A Deepdive on VSP Technology, Command Suite 7 overview, Technology within the VSP, Compa

rison of VSP vs USPV, some architecture discussions and marketing message. Along with this
discussion, also see architecture block diagrams and Videos from the event.

The Announcement
Hitachi and its US Subsidiary Hitachi Data Systems announced its next generation Storage
platform on the 27th of Sept, 2010. It’s proven technology of storage virtualization that surfaced
back in 2007/2008 is being offered in its latest platform code name “VICTORIA” now called VSP
– Virtual Storage Platform.

Though I do not want to speculate too much on the naming, VSP – Virtual Storage Platform is a
relevant name to the technology, But is the name VSP somehow influenced from the name VMAX
(Virtual Matrix)??

The same day HP also announced its P9500 storage platform, which it rebrands from Hitachi with
an HP logo and HP management software. The looks of the HP version of VSP, (P9500) is very
attractive compared to the Hitachi looks.

Wonder the HP – 3Par acquisition will put some pressure on the OEM relationship between HP
and Hitachi Ltd, Japan, since essentially the game would be to compete in the same market space
now. Though to my understanding 3Par doesn’t offer Mainframe support with its storage as
Hitachi does today with FICON.

Though do not get deceived by the name or the looks, the technology that VSP brings to datacent
ers (let me correct, virtual datacenters), is one that is revolutionary and will help customers build
more resilient and efficient environments.

Hitachi VSP at Hitachi Information Forum in Santa Clara, CA

The color of the VSP cabinet is Green, indicating it’s a step forward towards a highly energy
efficient system. As the datacenters are now being completely virtualized with computing
environments and no geographical boundaries, the requirement for storage virtualization becomes
key in being able to keep these environments resilient, scalable, reduced footprint and
manageable.

Victoria was the code name for VSP, during our last visit to HDS at the Geek Day 0.9 in Santa
Clara; we were given some hints about this project. But during our visit to Odawara (Tokyo),
Japan, Hitachi along with its US subsidiary (HDS) gave us a preview of VSP, the underlying
technology and architecture of VSP, a one for all platform Block, File, Object storage. Though we
did not blog about the technology discussion that took place in Japan, they were highly focused
around engineering & architecture aspects of the VSP technology.

VSP brings architectural enhancements, added flexibility, reduced footprint, higher response
times, reduced management, concepts of storage economics, etc natively within the platform.
It is expected VSP will also be the core storage platform on HDS’s UCP (Universal Compute Plat
form) along with Hitachi Symphony Servers, a networking partner (****) and Microsoft
Operations Manager as its orchestration software.
Notes: Nigel Poulton also has a Technical Deepdive Post on VSP, and it is very technical in
nature.
..
The Marketing Message
The core messaging behind the VSP platform includes 3D Scaling, which are Scale Out, Scale
Deep and Scale Up. In the past we have seen blog posts from Hu Yoshida and Michael Hay about
3D Cartesian scaling and affects of it on Storage Platforms.

Some additional pitches from HDS on VSP include being able to provide Virtualized, Automated,
Cloud-Ready and Sustainable platform. Though I necessarily do not understand what Cloud-Rea
dy means. The messaging around Cloud was particularly missing during the Hitachi Information
Forum.

Scale Up refers to the tightly coupled storage environment that is easy to expand and manage.
Scale Out refers to the priority queues, dynamic allocation of resources and system that helps
customers expand as business needs and workloads change.
Scale Deep refers to the Storage Virtualization piece that allows a single VSP system to grow
using external storage through centralized management to more than 255 PB of data.
..
The Technology
Storage Virtualization is a great technology and the benefits of it are being seen around the indus
try today. Manufacturers that did not have this technology a few years ago are all jumping in now.
These days talking to customers about the managed services businesses and understanding the
value storage virtualization brings to the table with technologies like Hitachi USPV, IBM SVC,
HP SVSP, EMC VPLEX and now Hitachi VSP is pretty phenomenal.

