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Lab Validation Report Hitachi NAS Platform

Efficient, Agile, and Powerful Network Attached Storage

By Tony Palmer and Ginny Roth

January 2011 © 2011, Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Lab Validation: Hitachi NAS Platform 2

© 2011, Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Contents

Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 3 Background ............................................................................................................................................................... 3 Hitachi NAS Platform ................................................................................................................................................ 4

ESG Lab Validation ........................................................................................................................................ 5 Ease of Implementation ........................................................................................................................................... 5 Performance and Scalability ..................................................................................................................................... 9 Enterprise Class Functionality ................................................................................................................................ 13 Reliability and Availability ....................................................................................................................................... 19

ESG Lab Validation Highlights ..................................................................................................................... 23

Issues to Consider ....................................................................................................................................... 23

The Bigger Truth ......................................................................................................................................... 24

Appendix ..................................................................................................................................................... 25

All trademark names are property of their respective companies. Information contained in this publication has been obtained by sources The Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) considers to be reliable but is not warranted by ESG. This publication may contain opinions of ESG, which are subject to change from time to time. This publication is copyrighted by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. Any reproduction or redistribution of this publication, in whole or in part, whether in hard-copy format, electronically, or otherwise to persons not authorized to receive it, without the express consent of the Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc., is in violation of U.S. Copyright law and will be subject to an action for civil damages and, if applicable, criminal prosecution. Should you have any questions, please contact ESG Client Relations at (508) 482.0188.

ESG Lab Reports

The goal of ESG Lab reports is to educate IT professionals about emerging technologies and products in the storage, data management and information security industries. ESG Lab reports are not meant to replace the evaluation process that should be conducted before making purchasing decisions, but rather to provide insight into these emerging technologies. Our objective is to go over some of the more valuable feature/functions of products, show how they can be used to solve real customer problems and identify any areas needing improvement. ESG Lab's expert third-party perspective is based on our own hands-on testing as well as on interviews with customers who use these products in production environments. This ESG Lab report was sponsored by Hitachi Data Systems.



Introduction

The ever-increasing volume of unstructured file data that enterprises need to share, manage, and protect has become a real problem for IT managers—particularly those that need to provide online access to shared files for revenue-generating workflows and processes. This report explores how the Hitachi NAS platform, powered by BlueArc, leverages Hitachi AMS and USP/VSP disk storage systems and tight integration with VMware to create a NAS environment with enterprise class scalability and performance that is easy to deploy and manage.

Background

With IT organizations under constant pressure to find ways to reduce cost, taking a long hard look at the storage environment makes sense. And so today, more than ever, IT is investing in new technology with a clear focus on reducing operational costs. Managing data growth was cited as a top priority by one quarter of those IT managers surveyed in ESG’s 2010 Spending Intentions Survey, putting it among the top five priorities for IT managers and only slightly behind improving security, backup, and network infrastructure.1

Figure 1. Most Important Considerations for Justifying IT Investments

Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, 2010.

The management of file-based, or “unstructured,” content (i.e., multimedia files, Web pages, office productivity documents, etc.) has become one of the most pressing and persistent challenges facing today’s IT organizations. IT managers must store, deliver, and manage large volumes of unstructured data while meeting increasingly demanding service levels. ESG research indicates that the majority of end-users currently using or considering scale-out NAS solutions are most concerned with improving management efficiency, scalability, performance, and availability.2

1 Source: ESG Research Report, 2010 IT Spending Intentions Survey, January 2010.

2 Ibid.

10%

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17%

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0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%

Reduced time-to-market for our products or services

Improved regulatory compliance

Return on investment / speed of payback

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Business process improvement

Reduction in capital costs

Reduction in operational costs

Which of the following considerations do you believe will be most important in justifying IT investments to your organization’s business management team over

the next 12-18 months? (Percent of respondents, three responses accepted)

2009 (N=492)

2010 (N=515)

http://www.hds.com/

http://www.bluearc.com/

http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/2010/01/2010-it-spending-intentions-survey/



Hitachi NAS Platform

Hitachi’s NAS Platform solution is designed to provide enterprise class performance and functionality at a mid-range price. With a focus on ease of use, scalability, performance, and reliability, Hitachi’s NAS makes a compelling solution for customers moving to NAS for storage solutions.

