Hitachi Content Platform (HCP)

"The software of Hitachi Content Platform serves as the catalyst of conversion of business using digital technologies, – Peter Sjoberg, the technical director of Hitachi Data Systems of cloud and mobile computing noted. – This not just object storage, is the integrated complex of object storage systems, cloud file gateways and means of joint work for end users. Thanks to such feature set of the company, the using HCP, receive control over data and take from them advantages to business in huge scales. The solution also helps to achieve necessary normative and legal compliances, allows to create private, public and hybrid cloud infrastructures and supports IoT technologies, Web 2.0 and projects on analytics of Big Data".

2020: Support of unstructured workloads

On July 20, 2020 the company Hitachi Vantara announced expansion Hitachi of the Content Platform (HCP) platform – cloud the software solution for storages of object data allowing to integrate producers data, users applications and the device in a unified environment. Thanks to nodes based on a flash memory of HCP will be able to support unstructured workloads. Additional functionality will provide capacity growth at data transmission on to the protocol Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) almost by 3.4 times that can lead to cost reduction for 34%, claims in Hitachi Vantara.

Architecture of Hitachi Content Platform

"CIOs and IT specialists do not need any more object storages only for data which storage is set by regulatory requirements, the contemporary records given the second level or "cold" data. They consider such storages in terms of additional options of application and support of high-performance workloads. These organizations also estimate a possibility of implementation of the distributed file solutions providing necessary scalability and performance for ensuring work of exacting computing applications, the AI systems and analytics of real time", 'Amita Potnis, the director of research of the infrastructure systems of IDC company noted'

According to the developer, the updated nodes of DWH will provide performance improvement of read operations and record three times, and at the same time will allow to triple capacity for rack space in comparison with the previous generation. It, according to the developer, is important in conditions when traditional NAS, the main and cloud workloads gradually pass into object storages because of need for performance improvement.

The HCP expansion will allow customers to turn quicker data into knowledge, valuable to business, to increase the income generated thanks to unstructured data and to increase performance of applications, developing a digital medium for users.

2018: Expansion of abilities to manage data

On October 1, 2018 Hitachi Vantara, the subsidiary company Hitachi, Ltd., announced the forthcoming updating of a line of solutions of Hitachi Content Platform (HCP). Updates are intended to expand abilities to manage with data, to provide optimization of cloud infrastructure and to upgrade services for work with files. It will help the organizations to manage data and to protect them in a multicloud environment which becomes harder and harder.

HCP represents the platform for creation of object storage which provides intellectual data management as a key resource of business. At the same time HCP uses the built-in security aids for reduction of risk of violation of the law. These updates expand possibilities of a line of HCP and increase productivity of business due to providing an information access to users in the managed safe mode at simultaneous cost reduction, work-related in private cloud and multicloud environments.

The additional opportunities on data management reducing risks in multicloud environments

HCP provides protection of sensitive data against malicious damage and distortions using the appeared functions on data management:

• Observance of regulatory requirements in a public cloud. Functions of ensuring compliance to regulatory requirements of the HCP platform, such as preserving and exclusive removal, allow to apply Amazon S3 expansions to the applied data entered through the application programming interface (API) of Amazon S3.
• Improvements regarding preserving. The improved preserving on the basis of events providing observance of strict requirements, such as DoD 5015.02-STD – Electronic Records Management and SEC17a.
• Replication before distribution by levels. Enhanced capabilities of automatic distribution by levels provide the global level of data protection covering a set of platforms, increase durability of data, optimize capacity and reduce costs.
• Protection against cyberthreats. HCP regularly undergoes procedures of substantive audit of security and supports continuous, incremental updates for protection against the appearing threats.

Optimization for work in a cloud: cost reduction at simultaneous increase in income

HCP provides the cloud storage of objects optimal in terms of costs and having such performance level and scalabilities which allows the organizations to consolidate a set of different applications within one platform. It gives to customers the chance to perform centralization of data, to make their accounting and to define the best storage location – internal systems and/or cloud infrastructure – proceeding from such criteria as cost, sensitivity or value of data. HCP allows to reduce costs to 60% in comparison with use of only one public cloud.

