Its scalable architecture allows you
to add storage capacity and adjust performance as your
needs change. A wide range of performance/capacity
combinations delivers unprecedented power and the ability
to fine-tune the system precisely to your requirements.
This eliminates gratuitous expenditures, thereby reducing
the total cost of ownership.
Unparalleled flexibility in configurations: With
18GB to 1TB of storage, the 5800 is configurable as a
high-performance and/or a high-capacity solution. The
mirrored, nonvolatile cache can be upgraded from 128MB to
4GB, providing exceptional performance for a broad
selection of applications. The dual controller subsystem
can be configured with up to eight active SCSI
paths—or sixteen paths in a rack-mount
system—for industry-leading availability and
throughput in clustered server and parallel database
environments. You can also configure the dual controller
subsystem with up to four active fibre paths—or eight
paths in a rack-mount system—for point-to-point or
switched fibre fabric connectivity in storage area
networks.
The 5800 supports host attachment via Ultra-wide SCSI,
Ultra-2-wide low voltage differential SCSI (LVDS), and
Fibre Channel. This opens the throttle on throughput with
interface speeds of 100MB/sec and aggregate speeds of
640MB/sec per subsystem. In a full rack-mount
configuration, the 5800 delivers 1.28GB/sec transfer
rates, moving your information at the speed of business.
You have the choice of the following interface types and
data transfer rates:
- Ultra-wide SCSI—40MB/sec
- Ultra-2-wide LVDS—80MB/sec
- Fibre Channel-Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL) and fabric
implementations for SANs—100MB/sec.
Support for up to 64 logical units, coupled with
outstanding high-availability and performance attributes,
makes the 5800 an excellent fit for both UNIX and NT
server environments.
Technology for industry-leading performance: The
5800 speeds information to and from the hard disk drives
via a high-speed RISC microprocessor. All data paths have
been engineered for full parity protection to ensure the
highest levels of data integrity while moving information
at the fastest—and safest—possible speeds.
Hitachi's 18GB disk drives provide out-standing
performance with maximum capacity capabilities.
RAID-level intermixing in the subsystem: The 5800
supports RAID-0, RAID-0+1, RAID-1, and RAID-5. All these
RAID levels can be intermixed concurrently within the 5800
subsystem. You can select the RAID level that best fits
your application, protection, and performance
requirements.
HDS' unique FAST-5 performance: Many storage
providers claim that their RAID-1 provides the best
information protection and performance. The Hitachi
Freedom 5800 offers a superior RAID-5 known as "FAST-5,"
which integrates RAID-1 performance with RAID-5 value.
Using an innovative combination of compatible technologies
and management techniques, Hitachi brings remarkable
performance to the 5800's RAID-5 implementation, reducing
both operating costs and management complexity. Now, for
your mission-critical applications, you have a real choice
for cost-effective, high-performance, fully protected
storage.
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Centralized storage management
Today's IT organizations are tasked to manage distributed,
heterogeneous computing environments that house
multivendor components, hardware, and software. As
networks become more and more complex, you must keep pace
with rapid advances in technology to ensure the superb
levels of end-user productivity and customer service
needed for business agility.
Storage area networks further complicate management
challenges because they demand the installation,
deployment, and maintenance of myriad nodes/devices,
which, in turn, must be monitored, controlled, and
managed. SANs call for other management functions as
well—special security features are required to guard
against unauthorized access; data backup and recovery are
key issues; and proactive features are essential to avoid
outages, provide automatic load balancing, and assist in
asset management.
Hitachi Data Systems addresses these challenges through
Hitachi Storage Central, a customizable suite of
centralized management solutions that heighten
competitiveness, increase productivity, and reduce the
total cost of computing. Hitachi Storage Central delivers
a single point of control for network management
activities—a critical advantage for distributed
enterprises.
The Hitachi Freedom 5800 supports Hitachi Storage Central.
You can take advantage of the 5800's SNMP compliance, SAN-
Ready Architecture, NDMP compliance, and Hitachi Storage
Central features such as SOMMET and Hitachi Storage Central (HSC) WATCHMAN™ to manage
your consolidated storage.
