VSP 5000 series --Hitachi Vantara a new generation of high-end storage systems, but it does not follow the laws of the product named in the past, "The reason why this number by 5000, is to show that it really is a breakthrough product." Hitachi IT company Akinobu Shimada, vice president of product management platform says.
High-end storage, this was canceled Gartner Magic Quadrant, once considered the product is no tomorrow, but this year ushered in a real outbreak, from EMC, HPE, to Huawei, IBM, to the current Hitachi Vantara, high-end storage market, the top five players this year collective showed the new product, called 2019 years of high-end storage.
The culmination of years of high-end storage part of Hitachi Vantara, when Hitachi Vantara VSP 5000 series to produce a series of staggering when data of "100% data availability, 21 million IOPS, 0.07 millisecond response time", also declared the high-end stores entered a new stage of the competition: the high-end storage market players will continue to invest in the future of high-end storage will not only not disappear, but will play a more important role in the digital transformation of enterprise in flash blessing and cloudy trends.
Why high-end storage can be revitalized
As early as 2016, IT Market Clock for Storage Gartner report predicted in the next 2 - 5 years, high-end storage will gradually withdraw from the stage of history. In fact, based on the traditional high-end storage to HDD or mixed media's decline is a historical necessity; instead it is full of high-end flash-based storage system.
According to IDC statistics, the next five years all-flash storage will continue to maintain a high growth rate. In the Chinese market, IDC forecast the next three to five years there will be about 50% growth rate. Hitachi Vantara areas of their business performance also reflects the high-end storage is still a concern: high-end storage business maintained strong growth, and the company's overall business continued to maintain double-digit growth in 2018 and made on half of fiscal year 2019 a great contribution.
Hitachi IT company vice president, Product Management platform Akinobu Shimada
In Hitachi Vantara view, the reason why high-end storage systems can be revitalized, on the one hand lies in its high availability, high reliability, high consistency of properties still include financial, telecommunications and many other industries valued by users; on the other hand, high-end storage on the basis of retaining the original features are constantly on the move towards evolution, go for cloud native, elastic expansion and other new technology trends. Hitachi Vantara bluntly, a lot of the current user demand for high-end storage is mainly reflected in:
Usability is the most important. Data availability is the ultimate high-end storage, the storage system user may not want downtime.
The pursuit of high performance. As the user changes in the business, for business processing speed requirements have become more sophisticated, the pursuit of high-end storage performance should also be never-ending. For example, in the financial industry, the emergence of mobile payments, making small transactions showing exponential growth, and was followed by a storage system for financial institutions processing speed faster and faster, higher and higher performance requirements.
High elasticity. To financial institutions, for example, in the process of accelerating the digital transition, a native cloud-based and other related new business after another, often need to store more and more able to meet business needs in a flexible elastic capacity, performance level.
Ease of use. High-end storage needs to be more intelligent, allowing users to use more simple.
True, with different Internet business, finance, telecommunications and other sectors of business property determines its digital transformation process, the long-term environmental and faced with two situations: one is years of history accumulated a traditional business logic, it is more in line with run on high-end storage reliability and stability for this demanding product; the other is more and more cloud-based applications native born micro-technology services, containers, etc., and the two kind of environment will not be fragmented, but will get increasingly close contact. Adapted to each other in two trends, in the context of mutual influence, no doubt high-end storage data carrier will be the best link between the two environments.
VSP 5000 series brings new answers to the high-end storage
This is the reason why high-end storage year, because of the five high-end storage vendors have come up with a very strong year of new products, and also to determine a clearer trend, namely: higher performance, better scalability and flexibility sex, more intelligent and simplistic. Hitachi Vantara it has more than 40 years of research experience in the field of high-end storage, it can be said to have witnessed the history of the development of high-end storage industry. Now, with the VSP 5000 series launch, Hitachi Vantara also brought its answer to the high-end storage of the future.