Are among the announced innovations:

• Full compatibility with cloud infrastructure. HCP has a bigger compatibility with the application programming interface (API) of Amazon S3 which is the industry standard. Thanks to this HCP supports applied requirements and constantly extending ecosystem of applications from independent software providers (ISV). The organizations can use HCP in combination with the advanced systems for processing of Big Data. It gives the chance to significantly reduce costs due to carrying out of contents from storage of the first level.
• Flexible options of installation. In addition to purely program and hardware-software models of installation, HCP supports installation in the vSAN environment from VMware. It gives the chance to use this platform in hyper convergent environments, such as Unified Compute Platform (UCP) from Hitachi Vantara, for ensuring high availability, performance and reliability.
• The updated possibilities of monitoring of performance. Using Hitachi Content Monitor of the organization can aggregate and visualize system indicators of different clusters of HCP on the configured panels. This important help for the companies which should manage large volumes of data and to use the consolidated information for maintenance of optimal performance.

Upgrade of file services on terminal units for the purpose of work performance improvement

The last improvements of a line of Hitachi Content Platform allow customers to organize better management and data protection in a multicloud environment and at the same time helps everywhere – from a data processing center to end users – to increase labor productivity. Requirements of the organizations to cloud storages, management and ensuring data availability quickly grow. The cloud platform for data storage of HCP having high adaptivity and scalability at optimal costs will help the companies to arrange data, to take information in the form useful to business, and it is safe to exchange data with employees worldwide. Linda Xu, marketing vice president of new solutions and cloud services of Hitachi Vantara

Updates of Hitachi Content Platform Anywhere (HCP Anywhere) expand borders of digital space, providing a possibility of application of services of file synchronization on terminal units. HCP Anywhere allows the organizations to replace traditional file servers with cloud file storages or house directories. It gives the chance to cover services of shared access to files not only reference data processing centers, but also remote offices, branches and devices of users. The added features for HCP Anywhere improve quality of joint work and increase labor productivity and also provide additional data protection on a case of failure of devices, the user errors and the attacks for the purpose of racketing (ransomware).

The provided version of HCP Anywhere includes the following improvements:

* Cloud file services

The updated file services HCP Anywhere Edge introduce technology of synchronization HCP Anywhere for the user devices on the level of remote offices and branches. HCP Anywhere Edge are a version of the gateway for the cloud storage which helps to pick up correctly a configuration and to consolidate the file servers servicing terminal units due to storage in local storage of only actively used data at a simultaneous possibility of easy access to large volumes of the data stored in private or hybrid clouds of HCP in data processing centers of customers.

* Full compatibility with Microsoft Windows

File services HCP Anywhere Edge provide a full support Microsoft Windows of the SMB 2 and 3 protocols. It allows to reduce overhead costs of management and it is essential to simplify process integration, applications, testings and supports of fresh updates of Microsoft Windows.

* Protection of file data

HCP Anywhere Edge provides expanded data protection and easy recovery after the failures caused by the user errors, failures of devices and cyber attacks, such as attacks for the purpose of redemption racketing, saving at the same time from need of use of traditional backup procedures. Besides, this platform simplifies and centralizes data protection and management of them for multi-user and terminal units, allowing to organize a uniform control node.

2017: Updating

During a digital era the "traditional" organizations start conversions to save competitiveness near the new digital companies. Cloud computing can give them necessary flexibility and maneuverability. The solutions HCP allow to increase the available capacity of storage to 400% for a cluster, and data storage node capacity for 67%, thanks to drives with a capacity of 10 Tbyte. Besides, these solutions allow to increase twice the maximum quantity of objects on each node and also offer a reduced model of licensing of the software. Thanks to it business has an opportunity more than five times to reduce costs for storage systems that will allow to save more than 60% of TCO in comparison with a public cloud for corporate applications.