SNMP compliance: In order to participate in a
managed SAN environment, all hubs, switches, directors,
and storage devices must be capable of supporting SNMP.
Developed to solicit status and set operating parameters
for basic availability management in a network, SNMP is an
industry-standard IP-based protocol supported by
multivendor platforms. Although it was designed to
facilitate the exchange of information between network-resident
devices, SNMP also enables configuration and
management of multiple networked systems and applications
from a single point of control. The Hitachi Freedom 5800
is fully compliant with SNMP. This means that you can
integrate the 5800 into existing CA-Unicenter,
Tivoli, and HP OpenView network environments.
The 5800's SNMP compliance makes it truly SAN-Ready.
Out-of-band SAN management: Traditionally, network
managers have relied on in-band management, where
management traffic—such as SNMP commands—is
mixed with the data and sent along the primary data path.
Unfortunately, this method not only causes contention for
network bandwidth, but also makes management and traffic
information unavailable if the network is down. SANs
cannot afford the negative fallout of in-band management,
given the arbitrated loop characteristics of Fibre
Channel, which affects the bandwidth for mission-critical
data. Most SAN hubs and switches offer an out-of-band
capability, either through Ethernet or a serial RS232
interface.
The Hitachi Freedom 5800 subsystem fits squarely into the
out-of-band management architecture for storage area
networks. Out-of-band management means that all status
activities and management traffic occur off the data path.
This ensures data security, data accessibility, and data
manage-ability even when a data path is down. You can keep
track of the status of your SAN environment without
compromising network performance—a critical business
advantage.
Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP) compliance:
With Network Data Management Protocol compliance, the 5800
is designed to support future storage area network
information movement technologies that employ
NDMP—such as server-less automated backups executed
across the SAN.
SOMMET: Hitachi's SOMMET—or
Storage On-line Management
and Media Error Transmission—allows you to monitor
and control your storage environment from a central
location. You can inspect the functionality of modular
replaceable units such as disk drives, controllers, power
supplies, and fans. SOMMET also provides for error
notification via alert indicators and e-mail notices. The
ability to extract valuable subsystem usage and
performance information for storage management analysis
tasks is invaluable in fine-tuning your environment to
accommodate changing business requirements.
Hitachi Storage Central WATCHMAN: HDS
introduces World Wide Web storage management capabilities
via HSC WATCHMAN. This
Web-browser-based utility delivers the power to monitor
your storage anywhere, from any computer, at any time.
Point-and-click access to your worldwide storage enables
you to make rapid decisions regarding storage management.
If HSC WATCHMAN detects an error, indicators "pop up" on
the browser; if it detects a modular component error
anywhere in your storage world, worldwide e-mail
notifications are sent out. Hitachi plans to expand the
scope and functionality of HSC WATCHMAN by incorporating
more SOMMET-like features into this powerful tool.
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Mission-critical availability
The extensive spread of e-commerce acutely highlights the
correlation between nonstop service and business success.
Customers seek fast, continuous service from their
suppliers and are quick to switch loyalties when their
expectations are not met. The productivity of internal end
users of IT is also directly linked to timely, nonstop
service. Round-the-clock availability of IT hardware is
one of the most critical factors in growing and
maintaining market share.
The Hitachi Freedom 5800 is engineered to meet these
exacting requirements for continuous availability. Its
unique design eliminates single points of failure and
incorporates advanced electronics to bring full fault
tolerance to the open systems world. The 5800 can continue
to run during almost any maintenance
activity—including component replacement, feature and
capacity upgrades, and microcode updates.
Hitachi's manufacturing relies heavily on proven process
technologies and state-of-the-art automation. Rigorous
testing and the most stringent quality assurance criteria
in the industry ensure that the 5800's components meet the
highest reliability standards.
In addition to these design engineering and manufacturing
safeguards, Hitachi offers several features and functions
to further satisfy the demanding access requirements of
mission-critical and open clustered server environments.
