Hitachi Data Ingestor

Remote and branch offices generate huge amounts of unstructured data from office applications, video, images, and the like. For legal and regulatory compliance, corporations with remote and branch offices choose to store and share data across the organization from a centralized location.

At the same time, there is an increasing requirement to better manage and utilize the remote data in a centralized environment. Access to this consolidated storage is typically over wide area network (WAN) links that are shared by both data traffic and unified communications (VOIP and video). Hitachi Data Systems and Silver Peak have teamed up to fulfill these increasing demands on the WAN.

The Hitachi Data Ingestor (HDI) is a dedicated on-ramp optimized for the Hitachi Content Platform (HCP), an intelligent object store. Moving data from edge or branch offices into centralized repositories can be severely limited by the WAN. Combining Hitachi Data Ingestor, Hitachi Content Platform and Silver Peak replication acceleration software can create a simple, cost-effective solution for mitigating the soaring costs associated with remote office support and data consolidation.Silver Peak accelerates data ingest and recall, clearing up the most common WAN bottlenecks. Remote offices can access files quickly while avoiding technology sprawl, complexity, and the need for on-site IT staffing. 

Accelerating data ingest and recall

Hitachi and Silver Peak joint testing shows that on a 45 Mbps WAN link, Silver Peak accelerates HDI migration by 4X as distance (latency) increases, while maintaining and improving throughput for long distance (international) deployments. Silver Peak also accelerates HDI remote file access by up to 20x.

Figure 1. Silver Peak accelerates HDI migration even as latency increases.

Silver Peak data acceleration software fixes the problems that exist on the WAN, moving more data in less time, and over longer distances. Silver Peak software solves WAN problems by repairing dropped and out-of-order packets, overcoming the effects of latency, and providing real-time deduplication and compression of all data before it is sent across the WAN.

Silver Peak's Quality of Service prioritizes traffic by type, setting both minimum and maximum bandwidth requirements—especially useful when sending data over WAN links shared by other applications.

Silver Peak supports a secure content architecture between HCP and HDI instances. All enterprise data ingested from remote offices can be transferred securely between sites using Silver Peak’s IPsec AES 256 site to site VPN. 

Once deployed, Silver Peak software enables any storage administrator to manage the Silver Peak implementation.  Reports are in storage-friendly terms showing the data sent across the WAN in bytes, and replication throughput. Storage traffic is segmented by application, such as replication and or backup. Reporting includes minute, hour, and daily intervals, and includes a 10 day chart to reflect performance data before and after any changes made during the weekend.

With Hitachi HDI and Silver Peak software, you can migrate all of your business-critical data consistently, regardless of network problems or distance.