On the VSP Hitachi also introduced the SAS II drives 2.5 inch form factor, reducing the footprint
substantially. With a 2048 drive system, customers are typically looking at 6 standard cabinets vs
an EMC VMAX that may utilize 10 cabinets for the same number of drives. The largest drive
supported today on the VSP is 1 TB drive.

Along with the added number of drives to the VSP technology, the Storage Virtualization
technology enables 255 PB’s of Storage behind a VSP or essentially 1TB x 255000 drives in a
single federated storage system.

After the leap by EMC into the Intel Architecture with it enterprise Storage system VMAX earlier
last year, Hitachi is the next storage manufacturer to take advantage of the great engineering work
that is currently being done by Intel for Enterprise computing. Along with the Intel Xeon CPU’s
on the Virtual Storage Processors, Hitachi also uses Hitachi ASIC’s on its controllers for
specialized functions within the VSP.
The number of ports has also been now doubled with VSP for host connectivity, substantially less
power consumption which numbers seem to be in the range of 40% to 50% energy efficient
systems for power savings.
VSP also enables XTS-AES256 bit Encryption of data as its being written to its disk. This
technology more than likely could be a third party plug-in that enables this feature. It will need to
be purchased and enabled through software keys within the VSP.
..
One size fits all (Scale Up, Scale Down)
As you are aware, the USPV came in two flavors, the USPV and the USPVM. If the customer had
invested into a USPVM and as the business demand (applications requirements, IOPS, workloads)
increase, the only option the customer might have is purchase another system. There are similar
offerings from EMC in this space with its VMAX and VMAX-SE frames. The VSP goes back to
the basics of purchase a system and expand it based on your needs without the necessity to
purchase a new system.
..
The Architecture
With the new generation of storage virtualization technology just brought to the market by
Hitachi, there are differences between its predecessor, the USPV.

While the VMAX today offers 128 cores, the VSP starts at 32 Cores, but using Storage
Virtualization, you can add thousands of Cores behind it.
Okay, just an example….
One of the large financial houses that were on the panel at Hitachi Information Forum virtualizes
DMX-4’s behind USPV’s today. If a VSP supports 255000 drives, you can practically have 106
fully populated (2400 drive configured) VMAX systems behind one VSP.
Since manufacturers leverage technology and its inter-workings in different ways, a side-by-side
comparison of VMAX and VSP may not be a fair comparison.
..
Though I want to point out differences between VSP technology and USPV technology relating to
architecture and configurations.
Hitachi VSP vs USPV
VSP Technology USPV Technology

