Enhancements to Hitachi Data Ingestor
by Miki Sandorfi on Dec 14, 2011
A couple of months ago, we announced the broader HDS vision of Infrastructure, Content, and Information Cloud (see the post here and our press release). Today we announced the newest version of the Hitachi Data Ingestor (HDI) which will help organizations begin bridging between simple Infrastructure Clouds towards the Content Cloud.
With this newest release of HDI (see the press release), coupled with the power of the Hitachi Content Platform, we are arming customers with the necessary technology to free their information and take a step into the Content Cloud. As we outlined before, the key capabilities of the Content Cloud include information mobility and intelligence – putting the right data in the right place, at the right time, whilst empowering user control. This new version of HDI supports this vision in several ways.
First, HDI v3.0 includes technology that permits dynamic dispersion and sharing of data. Based on chosen policies, information written into one HDI (via standard NFS or CIFS) can automatically and transparently become available at multiple remote HDI instances. Imagine, for instance, wanting to distribute the new 20MB corporate presentation to each of many regional offices. Instead of emailing it (propagating hundreds if not thousands of copies – yuck) or putting it on SharePoint (slow downloads), you can instead drop it onto the “corporate drive”. This action will cause the other inter-connected HDIs to “see” that new content is available, and based on access it will be cached close to the users who want to get the new presentation (much faster, simple and seamless).
Next, HDI places control at the fingertips of users. Because by design and construction, a cloud built with HCP and HDI is backup free, placing tools in the hands of users to manage their own data is imperative. HCP already affords many controls for managing where data is stored, replicated, versioned, retained, and disposed. Now HDI passes this richness directly onto users via self directed recovery of prior stored versions or recovery of deleted content. Unlike other NAS technologies, HDI natively couples with the power of object-based management affording unparalleled granular access and control.
Finally, HDI includes some clever technology that helps customers adopt cloud in a very seamless fashion. By directly managing the transition of data non-disruptively from legacy NAS devices into the cloud-attached HDI, making the transition to cloud-based storage has never been easier. During the transition, all data remains available and once the transition completes, the richness of the Hitachi solution becomes fully available – bottom-less, backup-free file sharing that looks “legacy” NFS or CIFS to users and applications, but with the power of cloud underneath.
Take a look at the products in more detail for HDI and for HCP.
Comments (2 )
Hu Yoshida >> Blog Archive >> HDI 3.0: Edge-to-Core with Content Sharing on 15 Dec 2011 at 4:04 pm
[...] Also, check out Miki Sandorfi’s take on HDI: Enhancements to Hitachi Data Ingestor [...]
John Nicholson on 20 Dec 2011 at 10:24 pm
Interesting advantages. While we are seeing a centralization of files (VDI) the replication is still useful for replication between regional data centers where VDI is dispersed for latency reasons, and this makes things even more affordable as the smaller offices are more likely to be able to share an HDI as they are the first ones to move to virtual desktops. Ultimately its the data management policies that I find the most exciting option with HDI. I’m curious about policies where some markets like healthcare where data being pulled from archive will have relevancy to other files being pulled out at the same time also (When a patients files are accessed again after they come back) if there is a way to leverage API’s or just file and data grouping to make subsequent access to a patients dataset quickly. HSM is a powerful technology, but there are a lot of limits to automatic data movement, where infrequent data needs to be pulled in quicker, or based on scheduals or triggers moved up.