Figure 2. Hitachi NAS Platform

Hitachi NAS Platform provides enterprise level functionality, scalability, and performance:

Simple management interface: Administrators can quickly and easily provide access to shared storage for file services.

File Migration: Provides policy-based file migration across SSD, Fibre Channel, SAS, and SATA drives to reduce storage costs.

Cluster namespace: Up to 16 PB of storage can be managed under a single namespace.

Thin provisioning: Storage can be allocated dynamically, as needed by users and applications.

Unified Multiprotocol support: Hitachi NAS Platform can provide shared access to file systems for Windows and Linux/UNIX users using NFS and CIFS, as well as block access to volumes using iSCSI.

Scalability: Storage can be added on the fly without disruption of services to users or applications.

Capacity Efficient Snapshots: Pointer-based snapshots provide instant recovery of deleted files by users or administrators. Up to 1024 snapshots can be created per file system to provide extremely granular point-in-time recoverability.

Hitach Command Director 6.4: Centralizes management and reporting for Hitachi NAS and Storage Arrays, providing consolidated storage configuration, tier, capacity and performance statistics while establishing application to storage correlation without the use of host based agents.



ESG Lab Validation

ESG Lab performed hands-on evaluation and testing of the Hitachi NAS Platform at Hitachi’s facilities in Santa Clara, CA. Testing was designed to examine enterprise functionality, performance, scalability, ease of implementation, and availability. The test bed, shown in Figure 3, contained a two-node HNAS 3090 cluster attached to an AMS 2500 mid-range storage system with a mix of SAS and SATA drives. A VMware ESX server hosted the test clients and connected via the LAN to the HNAS 3090 system.3

Figure 3. The Hitachi NAS Platform Test Bed

Ease of Implementation

Hitachi’s NAS Platform is managed via an administrative GUI that provides access to all the tasks necessary to set up and configure an enterprise NAS environment. Administrators familiar with Hitachi’s Command Director and Command Suite of SAN management software can use those tools to manage the back end disk if they choose. ESG Lab examined the ease of configuring a working NAS environment using the Hitachi NAS GUI.

ESG Lab Testing

ESG Lab tested the steps involved in setting up file services from beginning to end including configuration of Hitachi back end storage. ESG Lab accessed the GUI using the Firefox web browser pointed at the administrative IP address of the Hitachi NAS system. Figure 4 shows the overview screeen of the GUI. Management tasks are broken into categories based on the type of task. ESG Lab selected the server setup wizard under “server settings” to configure both nodes into a cluster as well as initial storage, network, and sharing parameters.

3 Configuration details are provided in the Appendix.



Figure 4. The Hitachi NAS Patform GUI

First, the server setup wizard prompted the user to configure IP addresses for the two HNAS nodes in the cluster. In addition, ESG Lab was able to configure two Enterprise Virtual Servers (EVSs). EVSs allow administrators to contain fle services in a virtual container, with their own IP addresses and file systems. These virtual servers are not tied to the physical node and can be moved quickly between nodes when needed, for planned and unplanned outages.

Figure 5. Server Setup For Enterprise Virtual Servers



Each EVS was added to a Microsoft Windows Active Directory domain, as shown in Figure 6. Joining the domain makes the EVS a member server and allows authenticated Windows users to access CIFS shares with rights assigned and managed by Windows domain administrators.

Figure 6. Register With an Active Directory Domain

Finally, the server setup wizard allows a file system to be immediately created and shared out to clients to validate functionality and accuracy of the configuration. ESG Lab created a file system called “TestFileSystem” on storage pool “AMS2500_SAS.” Additionally, a CIFS share called “TestShare” and an NFS export called “TestExport” were both created at the root of the new file system. Figure 7 shows a summary of the completed server wizard.

Figure 7. Server Setup Summary

In less than five minutes, ESG Lab configured the Hitachi NAS platform and mounted a CIFS share and NFS export to allow immediate access from Windows and Linux clients.