The solution portfolio of HCP represents the complete solution which, first of all, allows business to refuse the isolated storages. In addition, these solutions automate joint work of users with content, provide compliance to requirements of regulating authorities and to requirements to corporate management. It is important that solutions of a line of HCP qualitatively protect confidential data and simplify management within a private, hybrid or multicloud environment. The innovation search and analytical opportunities, in turn, allow the companies to receive valuable unique data on the market and the clients.

Entering a lineup of HCP the following solutions:

• HCP Anywhere for synchronization, sharing and ensuring protection of file data;
• Hitachi Data Ingestor (HDI) is the scalable gateway to cloud file storages;
• Hitachi Content Intelligence is the tool for fast extraction of analytics from data warehouses.

For modern IT environments of permanent availability of HCP offers a number of improvements in terms of reliability, to availability, security and flexibility. For configurations with several objects support of geographically distributed excess coding (Erasure Coding) is added to HCP that reduces volumes of service data and total cost of ownership (TCO) and also provides faster recovery of information. Recovery of the damaged files can be made from storages in different geographical regions instead of use of the platforms which are completely duplicating each other. It allows to provide data availability in case of failures.

Depending on requirements of business and requirements to performance the choice between Erasure Coding technology and data protection using RAID is offered to users of HCP. The new version increases convenience of service of IT systems and a possibility of monitoring even more. To provide to customers additional flexibility, KVM Hypervisor was added to the structure of HCP – it in addition reduces total cost of ownership and expands possibilities of the software-defined solution. Can offer business with especially high requirements to security of HCP the selected port of management allowing to isolate the user traffic and traffic of administration.

2016: Hitachi Content Intelligence

On November 16, 2016 Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) announced release of Hitachi Content Intelligence, addition to a solution portfolio of Hitachi Content Platform (HCP).

Hitachi Content Intelligence is focused on processing of a large number of data, finding relevant and valuable information in sources necessary for business. Aggregation of multistructured data allows the solution to reveal valuable fragments of information, to manage data and to distribute data in the organization depending on their value for business.

By means of Hitachi Content Intelligence technology of the organization have an opportunity:

• Accelerate process of extraction of useful information, thanks to the automated instruments of classification, enrichment and categorization of all data which the organization has.
• Minimize the risks for business and a possibility of disclosure of confidential information connected with unavailability, theft and loss of data.
• Optimize the operating infrastructure due to detection of seldom queried data and their automatic movement of the level of object storage with lower cost.
• Implement procedures of self-service and instruments of data analysis, intuitive, completely ready to use, supporting the detailed requests and natural language queries at all levels of the organization.
• Increase efficiency of employees due to creation of the standardized, universal process of information search on the scale of all IT infrastructure.

Data represent an asset of strategic importance for the modern enterprises. Capability provide access for the necessary people to the necessary information in due time purchases the extreme importance for preserving of company competitiveness in the market. Hitachi Content Intelligence helps customers to organize and transform data which are owned by the organization, in the invaluable tool for business. Scott Baker, the senior director of Hitachi Data Systems on new technologies

"The complex of the solutions HDS not only has the growing ecosystem of technology partners, but also holds unique position on roar of object-oriented storage systems, – Amita Potnis, the head of researches in the field of file and object storage systems of IDC company considers, – the HCP Platform from HDS is set more than at 1700 customers. It is focused on emerging markets – for example, [[Internet of Things of Internet of Things (IoT)|[[Internet of Things of Internet of Things (IoT)|[[Internet of Things of Internet of Things (IoT)|Internet of Things (IoT)]]]]]], Web 2.0 systems and means of analytics – and surely goes to success in this sphere". Also Amita Potnis emphasized that recent initiatives of HDS in the field of digital transformation of business confirm the growing competitiveness of solutions of the company. She considers that the complex of the solutions HCP is the technology development of the future capable to cope with growth of amounts of data and for reasonable price to provide scalable characteristics of performance and capacity for support of workloads of modern business.