Industry validation and certification: Hitachi
works with industry-leading companies to qualify,
validate, and certify the open systems compliance of its
storage products in high-availability environments. CLAM
Associates and Microsoft are instrumental in providing
independent validation and certification of Hitachi
Freedom Storage products.
CLAM Associates conducts numerous tests to ensure that
Hitachi Freedom Storage performs seamlessly in a High-
Availability Clustered Multi-Processing (HACMP)
environment. A state-of-the-art validation and
qualification laboratory enables CLAM Associates to test
products in various hardware and software configurations,
with different operating systems, platforms, and
interfaces. Comprehensive testing of RAID arrays, servers,
optical libraries, adapters, networks, and device drivers
can be customized for specific environments. The tests
cover AIX,T HP-UX, Solaris, and Windows NT operating
systems, along with their associated high-availability
software and adapters.
Microsoft capitalizes on Hitachi's self-certification
capabilities by providing numerous tests that are run in-
house. Hitachi sends the completed test results and
documentation to Microsoft, along with the hardware, and
Microsoft confirms the test results. Once testing is
satisfactorily completed, Microsoft issues the official
certification for storage RAID or clustered RAID, and
places the product on the World Hardware Quality List
(WHQL). Customers can access the WHQL list
on Microsoft's Web site.
On-line Verify: The risk-avoidance technology of
On-line Verify minimizes the potential for a fatal data
block read error in your operating environment. This
robust, subsystem-based, self-analysis program continually
checks the storage environment for potential data
integrity issues. During idle periods, the on-line program
reads and checks data blocks to ensure full data integrity
throughout the 5800 subsystem. If a data block exhibits
the potential for a fatal error, the 5800 subsystem
automatically reassigns the data to a problem-free data
block. If the 5800 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. The interval times for On-line Verify
analysis can be defined by the user. Operations personnel
can track activities through a detailed log provided by
the On-line Verify program.
Data Assurance Code: To maintain data integrity,
Hitachi implements Data Assurance Code technologies in the
5800. When information is written on the disk drives, the
Data Assurance Code is added at the end of each data
block, and the relative block number is confirmed. Data
Assurance Code includes a cyclic redundancy checking (CRC)
byte for guaranteed safe and secure data placement. CRC is
compared on read commands to further ensure data
integrity.
Error-correction code (ECC): Hitachi employs the
reliable and proven Reed-Solomon error-correction code on
the 5800.This technology is able to detect and correct
data flaws "on the fly" before being written to disk.
Reed-Solomon ECC also ensures that the data can be read
from the hard disk, minimizing both soft and hard read
errors.
High-availability middleware: As open systems
platforms take on more of the mission-critical workload
traditionally performed by S/390® systems,
they must rely on special middleware to secure the
required levels of availability. Hitachi supports two
types of high-availability middleware to help reduce
downtime: host failover and alternate pathing. These
features automatically detect faults and recover data
services on a redundant set of hardware.
Host failover supports a cluster of host
processors. One host automatically takes over the workload
of any failed host in a cluster. Networks and peripherals
are reassigned and applications are restarted. The Hitachi
Freedom 5800 dual controller is capable of supporting host
failover in the following environments:
- HP-UX—MC/Service Guard
- Sun Solaris—VERITAS First Watch (with HDS agent)
- IBM's High Availability Cluster MultiProcessing
(HACMP) for AIX
- Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS)
- NCR LifeKeeper
- SGI FailSafe
- DIGITAL TruCluster (DECsafe)
Alternate pathing—or I/O path
switching—middleware automatically switches the I/O
load on a failed primary path to an alternate path on the
same host system. The Hitachi Freedom 5800 dual controller
supports I/O path switching functions in the following
environments:
- HP PVLink (standard feature on HP-UX 10.01 and later)
- Solaris—VERITAS Volume Manager Dynamic Multi-
Pathing (DMP)
- IBM 7135 emulation support
- Sequent Multiport Driver
- Hitachi Path Failover for Windows NT
- Hitachi Path Failover for Sun Solaris
- NCR RDAC with RAID Manager.