ESG Lab tested the file shares created for both Windows and Linux by connecting to the CIFS share with a Windows client and creating a file called “ESG.txt.” ESG Lab then mounted the NFS share to the same file system and successfully accessed the same file created by the Windows client, as shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8. File Access With CIFS and NFS Clients

Why This Matters

As enterprise NAS environments grow, the ability to easily and quickly provision and manage those environments is essential if organizations are to provide cost-effective file services to applications and users. With IT departments being asked to do more with fewer resources, providing simple tools for administrators to manage NAS helps save both time and money.

Hitachi’s NAS Platform solution was very quick and easy to set up and manage. ESG Lab set up a two node 3090 NAS cluster and began providing file services to Windows and Linux users in minutes using an integrated server setup wizard that walked the user through all aspects of configuration of an enterprise NAS environment.



Performance and Scalability

Key benefits of the Hitachi NAS Platform are high-levels of aggregate capacity and performance that scale in a near-linear fashion. With a maximum file system size of 256 TB and a total addressable storage space of 16 Petabytes, Hitachi’s NAS Platform can meet the largest scale-out and enterprise capacity requirements while consolidating the number of file systems that need to be managed. Performance can scale independently of disks and vice versa; as additional cluster nodes are added, performance increases with the additional processing power and bandwidth of each node—as additional disks and disk arrays are added, the capacity—and IO performance—of the solution increases as well.

The Hitachi storage family offers enterprise class performance functionality across their entire stroage line, which further enhances performance scalability for the Hitachi NAS platform. Active-active storage controllers enable an AMS 2000 system to behave more like an enterprise class array, providing integrated and automated front-to-back I/O load balancing. Figure 9 compares a traditional active-passive controller architecture with the AMS 2000 family. In the traditional architecture, each controller ‘owns’ a set of LUNs and each server accesses individual LUNs one path at a time. Load balancing is a manual, administrative task where LUNs are distributed between front-end controllers. If I/O is unbalanced, the administrator must manually change ownership of LUNs to the opposite controller until the I/O load is balanced between the two, potentially forcing reconfiguration of the server and SAN to maintain access.

Figure 9. Hitachi Data Systems Active-ActiveStorage Controllers

SPECsfs2008 Results

ESG Lab audited published results of the SPECsfs2008 industry standard benchmark suite maintained by the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC). SPECsfs2008 testing measures file server throughput and response time, providing a standardized method for comparing file server performance across disparate vendor platforms over both the NFS protocol, used by Linux and UNIX servers as well as the CIFS protocol, employed by Windows systems. SPECsfs2008 results summarize the server's capabilities in the context of both the number of file operations that can be handled per second, in addition to the overall latency of the file operations. As of this



writing, Hitachi has published NFS results for single and two node configurations of the Hitachi NAS Platform 3080 and a single node configuration of the Hitachi NAS Platform 3090. ESG Lab evaluated these results as well as a two node cluster configuration of the BlueArc Mercury 100, which is hardware equivalent to the Hitachi NAS 3090, to get a more complete picture of the NFS performance of the Hitachi midrange NAS Platform models.

SPECsfs2008 results are audited by the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation and peer reviewed to ensure consistency and compliance with testing rules. Full configuration data for each SPEC benchmark result are publicly available for download and review.4

Figure 10. SPECsfs2008 NFS v3 Benchmark Results

As seen in Figure 10, the Hitachi NAS Platform 3080 and 3090 clusters published excellent results of 79,028 and 146,076 SPECsfs2008 NFS requests per second with average response times of 3.29 and 3.34 milliseconds respectively. Response time is an extremely important component of SPEC results as this is the delay that an application will experience (and pass on to users) when a storage system is stressed to its limits.

It’s important to note that the Hitachi NAS platform was designed to provide enhanced CIFS performance and compatibility as well, by implementing CIFS at the kernel level and SMB 2.0 compatibility in hardware. As of this writing, Hitachi is planning to submit CIFS results to SPEC.org in the near to medium term.

While SPEC results can be useful for comparison between vendors, it is important to note that not all vendors participate and publish results, and hardware configurations should be carefully evaluated to ensure that compared results are from similarly configured systems. For example, there is a result from another vendor that posts a very close result to the 3090 cluster result above, in both Ops/sec and response time, but using twice as many drives and providing only about 1/3 of the usable capacity.

