Overview

Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning software is thin provisioning software that provides virtual storage capacity. It simplifies application storage provisioning by allowing administrators to draw from a central virtual pool without immediately adding physical disks. When an application requires more storage capacity, the storage system automatically allocates the necessary physical storage. This just-in-time method of provisioning decouples the provisioning of storage to an application from the physical addition of capacity to the storage system. This improves storage usage rates, tunes the entire storage system for greater efficiency, reduces the time administrators spend provisioning new storage and improves application availability by reducing the downtime involved in provisioning.

• Achieve higher rates of storage utilization with nondisruptive storage additions as needed
• Receive proactive alerts before more physical storage is required
• Transparently spread individual I/O workloads across multiple physical disks to balance workloads, eliminate bottlenecks and reduce costs of managing performance and capacity
• Automatically performance tune all hosted applications for operational efficiency (via I/O workload balancing)

Features

• Eliminates traditional complexity of “per application” provisioning of storage volumes by allowing administrator to draw from a virtual pool without immediately adding physical disks
• De-couples physical resource provisioning from application provisioning, so one administrator can manage more terabytes of data
• Monitors storage resources and alerts administrators when more storage is needed
• Reduces the downtime (planned outages) required to increase physical disk capacity and change the application server and storage system configurations
• Offers automatic application I/O workload balancing by spreading many I/O workloads across multiple physical volumes
• Gives you the ability to configure all anticipated storage across multiple applications and purchase fewer physical disks than with conventional provisioning techniques
• Can be used with internal and externally attached heterogeneous storage on Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, Hitachi Universal Storage Platform V and USP VM
• Provides environmental savings in floor space, power and cooling by increasing utilization of existing disks and deferring storage purchases
• Offers compatibility with all replication products on Virtual Storage Platform, Universal Storage Platform V and USP VM
• Is compatible with ShadowImage® and TrueCopy® software on Hitachi Adaptable Modular Storage 2000 family
• Replicates only used portions of volumes for savings in bandwidth and licensing fees

Benefits

• Reduce storage management operating costs
• Reduce application outages during provisioning
• Extend resources by improving overall storage utilization and automatically tuning performance on hosted applications
• Reduce storage acquisition costs and minimize expensive over-provisioning
• Greatly improve storage management efficiency and the ability of one administrator to manage more terabytes of data
• Save space, power and cooling requirements by reducing physical disk requirement

Reduce operating and capital expense in a replication environment by replicating only used portions of volumes and taking half the space of typical replicated systems