Hitachi Data Systems Offers Storage Reclamation Capabilities

Hitachi Data Systems Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hitachi, has introduced capabilities across software and services to enable customers to reclaim underutilised storage capacity and increase the return on their assets.

Coupled with the recently announced Switch IT On program, the enhancements can help customers improve the efficiency of their existing environments by reclaiming storage capacity across all storage tiers. Specifically, Hitachi Data Systems has announced the following innovative capabilities:

* Zero Page Reclaim – examines volumes of physical capacity on or on storage connected to the Hitachi Universal Storage Platform, returns unused storage blocks back to the storage pool and reclaims storage space

* Automatic Dynamic Rebalancing – when physical volumes are added to expand a Dynamic Provisioning pool of storage, existing virtual volumes in the pool are automatically re-striped across these new physical volumes to rebalance the workload. Hitachi Data Systems automatically rebalances the pages of a virtual volume so they are actively re-striped to take advantage of new disks when the pool is expanded.

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* Support for the Hitachi Adaptable Modular Storage 2000 family – brings the advantages of dynamic provisioning such as cost savings, automated performance optimisation and easy provisioning, to Hitachi midrange customers.

* Storage Reclamation Service – assesses the customer’s environment, plans the new dynamic provisioned environment, migrates the data and reclaims unused capacity with Zero Page Reclaim without disruption to the application, thereby deferring CAPEX and increasing ROA.

Hu Yoshida, chief technology officer, Hitachi Data Systems, said, "Today’s software and services announcement is part of our focus to help our customers do more with less. Dynamic provisioning simplifies operations by replacing the management of hundreds of volumes with the management of one or two pools of virtual capacity. Dynamic provisioning can also reclaim capacity on existing open systems volumes without disruption for cost savings that go straight to the customer’s bottom line."