ESG Lab Testing

Next, ESG Lab tested the capacity scalability of the Hitachi NAS platform by creating a very large file system using the ‘create file system’ wizard. First, the wizard prompts the user to either create a new storage pool or select an existing pool. Storage pools allow administrators to create file systems out of large common pools of storage that stripe across all available disks in the pool. When ‘create a new pool’ is selected, the wizard prompts the user to select system drives to include in the pool, as shown in Figure 11. A system drive is a LUN created from a RAID

4 http://www.spec.org/sfs2008/results/

0

5

10

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20

25

0 20,000 40,000 60,000 80,000 100,000 120,000 140,000

Re

spo

nse

tim

e (

ms)

Throughput (Ops/sec)

Hitachi NAS Platform3080 2-node cluster

79,028 Ops/sec

Hitachi NAS Platform3090 2-node cluster

146,076 Ops/sec

http://www.spec.org/sfs2008/results/



group on the back end storage array and presented to the Hitachi NAS Platform. Five system drives built from 2TB SATA drives were selected.

Figure 11.Creating a Storage Pool

Next, ESG Lab entered the capacity of the new file system, 125.29 TB, the full capacity of the pool. Finally, the details of the new file system were verified in the last step of the wizard, seen in Figure 12.

Figure 12. Creating a 125 TB File System



ESG Lab next created a share, named “ESG_largefs” and mounted the share as a datastore from a VMware vSphere server. Figure 13 shows the 125TB file system in use by VMware. Finally, ESG Lab copied a virtual machine vmdk file to the new data store and booted it up.

Figure 13. The 125 TB File System in use by VMware

Why This Matters

ESG research found that more than half of IT professionals surveyed cited performance concerns as among their largest challenges with networked storage when implementing server virtualization and consolidation.5 A major challenge in this space has been the administrative effort required to manage capacity and performance. With traditional storage systems, administrators must carefully map servers to resources to avoid bottlenecks and balance the load evenly. The ability to host multiple operating systems and applications on very large file systems in a high performance NAS plaform can reduce capital costs for new equipment as well as operational costs associated with care and feeding.

ESG Lab created and shared a 125 TB file system to an existing vSphere environment and in less than ten minutes had virtual machines up and running on the new datastore. ESG Lab validated performance of the Hitachi NAS platform, through examination of the SPECsfs2008 NFS test bed and excellent published results. Hitachi’s USP/VSP and AMS storage systems have proven through previous hands on testing to provide impressively scalable, easy to manage back end storage that provides a robust, reliable platform to support enterprise class file services.

5 Source: ESG Research Report, The Impact of Server Virtualization on Storage, December 2007.

http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/2007/12/the-impact-of-server-virtualization-on-storage/



Enterprise Class Functionality

Hitachi’s NAS Platform offers many features that provide services required by enterprise IT environments. Cluster Namespace allows file systems to be aggregated, allowing clients to map to just one share to access any files they require, across multiple virtual servers and file systems. In addition, storage tiering is available through the Data Migration feature which offers the ability to automatically move data to secondary tiers of storage based on data type or access patterns. As capacity requirements grow, storage can be added automatically with file system dynamic allocation.

ESG Lab Testing

ESG Lab tested the properties of Cluster Namespace by examining the effect of creating a new namespace on eEVS1. Choosing cluster namespace under the File Services in the administrative tool, ESG Lab created a new namespace called “T1” and assigned it to the root of file system FS1_Tier1 on eEVS1. Figure 14 shows the newly created namespace was created under an already existing hierarchy allowing multiple file systems across many virtual servers to be aggregated under this global namespace.

Figure 14. Create Cluster Namespace

After the cluster namespace was created, ESG Lab created a CIFS share called “CNS” starting at Democenter as the root on the eEVS1 virtual server. A Windows client was then used to access the new file structure. As shown in Figure 15, ESG Lab was able to browse to eEVS1 on the network. The cluster namespace “CNS” was presented in the Explorer window, and ESG Lab was able to browse to the directory hierarchy created by Cluster Namespace services.