Name VSP: Virtual StorageUSPV: Universal Storage

Platform Platform – Virtualization
Cabinet Min: 1 Cabinet 5 Cabinets
Max: 6 Cabinets (2
Systems)
Drives (2.5 inch Min: 0 Drives (External3.5 inch x 1152 FC drives
SAS) Storage)
Max: 2.5 inch x 2048 SAS
II Drives
Drives (3.5 inch Min: 0 Drives (External3.5 inch x 1152 FC drives
SAS) Storage)
Max: 3.5 inch x 1280 SAS
II Drives
Federation Min: Single System Non
Max: Two Systems tightly
coupled using the Hitachi
Star Fabric over PCIe
External Storage Max: 255 PB Max: 247 PB
(Federation –
Virtualization)
External Storage 1TB x 255000 drives 1TB x 247000 drives
(Federation Drives)
Storage 2 PB’s Internal 1 PB Internal
Processors INTEL Quad CoreASICs
Processors plus ASICs on
FED / BED
Single Controller Min: 1 Cabinet 5 Cabinets
(System) Max: 3 Cabinets
Virtual Storage 4 Cores per Blade NON
Director Blades Min: 2 Blades (8 Cores)
Max: 8 Blades (32 Cores)
FED (Front End Each FED has 8 ports 112 Ports
Directors) Min: 2 FED (16 ports)
Max: 24 FED (192 Cores)
FED Port Speed 8 Gbps 4 Gbps
FED Port types Min: 16 – FC Ports (8GB) 224 – FC (4GB ports),
Max: 192 – FC Ports112 – FC (8GB ports),
(8GB), 112 – FICON
192 FICON Ports
FCoE It may be supported in aNot Supported
short duration but no
 support with Release 1
iSCSI Not Supported Not Supported
Infiniband Not Supported Not Supported
BED (Back End Each BED has 4 SAS links 64 FC loops – Half
Directors) Min: 0 (incase of externalduplex AL loops
Storage)
Max: 64 BED (64 SAS
links – Two federated
VSP’s)
BED Speed 6 Gbps SAS 4 Gbps FC-AL
Cache 32GB or 64GB Adapters 512 GB Cache
Min: 2 (64GB cache)
Max: 16 (1024 GB Cache)
Cache Protection Flash plus Battery Big Batteries
Power Consumption 30KW (one phase) – 102433.2 KW (three phase)
drives
Automated Dynamic LUN Level and Sub LUNLUN Level
Tiering level
Secure MultiTenancy Yes No
VAAI – vStorageAPI Yes (expected late 2010) No
support
Native within UCP Yes No
(expected)
Support for 2.5 inch 2.5 inch and 3.5 inch drives 3.5 inch drives only
drives and/or 3.5
inch drives
SATA drive support Yes Yes
SAS and SATA drive Yes SAS not supported
support – intermix
FC and SATA drive FC not supported Yes
support – intermix
Cache Mirroring Write Cache Mirroring Write Cache Mirroring
Command Suite 7 Supports Supports
SSD Supported Supported
Predecessor USPV USP
Released Sep 2010 2006/2007
Operating System BOS / BOS V BOS / BOS V
LUN based Tiering Yes Yes
Sub LUN based Yes No
Tiering
Page Size 42MB 42MB
Large Batteries No Yes
Drive Formats ??? bytes (expecting 520)??? bytes (expecting 520)
with 8 bytes ECC with 8 bytes ECC
Microcode Runs on Virtual StorageRuns on FED, BED
Processors
Rack System 19 Inch Racks, 42U 19 inch Racks
Airflow Hot – Cold Aisle Hot – Cold Aisle
RAID Mirroring, RAID 5, RAIDMirroring, RAID 5,
6 RAID 6
Cooling Fans Noise Reduction Non
Cooling Fans Speed 3 level speeds for cooling 1 level speed for cooling
Control Memory On Virtual StorageOn FED/BED
Directors
Color of the Cabinet Green Bluish / purple
Purchased as VSP only with ControllersUSPVM only sold with
or with X number of drives Controllers. USPV sold
scalable to 2048 drives with controllers and
drives. USPVM cannot
be upgraded to USPV

..
Cabinet Numbering and Structure
Below are how two VSP systems are coupled together using the Hitachi Star Switch (PCIe
Connect), which enables the expansion of two VSP into a single system scalable to 2048 drives
with 1024 GB of cache.
Cab 12 Cab 11 Cab 1 Cab 0 Cab 1 Cab 2
Drives Drives only Controller 1Controller 2Drives only Drives only
only + Drives + Drives
Each system (VSP Controller Unit) includes
4 x Virtual Storage Director,
8 x Data Cache Adapter,
8 x Front End Directors
4 x Back End Directors
4 x Grid Switch
2 x Drive Chasis in Controller Cabinet
3 x Drive Chasis in each – Drives only Cabinet
Totally 8 Drive Chasis
Each Drive chasis supports 128 drives (SAS)
..
FRONT of the UNIT includes
4 DataCache Adpaters
4 Virtual Storage Directors
4 Data Cache Adapters
Drive bays have FANs in the front of the unit

..