According to the report of IDC MarketScape, "one of strengths of HDS is the ecosystem of the products created by the company on the basis of the solution HCP using HCP Anywhere and Hitachi Data Ingestor. The continuing efforts of HDS aimed at the development of the solutions allowed not only to create a separate ecosystem of products, but also to offer customers different options of configurations and opportunities of distribution of data on storage levels. An opportunity to freely combine program or hardware nodes of access (nodes of G type) with economic nodes of storage (nodes of S type) and also to place data at the level of a public cloud has huge value for coincidence tuning of solutions according to needs of end users. Acquisition of Pentaho company, developer of software tools of the business analysis, will allow HDS to enter new emerging markets: market of the solutions for the Internet of things, systems of analytics and social innovations".

2015

Hitachi Content Platform S10

On January 21, 2015 the Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) corporation submitted the new^[1]expanding hybrid architecture of HDS, adding to it the economic level of storage.

As a part of Hitachi Content Platform integrated solutions for private and hybrid cloud infrastructures. The Openstack components which are not requiring backup cloud gateways with flexible scaling, means of synchronization and file sharing and also a possibility of mobile access to the corporate general file NAS resources on the basis of uniform architecture. The platform helps to create independently private and hybrid cloud infrastructures.

According to developers, Hitachi Content Platform:

• increases investment soundness in cloud infrastructures, allowing to provide cloud services, optimal in terms of costs, due to use of the technologies and services focused on benefits for business;
• allows to integrate within hybrid cloud computing architectures business applications for the environments of data storage located in the territory of the company and beyond its limits, providing at the same time flexible scaling;
• expands possibilities of employees at the expense of tools for mobile work, allowing to increase productivity and competitiveness thanks to the secure unified access to cloud and corporate data.

Hitachi Content Platform S10 is the solution, ready to work, using hard drives a high-capacity consumer class and technology of data protection Erasure Coding for ensuring long-term protection at the minimum costs. Now content it is possible it is transparent to move on S10 platform, using functionality of HCP for adaptive distribution of data on levels in "cloud" — the organizations have an opportunity to place content on open cloud services at the choice, such as cloud service of Hitachi for archiving of content Amazon S3 Microsoft Azure, Verizon Cloud and Google Cloud Storage.

The new software version of HCP helps the organizations to expand a cloud ecosystem due to transparent integration of HCP into the OpenStack environment and to involve broad functionality of HCP as a part of the general OpenStack system.

Hitachi Content Platform, 2015

Hitachi Content Platform S30

On November 6, 2015 the company Hitachi Data Systems Corporation (HDS) announced release of HCP S30 platform. The nodal server architecture of HCP G provides to the companies the increased flexibility, allowing to adapt workloads to the changing requirements concerning performance and scalability storage systems (DWH).

The solution helps the companies to use SSD drives for high-performance loadings.

Using Hitachi Content Platform S30 customers will have an opportunity with the minimum costs to manage as risks of violation of security and inviolability of data, and threats of non-compliance with the regulatory requirements connected with use of cloud storages.

The solution represents scalable DWH of high density. It expands the existing hybrid architecture of HDS, adding to it the economic level of storage with the built-in Erasure Coding technology.

Hitachi Content Platform 7.2

On November 6, 2015 the Hitachi Data Systems Corporation (HDS) company announced upgrade of the platform and release of the version of Hitachi Content Platform 7.2.

The platform guarantees comprehensive control of data, helping the enterprises to organize data access, their sharing more effectively.

What is Hitachi Content Platform? (2015)

The HCP 7.2 platform provides support of server nodes and nodes of storage HCP S30 and HCP G10, solid state drives. It also provides for HCP a possibility of write-through in DWH of series S, allowing customers to reduce total cost of ownership due to use of the equipment of series S instead of directly connected storage arrays.