Open storage replication: The 5800 supports open
storage information replication via full compliance with
VERITAS' Open Storage Replicators such as Storage
Replicator for Volume Manager and Storage Replicator for
File System. These powerful products complement the
robustness of the 5800, and enable you to replicate open
systems information in innovative ways to meet your ever-
changing business challenges. You can now execute logical
backups at faster speeds than previously possible. You can
easily configure your backups to execute across your
storage area network. And you can manage all of these
functions from a central location.
Advanced service technologies: HDS' approach to
service is an integral part of our commitment to
delivering 100-percent information availability. The
following advanced service capabilities help ensure
continuous operation:
- Concurrent maintenance. HDS performs all
maintenance activity concurrently while continuing to
provide you with access to information. Hardware
components (including disk drives) are replaced,
features are added or removed, and microcode is
updated—all nondisruptively.
- Remote maintenance. Many maintenance activities,
such as diagnostics and microcode updates, can be
performed quickly from the HDS remote support center,
via proprietary hardware and/or software tools, without
disrupting your operations.
- Hi-Track® support. This unique
HDS maintenance service maximizes system availability.
Hi-Track continuously monitors the subsystem and
automatically transmits collected hardware status
information to the HDS support center. The center
analyzes the information and takes corrective action,
where appropriate, in order to avoid problems that
could impact subsystem throughput or availability.
- High-speed microcode replacement. This feature
streamlines the introduction of operating firmware
updates. HDS has increased the speed and simplified the
process for firmware replacement.
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Comprehensive services and support
As new technologies gain acceptance, companies must decide
on long-term plans and implementation schedules that cause
the least disruption to business. It takes time to
implement any large-scale technological change. The
transition to new network topologies will see the
coexistence of distributed and legacy systems, SCSI and
Fibre Channels on SANs, ESCON® and FICON.
Hitachi Freedom Storage provides the comprehensive
connectivity, management, and availability capabilities
needed to handle this transition. These built-in strengths
are bolstered by our professional services and service and
support organizations, which team up with you to ensure
the optimal operation of hardware, software, and
middleware.
Professional services for enterprise solutions:
HDS Professional Services
specializes in infrastructure and storage management
services that provide a vendor-independent view of IT
architecture, focusing on ways to streamline operations,
costs, and interoperability. They also excel at helping
customers chart both the strategies and the timelines
necessary to remain productive and competitive. Whether
you need transition management, migration planning,
Year 2000 compliance,
decisions about platforms and architectures, or
maximization of IT investments, Hitachi has the expertise
and the resources to guide you towards the best solution
for your business.
Top-ranked service and support: The 1990s have
showcased HDS' stellar service and support standing. Year
after year, HDS has won the highest overall customer
satisfaction ratings in independent surveys conducted by
Datapro, with "service responsiveness" specifically
identified as one of the important evaluation criteria.
HDS' world-renowned service and support organization works
closely with you to ensure that your Hitachi products
operate at peak performance with the other hardware and
software in your enterprise.
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Hitachi Data Systems—For computing as critical as
your business
As competitive pressures continue to escalate, maintaining
the optimum balance of IT strengths and resources is the
only way for companies to gain differentiation and market
share. The Hitachi Freedom 5800 positions you well to
satisfy the rigorous demands for high availability and
high performance in clustered UNIX and NT server
environments. By exploiting the leading-edge connectivity
of storage area networks and Fibre Channel architecture,
the 5800 strengthens your capacity to improve global
information access and heighten business agility.
IT has become the key to competitive breakthroughs. Those
who adapt rapidly to change and capitalize on IT advances
are also the first to feel the burden of success. The real
challenge of critical computing is to make sure that the
IT infrastructure is in perfect alignment with fundamental
business objectives. That's what Hitachi Data Systems does
well. Critical computing keeps the world's largest
corporations up and running and successful. It's also what
makes them keep coming back to Hitachi Data Systems.
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