Figure 15. Client View of Global Namespace

The ability to expand storage capacity without impacting performance and user access to data is essential to providing enterprise class functionality. ESG Lab tested expanding a storage pool to provide increased storage space on demand as needed. Using the administrative tool, ESG Lab selected the details of an existing storage pool, ESG_AMS2500. As shown in Figure 16, the current size of the pool was 50 GB. ESG Lab expanded the pool size by 25 GB to 75 GB.

Figure 16. Expand Storage Pool

After expansion of the storage pool, ESG Lab examined the list of existing pools and was able to observe the new size of 75 GB for pool ESG_AMS2500. Figure 17 shows the newly expanded storage pool.



Figure 17. New Expanded Storage Pool

ESG Lab verified the newly expanded storage from the client perspective by opening a Windows share to the file system. When examining the properties of the share, ESG Lab observed a 75 GB file system.

ESG Lab tested dynamic allocation available in the Hitachi NAS Platform. Dynamic allocation provides thin provisioning of a file system allowing capacity to grow or shrink dynamically as needed, without requiring manual intervention from storage administrators when additional storage is needed. ESG Lab created a file system with a size limit of 15 GB and Auto-Expansion enabled. The default chunk size, which is the interval size at which the file system grows, was set at 5 GB. Using a Windows client, ESG Lab connected to the file system and copied files that exceeded the initial 10 GB size. The copy was not disrupted as the file system grew to 15 GB. ESG Lab verified the new 15 GB file size in the administrative interface.

Dynamic Data Migration automatically migrates files to archive storage based on policies defined by administrators. Policies for storage tiering contain the data migration paths and rules. Data migration paths define the storage locations where files can be migrated to another file system on the same storage array or moved to separate external storage as defined in the migration paths. Rules define the criteria that must be met for the migration to occur. Once a policy is created it can be run immediately or assigned to a schedule.

ESG Lab examined the procedure for creating a rule that defines the criteria used to determine what data to migrate. Figure 18 shows an example of one of the rules templates, which migrates data that has not been accessed in over 90 days. Other templates include: by creation time, file name, path, and user.



Figure 18. Data Migration Rule Template

Figure 19 shows an overview of data migration policies for Hitachi’s NAS Platform. ESG Lab chose to test an existing policy, called “External,” that moved PDFs to external storage attached to the HNAS 3090 via NFS. The policy used an existing rule that defines files with the .pdf extension as the data criteria.

Figure 19. Data Migration Policies

ESG Lab set the schedule for the policy to run immediately, and used a Windows client to connect to the CIFS share on eEVS2. As show in Figure 20, PDF files appear as though they exist on the primary file system. ESG Lab observed that each PDF contained an “x” marker in the icon which indicated that the file had been migrated and all that was left on the primary file system was a stub.



Figure 20. Client View After Migration

ESG Lab verified the file had moved by connecting with an administrative account to the external file system containing the migrated files. ESG Lab confirmed the three PDFs from the primary file system did exist on the secondary storage.

Hitachi Data Discovery for Microsoft SharePoint (HDD-MS) is a plugin for the SharePoint administrative tool that automatically archives selected SharePoint files to the Hitachi Content Platform (HCP). Files moved to the archive are replaced in the SharePoint database by a small stub file that points to the external location of the file. This reduces the size of the SharePoint database while still providing users access to the original content.

ESG Lab examined the HDD-MS plugin functionality, starting by opening the Application Management page of the SharePoint administration tool. As shown in Figure 21, the Data Discovery plugin, along with its tasks, was accessible on the main page. ESG Lab opened the Target Storage Settings first and successfully assigned three SharePoint site collections to the HNAS 3090 test system. Next, ESG Lab selected the Action Schedule for Document Libraries page which contained the schedule and retention policies for document libraries, and successfully created a policy to schedule archives to the HNAS 3090 cluster.



Figure 21. Microsoft SharePoint Integration

Why This Matters

Organizations are susceptible to a wide range of data management hazards, including viruses, human error, hardware failures, power outages, and natural disasters. The downtime associated with these hazards can lead to lost revenue and lost productivity. As a matter of fact, ESG research indicates that 63% of organizations cannot tolerate more than four hours of downtime annually for their most critical applications before experiencing significant revenue loss or other adverse business impact.6

While snapshot and remote replication technologies have become available in recent years as a quick and reliable alternative to recovering from a tape backup, a number of scale-out NAS solutions are missing these valuable capabilities due to the challenges of implementing these features while meeting extreme scalability and performance requirements. The extreme capacity requirements of scale-out NAS solutions are also driving the need for the automated, cost-optimized movement of files between different tiers of storage.

