Hitachi Data Systems enters hyperconverged race

Hitachi Data Systems has entered the hyperconverged race, unleashing its maiden device UCP HC V240 this week in partnership with VMware.

The storage vendor revealed the new hyperconverged box along with a new converged system, the UCP 2000, on Wednesday Australian time.

"We are seeing increasing demand to provide integrated systems that are reliable, trusted, and certified cost-optimal, from core to edge across the enterprise," said HDS solutions and cloud senior director Thomas Trela.

UCP stands for Unified Compute Platform. HDS claimed that the Intel x86-based V240 hyperconverged box could "go from power-on to virtual machine creation in minutes".

The device is also certified as "VMware Virtual SAN-Ready Node", allowing integration with existing vSAN environments - with VMware also providing the hyperconvergence software.

“The combination of Hitachi’s hardware platforms and VMware hyperconverged software offers radically simple, cost-effective path to digital transformation," said VMware director of product marketing Fadi Azhari.

The V240 was ideal for linear scaling in small increments, according to HDS, with the architecture described as "VM-centric pools of capacity that are flexibly consumed, based on VM-level policies that can be changed on demand".

HDS enters a booming hyperconverged market that has traditional vendors like EMC and HPE competing alongside younger specialists such as Nutanix and Simplivity.

The UCP 2000 is pitched as an entry-level converged system, supporting all-flash configurations and integration with VMware vSAN, OpenStack, VMware vRealize, VMware vSphere Storage Policy-Based Management and HDS data protection.

The Tokyo-headquartered Hitachi is a conglomerate that raked in 10,034.3 billion yen (AU$127 billion) of revenue for the year ending 31 March. The group, which includes HDS, employees 335,000 staff internationally.