Hitachi, known primarily for its block-storage platform, today moved to bolster its file storage with upgrades to two NAS platforms and a new software suite for indexing and searching data.
Hitachi's new enterprise network attached storage (NAS) comes from its OEM deal with BlueArc, which rolled out upgrades to its Titan family today, and which Hitachi will brand as the Hitachi high-performance NAS 3000 series. Hitachi also reworked its Essential NAS midrange platform, replacing NAS blades that plugged into its storage area network (SAN) storage systems with a standalone filer or gateway that connects to the Hitachi Adaptable Modular Storage (ASM) midrange or Universal Storage Platform V system.
Hitachi also brought out its Data Discovery Suite, which includes federated search across its high-performance NAS and the Hitachi content archiving platforms, and allows users to restore files without the help of administrators. The federated search comes from FAST, the search vendor that Microsoft is acquiring for US$1.2 billion. Hitachi also added security and search features to the archiving platform, allowing users to encrypt administrative functions and delivering role-based access to search results and a logging of search activities. Hitachi will also allow software vendors to write directly to its high-performance NAS and archiving platform.
Bringing search and retrieval to all
Analyst John Webster of Illuminata said federated search will soon be a "must-have" item for any e-discovery product. He also said Hitachi's new suite should help non-IT personnel find and retrieve email and other files. These personnel can include corporate attorneys, HR staff, the financial department and other users inside an organisation.
"You have to develop interfaces for people outside of IT, not just because you want to bring them into the decision-making process as to how these things are indexed, but [because] as storage administrators you don't want to get involved with all these things," Webster said. "You want the storage person to manage storage, and as a corporate attorney you don't want IT people making decisions that have a legal impact. Hitachi has created a place where both sides can sit down and work together."
Midrange NAS for Hitachi storage
Although the NAS that Hitachi gets from BlueArc is proprietary, its Essential NAS platform is designed to run with Hitachi storage. The new Essential NAS consists of the 1500c with 32 GB of RAM and supports 24,000 concurrent CIFS sessions; the 1300c with 16 GB of RAM and 12,000 concurrent CIFS sessions; and the 1100c with 8 GB of RAM and 5,000 concurrent sessions. The filers and gateways support RAID 6, scale to 512 TB in a two-node cluster and have a new GUI.
Hitachi sees the platform as competitive with the Network Appliance FAS3000 midrange NAS.