ESG Lab has verified that Hitachi’s NAS Platform supports valuable enterprise-class NAS features including capacity efficient snapshots, tiered storage migration, and tight Microsoft SharePoint integration.

6 Source: ESG Research Report, Data Protection Trends, 2010

http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/2010/04/2010-data-protection-trends/



Reliability and Availability

As the performance and scalability of Hitachi’s NAS Platform improves, more enterprise customers move mission critical applications to that solution. Providing high availability and reliable services is required to meet the demands of those enterprise environments. Hitachi’s NAS solution comes with cluster services for full failover capability of Enterprise Virtual Servers from one node to another. In addition, snapshot technology is provided for backup of file systems allowing for full or partial restores. These NAS components, coupled with Active-Active load balancing provided by the AMS 2000 family of storage, offers the elements required to provide a complete high availability solution to satisfy mission critical applications.

Figure 22. Reliability Components

ESG Lab Testing

ESG Lab tested the snapshot and failover capabilities of the Hitachi NAS solution. The procedure to create a snapshot was straightforward and quick to set up. ESG Lab chose a test file system, VMware_fs, and examined the options for performing snapshots. Snapshots can be created manually or scheduled. They can also be executed based on rules defined by the administrator. Figure 23 illustrates the options available for scheduling snapshots. Retention rules can also be configured to define how many snapshots will be retained and for how long.

Figure 23. Snapshot Schedule



ESG Lab chose to test the snapshot function by manually creating a snapshot from the management console. File system “VMware_fs” was chosen by ESG Lab for the snapshot, and the operation completed instantaneously. Figure 24 shows the information, including the name, for the newly created snapshot.

Figure 24. Snapshot Created

After a successful snapshot was performed, ESG Lab tested the ability to restore individual files from the snapshot. ESG Lab connected to the CIFS share that contained the newly created snapshot. As shown in Figure 25, two files were deleted from the current directory. In a Windows client, snapshots are contained in a hidden directory called ~snapshot under the root of the file system. ESG Lab was able to browse to and locate the manual snapshot created. The two deleted files were located in the snapshot directory, and ESG Lab was able to recover the files to the current directory.

Figure 25. Snapshot View From Client



ESG Lab tested failover capabilities by performing a manual migration of a virtual server from one NAS node to another. Figure 26 shows the current EVS mappings to the NAS nodes with both eEVS1 and eEVS2 mapped to HitachiNAS-1. ESG Lab chose to migrate eEVS1 back to its preferred node, HitachiNAS-2.

Figure 26. EVS Before Migration

Before starting the migration, ESG Lab opened a Linux client and mapped to an NFS share on eEVS1. ESG Lab started a copy of a large file from the client to the mapped drive on eEVS1. As the copy progressed, ESG Lab started the manual migration of the virtual server. The file copy continued uninterrupted as the virtual server was moved and completed shortly after the server migration finished. ESG Lab checked the EVS migration results, shown in Figure 27, and observed eEVS1 mapped to its preferred node, HitachiNAS-2.

Figure 27. EVS After Migration



Why This Matters

As companies deploy more business critical applications in virtualized environments, using NAS to support these environments necessitates a high level of availability, and reliability is paramount for business continuity. A disruption in vital business processes comes at a high cost. Hitachi’s NAS Platform combines Hitachi’s robust storage infrastructure with clustered file services, non-disruptive upgrades, and snapshot backup and recovery features to ensure persistent access to file services.

ESG Lab tested the high availability performance of cluster services and snapshot functions. File services were failed over across cluster nodes with no disruption to services for users and applications. Snapshots were used to perform user-initiated recovery of files, quickly and easily.



ESG Lab Validation Highlights

The Hitachi NAS Platform GUI provided an easy to use interface, incorporating wizards to clearly guide users through complex tasks.