2013

New version

As a part of the new version of HCP there is a number of considerable improvements:

• Support of cloud applicaions – customers can use advantages of a new ecosystem of the cloud applicaions created for Amazon S3 service still performing safe data storage in the territory of the organization.
• Intellectual management of metadata – allows to appoint to files of different users and applications tags with certain metadata to simplify problems of intellectual automation, management and search and to provide support of analytics.
• Support of technologies of VMware – allows customers to use in combination with VMware for work of HCP the server platform at the choice.
• Distribution of data on levels in external systems of storage – customers can involve intellectual opportunities of HCP even if data are stored in other environments.

2010

Hitachi Content Platform (HCP) v4

The Hitachi Data Systems Corporation (HDS) company, Hitachi affiliated enterprise, announced an exit in November, 2010 of the integrated Hitachi Content Platform (HCP) v4 and Hitachi Data Ingestor (HDI) technologies intended for simplification and acceleration of process of implementation of "cloud" infrastructures. Both offered a product are designed to help providers of "cloud" services and to departments of IT to design and construct own infrastructure for storage, search and data protection with a minimum of costs and without interruption of work of users.

The product Hitachi Content Platform (HCP) v4 which forms a basis of a line of solutions of Hitachi for "cloud" infrastructures represents the object storage with enhanced capabilities providing the intelligent mechanism of data storage focused on content. The solution allows to hide from the consumer of a part of implementation of underlying infrastructure of storage system and offers universal representation of objects both for users, and for applications. According to developers, HCP reduces the need for additional storages for storage of unstructured content. Thanks to high scalability, presence of several levels of storage, compatibility, support of the protected work in the multi-user environment and an opportunity to set separate attributes for each user clients can organize support of a broad spectrum of applications within a uniform cluster.

Hitachi Content Platform v4 saves from need of backup on tape libraries and includes the built-in means of diversity of costs on divisions. Integration of this platform into the new Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform platform opens ample opportunities for scaling and virtualization, emphasized in HDS. Adaptation of this platform to the existing, legacy infrastructures is performed using the new product Hitachi Data Ingestor which allows to prolong service life and to increase payback of the existing investments of the client. Besides, this system supports close integration with the advanced software for archiving, such as Hitachi Data Protection Suite, powered by Commvault and Symantec EnterpriseVault.

Among features of HCP v4 it is also possible to note: data transfer in new storage as required or obsolescence of the hardware without interruption of the operating services; the means of data compression, control of versions and removal of content on a basis the politician helping to provide more effective use of storage; the enhanced capabilities of replication providing higher level of data protection and helping to manage placement of content.

In turn, the product of Hitachi Data Ingestor (HDI) represents new "adapter" for the Hitachi Content Platform platform which can be placed at remote offices, branches or on platforms for a hosting of public "cloud" services. It supports integration with HCP storage with a capacity of 40 petabyte (PBytes) and also with new features of data management and storage, providing almost boundless opportunities of data storage in distributed environment without the need for their backup, says HDS.

Hitachi Data Ingestor provides transparent connection to the HCP platform and simplifies implementation of "cloud" infrastructures thanks to standard mechanisms of file access – from NFS to CIFS – to content stored by the platform. HDI acts as an intellectual cache of the data warehouse for the distributed platforms placed on customer premise. He allows to adapt users and the annex to work with the "cloud" or centralized Hitachi Content Platform platform. Using HDI providers of "cloud" services can create the universal infrastructures capable to satisfy requests of the most different categories of clients.

At the same time, Hitachi Data Ingestor: executes data transfer in the HCP system and saves the local link to content; uses the general pool of resources of storage without any damage to security, controllability or security; measures extent of utilization of storage for diversity of costs between divisions, managements of quotas and reportings; supports authentication using the Active Directory and LDAP; provides a local cache for fast extraction of often required content.

Notes