..
BACK of the UNIT includes
4 Front End Directors
2 Back End Directors
4 Data Grid Switches
2 Back End Directors
4 Front End Directors

. …

Virtual Storage Director (The Brains behind the VSP)

There are 4 Virtual Storage Directors in each system
Each Virtual Storage Director has 4 Cores
You can have 16 Cores per system
These processors manage the internal workings of the VSP along with the LUNs, eLUNs,
Addressing, data mapping, virtual partition manager, layered software interface, references, SAS
drives if internal, operational control data memory.
You can expand this to 32 Cores using the PCIe Hitachi Data Switch Grid and 3 additional
cabinets along with a controllers.
..
Control Memory
Serves at L2 Cache
On Virtual Storage Directors
Responsible for managing and maintaining Metadata, mappings, etc
..
Data Cache (Global Cache)
Primarily used as Cache for read/write
Caches data during read operations from BED, similarly caches data from FED for write
operations
Only write data is mirrored in cache (not all data is mirrored like the VMAX)
1024GB of total cache for 2 VSP’s tightly coupled
Read Operations only require one copy of cached data
Cache backed up to onboard Flash drive, reducing the amounts of needed batteries
..
BED / FED and ASICs
Though the Virtual Storage Directors use the Intel Quad Core processors, BED’s and FED’s use
special purpose ASICs for I/O operations, which enables a much better, and flexible data
movement and associated performance

Back End Directors

 Front End Directors

..
Grid Switch
Unlike VMAX which uses Rapid IO for coupling its engines, Hitachi uses its custom designed
Hitachi Star Fabric for tightly coupling its Internal Network to manage data which includes the
Drives, Virtual Storage Directors, Data Cache, BED & FED. This switch also connects two VSP’s
together to form a 6 cabinet, 2048 drive system, which is connected through PCIe at a CPU level.

Dynamic Automated Tiering (Sub LUN Tiering)