The server setup wizard provided a simple first time setup, guiding an administrator though initial system configuration and providing file services to users and applications in under 5 minutes.

ESG was able to create and export a 125TB file system in just a few minutes, using the file system to host virtual machines in a VMware vSphere environment.

Excellent performance validated via SPECsfs 2008 NFS published results. Automatic Data Migration policies were used to automatically and transparently move data to second tier

storage based on data rules and schedules. Storage was automatically managed at the file system and storage pool level, providing dynamic

provisioning of storage resources. File systems grew automatically as demand for storage increased. Hitachi Command Director provided a single console to view and report the health and performance of

both Hitachi NAS nodes and AMS2000 storage arrays.

Issues to Consider

While automated file migration provides a way for data to be moved to secondary tiers of storage based on data type or access patterns, automatic migration was a one way function at the time of these tests. While not tested for this report, the Hitachi NAS 7.0 firmware release provides “Policy-based Recall” which automatically migrates data from secondary tiers back to primary storage.

While snapshot services were found to be robust and efficient, integration with Microsoft VSS services was not available at the time of testing. The Hitachi NAS 7.0 firmware release provides integration with Windows for file level recovery and full shapshot rollback, as well as VSS provider functionality for iSCSI environments.



The Bigger Truth

The massive growth of file data flooding data centers today can overwhelm traditional NAS solutions and administrators. The Hitachi NAS platform offers scale beyond that which can be attained with traditional NAS solutions: users can start small with a one-node system and affordable midrange storage and grow to a massively parallel system with Enterprise class USP/VSP arrays. The performance ceiling is raised by adding more nodes to the cluster and capacity is increased by adding more storage, enabling “just-in-time” scalability.

Hitachi’s NAS offering combines the field-proven performance and scalability of Hitachi midrange AMS and enterprise-class USP/VSP storage with the Hitachi NAS platform, powered by BlueArc, to cost-effectively address both capacity and performance NAS challenges. What’s more, it’s surprisingly simple to deploy. ESG Lab was accessing files less than five minutes after getting started. It was also easy to manage via an intuitive graphical user interface.

Additionally, it supports enterprise-class data management and availability features—ESG Lab tested multi-protocol file access, snapshots, and automated online migration between different tiers of storage. Last, but not least, it is fault tolerant and fast.

More and more enterprises are taking a serious look at NAS solutions that scale out as well as up, like the Hitachi NAS platform—clustered scale-out solutions are going mainstream. But commercial enterprises are not just interested in the increased capacity and bandwidth scale-out solutions bring to the table. Users are expecting enterprise class usability, availability, and performance. Hitachi delivers on all three counts.

ESG Lab validated through hands on testing that the Hitachi NAS Platform delivers the scalability and performance required to meet the needs of a real-world environment running business applications within a VMware vSphere enabled virtual infrastructure.

Using an enterprise centric approach that is fault tolerant and centrally managed, Hitachi has harnessed the field-proven power of Hitachi’s robust storage infrastructure to BlueArc’s SiliconFS to create an enterprise-class NAS solution that is extremely scalable, extremely fast, and extremely easy to deploy and manage.



Appendix

Table 1. ESG Lab Test Bed

Hitachi HNAS Test Bed

Hitachi NAS Platform 3090 2x 10GbE interfaces

Version 6.5

HDS AMS 2500 – 105x 146 GB SAS drives

74x 2 TB SATA drives 4x 4 Gb FC connections

Firmware 0852/A-M

2x Brocade 5000 32 port 4 Gb FC switches Firmware 5.2.1

Hitachi Command Director (aka Hitachi Storage Command Portal)

Version 6.4

VMware vSphere

VMware ESXi 4 Servers – 2x Dell PowerEdge R905

4x Quad core Opteron CPU, 64 GB RAM 2x QLogic 2462 4 Gb/sec FC HBA

Integrated GbE NIC

Guest Operating Systems: RedHat Enterprise Linux 5 (64 bit)

MS Windows Server 2008 SharePoint 2008

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Lab Validation Report - infostor.com · Lab Validation Report Hitachi NAS Platform Efficient, ... leverages Hitachi AMS and USP/VSP disk storage systems and tight ... In the traditional