Akinobu Shimada认为VSP 5000系列高端存储确立了四项新的标准：
首先是速度更快、性能更强，VSP 5000系列是目前全球最快的存储阵列，性能达到了2100万IOPS，延迟则低至70us，并且实现了4:1的有效容量缩减率以及7:1的总效率（包含数据压缩、重复数据删除、快照和瘦镜像），VSP 5000系列如此出色的性能足以满足各种工作负载的苛刻需求。
其次，拥有业界最为出色的扩展性，VSP 5000系列产品最高可扩展到12个控制器，容量最高可达到69PB。
第三，VSP 5000系列具有最佳的灵活性，可以支持五种存储介质：NVMe SSD、NVMe SCM、SAS HDD、SAS SSD等，满足不同场景对于存储价值的需求，并且成熟的虚拟化功能可以全面兼容所有存储产品，实现利旧和保护投资。此外，无论是大型机环境下的核心业务应用，还是互联网环境的Docker等云原生应用，VSP 5000系列都可以很好地支持。
最后，VSP 5000系列在可靠性上树立了新的标杆，设备可靠性高达8个9，比市面上相同定位的竞争对手产品的可靠性高100倍。
VSP 5000系列之所以可以拥有如此出色的产品特性，离不开Hitachi Vantara研发团队对于高端存储的深厚积累以及对用户业务未来需求的精准把握。在VSP 5000系列中，有多项技术可谓是功不可没。首先是创新的HIE节点互联技术，实现了物理分布式和管理逻辑集中，解决跨节点数据访问带来的延迟和管理复杂性问题，这也是VSP 5000系列能够实现2100万IOPS和70us延时的关键技术所在。
第二个则是统一存储微码SVOS。从入门级存储到中端存储到高端存储再到如今的新一代VSP 5000系列，Hitachi Vantara均统一了存储操作系统，使得存储的统一管理性得到极大加强，让VSP 5000系列可以和现有的Hitachi Vantara存储之间进行容灾，大幅优化了成本，并且为后续的软件定义存储产品打下了坚实基础。
另外则是大量人工智能技术的加入，使得存储的功能走向自动化以及存储运维智能化，让存储管理更加简单与高效。
Hitachi Vantara全球副总裁兼中国区总经理戴建平透露，VSP 5000系列主要针对国内金融、电信、高端制造、医疗等行业用户，目前已经有国内用户在进行POC测试，用户对VSP 5000系列的反响与评价都非常之高。“Hitachi Vantara国内的中国制造中心（CMC）位于太仓，非常有利于对国内用户的支持与服务。”
Hitachi Vantara：SDS明年强势到来
除了VSP 5000系列之外，Hitachi Vantara还进一步透露了存储产品线的未来规划。Akinobu Shimada表示：“明年，Hitachi Vantara将会推出两个重要的存储产品。第一个是全新的NVMe中端存储产品，另外则是Hitachi Vantara的软件定义存储产品。”
根据Akinobu Shimada介绍，计划于明年推出的全新的NVMe中端存储产品将会针对NVMe SSD进行全面优化，将实现高吞吐量和超低延迟，尤其针对高工作负载领域；还将以更高的性能和容量效率实现智能数据缩减；另外，新产品会进一步增强可靠性、易用性以及数据恢复能力。
Hitachi Vantara全球副总裁兼中国区总经理戴建平
毫无疑问，最近几年存储领域最大的两个趋势就是闪存+软件定义存储（SDS）。软件定义存储被认为是解决存储孤岛、存储管理复杂性以及被锁定等传统存储难题的良剂，将彻底颠覆传统存储格局。软件定义存储市场在经历了四五年的发展之后，涌现出一大批参与市场竞争的存储公司，甚至连一些老牌存储巨头也开始逐步推出SDS的产品选项：支持用户在通用硬件上运行SDS产品，并且可以与传统存储进行打通，做数据级容灾，实现统一数据访问。
在存储领域，Hitachi Vantara对于新技术和新趋势一向都不是走得最快的，但是一定是对技术创新和市场趋势思考最为深入的公司之一，并且每次推出产品的时机总是恰到好处。面对软件定义存储的大趋势，Hitachi Vantara终于决定明年拿出其拳头级产品：Hitachi Software-Defined Storage。
Akinobu Shimada介绍，明年推出的Hitachi Vantara软件定义存储产品将会是首款企业级的软件定义存储解决方案。“Hitachi SDS兼容SVOS，可以与VSP进行对接，自动化、无缝地对系统进行管理。”随着Hitachi Vantara加入到SDS的大潮之中，除了极个别厂商之外，市场主流存储厂商已经全部对软件定义存储进行了布局。
“未来存储主要会是两种形态：一种是软硬一体机，另外一种就是纯软件。从硬件角度来看，软件定义存储使用标准化的X86，而差异化的硬件+软件部门就是企业级软硬件一体化产品。未来，这两种产品之间会有越来越多共享的组件，用户可以根据实际需求来灵活配置和选择。”Akinobu Shimada最后表示道。
深度观察
合适的时间选择合适的技术放在合适的平台，这是Hitachi Vantara存储的一贯风格，用“恰到好处”来形容是再合适不过了。VSP 5000系列跟Hitachi Vantara之前推出的产品类似，它不是最早采用各项新技术的产品，但是它总是在市场对于新技术接纳度最恰当的时候推出，并且基于新技术的创新往往也是走在业界的最前列。
毫无疑问，Hitachi VSP 5000系列的推出，必然会将高端存储的竞争推向新的高度。与此同时，我们也看到了明年Hitachi Vantara软件定义存储等一系列新产品将推出，可以说，Hitachi Vantara存储产品进入了产品更新迭代的高峰期。
Hitachi Vantara storage is one of the areas most advantageous, with the build of improving products, services and solutions to companies around the data, Hitachi Vantara perspective for the future development of storage was also more comprehensive. 2020 will be the year of Hitachi Vantara storage struck the first blow, let us look forward to further its performance.