On June 15th HDS announced it's new converged/unified platform which consists of a optimised bundle of hardware and software. Links over

here and here.

With some very cool things I must admit. HCP (Hitachi Content Platform) together with HDI (Hitachi Data Ingestor) and HDDS (Hitachi Data Discovery Service) is one of those hidden diamonds in the company. If you're looking for an object store based storage solution with full content indexing, search and compliance look no further.

So what has been improved. (It's almost hard to find stuff to improve. :-))

Well basically 3 things:

1. Cloud/WAN optimized Hitachi Content Platform
2. Enhanced administration of tenant/namespaces

Huhhhh, what does that mean. Well, basically it means you can setup a DC in Singapore, Amsterdam and Miami and a-synchronously replicate in a cascaded fashion between the three whilst maintaining data consistency on databases, exchange etc. Very cool.

Some new and enhanced features:

Automatic Application Creation: Leverages your HDVM logical groups and application + business views are automatically generated based on the logical group structure you created.

VMWare ESX host discovery by using vCenter: This removes the need to connect to each ESX host separately. sames you time and provides a more resilient method of collecting this information.

New reports : Chargeback reports plus filesystem inventory reports. See for yourself.

On May 3rd 2011 HDS released new microcode for the VSP which has some really nice enhancements to extend the functionality of HDT (Hitachi Dynamic Tiering).

New gadgets are:

* Support for External Storage – A HDTiering tier may now be used on external volumes. This gives more configuration flexibility over multiple tiers. An external storage tier will be managed the same way as an internal SATA tier. Don't configure a HDT pool with both internal SATA and external storage.

On May 3rd 2011 Hitachi Data Systems announced the availability of support for VMWare's vStorage API with VAAI on the USP-V and USP-VM. The long awaited update that was already available on the VSP and AMS2000 series has now been included in USP-V and USP-VM microcode 60-08-01 and higher.

There has been quit some confusion around the use of fill words with the adoption of the 8G fibre-channel standard. Some admins have reported that they have problems connecting devices on this speed as well as numerous headaches in long-distance replication especially when DWDM/CWDM equipment is involved.

An ordered set is a transmission word used to perform control and signaling functions. There are 3 types of ordered sets defined:
1. Frame delimiters. These identify the start and end of frames.
2. Primitive signals. These are normally used to indicate events or actions (like IDLE)

So you've got everything calculated, done your due diligence on capacity, number of hosts/hba's. Made a best guess on IO profiles, installed and configured your hosts,switches, array etc and everything is running pretty smoothly.

You boss complements you on your work, users are pretty satisfied with response times and your management software hasn't reported any problems.