Once a disk is assigned to the VSP whether it is native within the VSP or external virtualized
(eLUN), VSP will utilize it for Dynamic Automated Tiering. With the announcement of VSP, HDS
is also including policy based Sub LUN Tiering to this platform, allowing automated data
movements in page size of 42MBs.
Dynamic Automated Tiering is shipping day one with VSP platform. Look at Sub LUN Tiering as
a technology that will move the data real time based on policies setup in the environment. As a
certain page gets a higher heat index, the underlying technology will automatically upgrade the
tier only for that page.
If over time, a certain page falls on the heat index chart, the data is moved to a lower tier. This
technology helps bring more efficiency into environments and does not require having all your
data stored on one tier and helps you save on the use of expensive SSD’s for all your data.
Again this offering as it stands today is very unique in the industry and other vendors are moving
or have a road map focused towards this technology.
..
VMware, SMT, Cloud
Day 1, VSP will not support VAAI, the vStorageAPI for VMware offloading VMware related
tasks locally within Storage controllers bringing much added flexibility to virtualized
environments.
But within the next 45/60 days as first code release rolls out, VAAI support is on the roadmap to
be included as supported on VSP.
Also the VSP claims to have SMT (Secure MultiTenacy) built into the architecture that allows the
system to operate in virtual partitions including cache & host ports. Though still not sure how the
VSP manages to offer audits, resource management etc within an SMT environment. In an SMT
environment, encryption becomes a very viable offering where tenants could have its own
individual key as the VSP natively supports 32 different keys.
..
Some Observations
Very noticeable product differentiation from previous generation Hitachi USPV. Improvements
visible in terms of I/O, tight coupling of systems, SAS drives, drive speeds, port speeds, data
routing. Expansion of external storage to 255PB total, internal drives to 2048 with reduction in
floor space and hot and cold aisle friendly cabinet design shows the move towards the next
generation thought process.
No Total cache mirroring
No VAAI support day 1
Cloud ready message needs to be more refined
The product seems to miss the flashiness
Having the front bezel green in color is a great message.
Color coded cables in the cabinet based on different loops possibly, cable colors are black, grey,
white and are very visible.
..
..
HDS Command Suite 7 for VSP, AMS and USPV
Along with the announcement of the VSP, HDS also announced its next generation SRM tool
Command Suite 7 that enables management of the VSP along with its predecessor USPV & USP,
along lines its mid tier storage platform AMS.
The message driving the Command Suite like the VSP platform is the 3D Cartesian scaling, which
is Manage Up, Manage Out and Manage Deep.
The Command Suite 7 is being compared to solutions from other vendors in this space. Along
with managing the Hitachi systems at an element manager level, Command Suite 7 also offers
heterogeneous storage support for other vendors.
It seems the Command Suite 7 or its elements might end up within the UCP announcement likely
to happen early 2011, which will offer an integrated stack of solution from HDS.
Command Suite 7 is a move towards being able to manage & discover all storage, either
virtualized behind a VSP, non virtualized but in the environment, VMware host, Virtual Machines,
Switches, hypervisor and wants to impact as an infrastructure monitoring tool.
..
Marketing Messaging
Manage Up: References the ability to manage the Hitachi environments that will enable automated
dynamic tiering. Command Suite 7 also boasts the management of 255 PB of storage and 5Million
objects through a single installed instance
Manage Out: Single Solution for management whether is File, Block or Object storage. Along
with the ability to manage VM hosts, VM’s, applications, it also enables the management of
heterogeneous storage. It is not expected to replace your existing native element managers within
your storage environment by Command Suite. It is also expected that within Hitachi storage,
Command Suite 7 will be able to manage the objects without agents being deployed in the
environment.
Manage Deep: Through the use of reporting, single pane of glass view, capacity monitoring,
performance monitoring, Command suite 7 enables a granular management of your storage
environment adding automation reducing operations to accomplish required tasks.
..
Automated Dynamic Tiering
Hitachi introduced Sub LUN level tiering with its VSP and Command Suite 7 offering. The
automated tiering will work either at File / Object or Block levels. Through a policy-based engine
any of the above can be migrated to either a lower or a higher Tier based on SLA’s, performance,
time of the day, application requirements or cost.
With the Sub LUN Tiering, Hitachi allows the movement of its data in 42MB page size, which is a
standard within its storage environments and enables it to be promoted or demoted based on
policy.
The sub-lun level tiering enables only the hot blocks of data or file to be moved rather than an
entire LUN. Also by default all new incoming data gets written to the highest performance tier
first and gradually gets demoted to a lower tier as the activity on it is reduced, again all this can
happens at a LUN level or a sub-LUN level.
..
All Inclusive
The Command Suite 7 ships as a BOS (Basic Operating System) or BOS V (Basic Operating
System V), which includes the following Software modules as part of the offering.
Hitachi Device Manager (BOS)
Hitachi Universal Volume Manager (BOS V)
Hitachi Dynamic Link Manager Advanced (BOS / BOS V)
Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning (BOS / BOS V)
Hitachi Dynamic Tiering (BOS / BOS V)
Hitachi Command Director (BOS / BOS V)
Hitachi Storage Capacity Reporter (BOS / BOS V)
Hitachi Tiered Storage Manager (BOS / BOS V)
Hitachi Tuning Manager (BOS / BOS V)
Hitachi Virtual Server Reporter (BOS / BOS V)
** Have no idea how Command Suite is licensed today, but I would think the pricing for both the
BOS and BOS V are different and possibly would have a Base price plus a per TB of licensing
cost.
..
Security, SMT, Cloud
Along with the discussion above around VSP in SMT and Cloud environment, Command Suite 7
offers additional benefits towards applications being hosted in a cloud environment.
Through the use of industry standard implementations of Active Directory, Radius etc, the storage
managers, administrators, backup admins, etc get authenticated in the environment.
Through the use of Virtual partitioning, resources can be allocated in partitions and only managed
through those with the correct permissions, giving the management of the environment the much-
needed granularity. There is also support for Host port segregation, reporting and management
includes support for provisioning, migration and replication.
For SLA and Reporting, Command Suite 7 has support around Automated Policy based TIering.
There is also support for Hypervisor discovery and reporting along with Charge backs that should
be included in the near future.
Okay that was long!!!
Some More….a discussion with RIck Vanover, Chris Evans and Claus Mikkelsen (Chief Scientist,
HDS) about the VSP Technology and release.