Hitachi Data Systems and VMware have made the concept of a Software-Defined Data Centre a reality. Hitachi Unified Compute Platform (UCP) Pro for VMware vSpher, introduced in October 2012, integrates the vSphere hypervisor, server, network and storage in a data center and validates the application layer running on top of them.

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The Software-Defined Data
Center and the New Hitachi
Unified Compute Platform
By Miklos Sandorfi, Chief Strategy Officer for File,
Content and Cloud at Hitachi Data Systems
and Mike Clayville, Vice President, Product Marketing,
Cloud Infrastructure, VMware

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he traditional data center is dying. Far from being
a harbinger of the future of computing, the data
center as we know it today has actually become
a relic of the past. It is inefficient, expensive and
unreliable. It’s also unsustainable.
A Museum of IT Past
The main problem with the traditional data center is a lack
of integration. It’s a loose collection of technology silos, a
complex blend that requires time-consuming, hands-on
management and still is not reliable enough to consistently
meet the needs of today’s organizations. The jumbled
collection of technologies present in the traditional data
center can be an assortment of outdated and outmoded
tools. Today’s data center isn’t part of the future; instead,
it’s a “museum of IT past.”
Let’s take a look at some of the problems with today’s data
center.
• Traditionally, applications have dictated a set of
requirements that directly related to a set of choices
on infrastructure technologies.
• Each application type had its own vertical stack of
CPU and operating system type, storage pool, net-
working and security, and even management systems.
The contemporary data center has yet to benefit from
virtualization in the same manner other elements of comput-
ing have seen value. While IT has made substantial progress
virtualizing much of the the Microsoft©
Windows®
and Unix
world, organizations are still dealing with all of the disparate
and poorly integrated pieces of the datacenter. Continuing
the theme of a lack of integration, different providers of tools
to the modern data center have different excuses as to why
it’s not working:
• Database vendors argue that another vertical, propri-
etary stack should be put in place.
• Mainframe vendors argue that the only way to deliver
mission-critical environments is with their vertical stack.
• High-performance computing vendors argue that we
can’t afford any more latency or overhead.
• And today, with Hadoop for example, many IT
organizations are building yet again another isolated,
propriety pool.
The result is devastating: IT spends now spends more than
70 percent of its budget to keep the data center up and
running—to “keep the lights on.” This picture is just not
sustainable over time. It is putting IT further and further into
the hole.
A New Approach to the
Data Center
There is a solution to the dilemma of
the data center. The new data center is
integrated and virtualized. It’s automat-
ed and simple to control. The new data
center paradigm is the Software-De-
fined Data Center (SDDC). In the
software-defined datacenter, infrastruc-
ture is virtualized and delivered as a
service, and control of the datacenter
is entirely automated by software.
That means the end of disparate
technologies that don’t work together,
require constant intervention from IT
and have to be linked in an inorganic
fashion. The SDDC ushers in a new
era of automation and control for the
data center. It includes five essential
Figure 1: The offerings in the Hitachi Unified Compute Platform product family

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characteristics. The SDDC is:
• Standardized: Homogenous
infrastructure is delivered as
software services across pools of
standard, x86 hardware to
eliminate unnecessary complexity.
• Holistic: A unified platform is
optimized for the entire datacenter
fabric, providing comprehensive
infrastructure services capable
of supporting any and all
applications.
• Adaptive: Self-programmable
virtualized infrastructure services
are provided on-demand, uncon-
strained by physical topology,
dynamically adapting to applica-
tion scale and location.
• Automated: Built-in intelligence automates provision-
ing, placement, configuration and control, based on
defined policies.
• Resilient: Software-based architecture and
approach compensates for failing hardware,
providing failover, redundancy, and fault tolerance
to critical operations.
This concept has been developing for a long time. Now, all
of its elements have come together into a cohesive
approach for the entire datacenter. What the SDDC does is
clean up the data center. It abstracts services that are
required from the underlying hardware, pools them and
then automates them.
The concept is based on the existing philosophy of the
hypervisor. The classic hypervisor abstracts and pools
both CPUs and memory. The SDDC fills the need for a
platform that applies this approach to storage and
availability services, as well as to network and security
services.
Only by taking this fully virtualized approach can organiza-
tions begin to address the true automation of the entire
datacenter environment. Now, everything becomes an
on-demand service that can take on the shape and size of
application requirements as they are presented—it’s a
just-in-time service configuration.
That’s the Software-Defined Data Center: one platform,
consisting of all software services, delivered on demand as a
service, to support any and all application types in the
datacenter—both existing apps and new, modern apps that
will increasingly demand more of the datacenter infrastructure.
Delivering on the Vision—and Delivering Value
Hitachi Data Systems and VMware have made the concept
of a Software-Defined Data Center a reality. Hitachi Unified
Compute Platform (UCP) Pro for VMware vSphere, intro-
duced in October 2012, integrates the vSphere hypervisor,
server, network and storage in a data center and validates
the application layer running on top of them. In UCP Pro,
the application layer is the only element of the data center
not natively integrated. Everything else is part of one
package with one management console: VMware vCenter.
Hitachi UCP Pro for VMware vSphere ties in VMware’s
vSphere hypervisor with server, network and storage
technologies from Hitachi, Cisco and Brocade. It delivers
on the promise of an integrated data center consisting
entirely of software services and available on demand. UCP
Pro and UCP Select both deliver the Software-Defined Data
Center—integrated, flexible, easy to deploy and simple to
Figure 2: Available configurations of the Unified Compute Platform for VMware vSphere

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maintain. (The various iterations of UCP are shown in
Figure 2). They offer best-in-class functionality and a wide
range of integrated and flexible reference solutions.
The deep integration of UCP Pro for VMware vSphere, with
UCP Director Software, into vSphere and vCenter enables
faster deployment of cloud infrastructure and efficient
resource allocation, simple automation and orchestration
for streamlined infrastructure management, as Figure 3
demonstrates.
All Hitachi UCP integrated (Pro) and reference (Select)
solutions are designed for maximum performance and
utilization through Hitachi best-in-class storage and
software technologies. The Select option offers the choice
of Hitachi servers with Brocade networking and your
choice of Hitachi storage, or Cisco servers and networking
with Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform. In addition, most UCP
solutions support multiple storage systems with industry-
leading Hitachi storage virtualization technology.
With Hitachi UCP Select for VMware vSphere, organiza-
tions can:
• Simplify configuration and integration of all solution
components to accelerate time-to-value for your most
demanding applications.
• Improve organizational agility by
quickly deploying new applications
and services to respond to
changes in business needs and
integrate into current environ-
ments.
• Be certain with the predictable
reliability of a robust private cloud
platform aligned to business
service levels.
• Reduce management cost and
complexity with coordinated
comprehensive provisioning and
administration of virtualized private
cloud environments.
• Simplify the ordering and procure-
ment process as well as the
onboarding and management of
physical and virtual resources. Increase operational
efficiency and resource utilization by aligning busi-
ness processes to IT execution.
UCP Select for VMware vSphere also lets companies
decide which reference architecture best meets their
needs – either Hitachi- or Cisco-based – then choose the
CPU and memory configuration to match workloads or
offer multiple tiers of compute resources.
UCP Pro for VMware vSphere Pro enables organizations to
do even more:
• Bring infrastructure on board quickly with faster
deployment and preconfigured elements with Hitachi
UCP Director software.
• Automate and orchestrate the management of essential
infrastructure components as unified pools of business
resources from directly within the vCenter management
console.
• Use comprehensive management via integration with
vCenter and vSphere through the UCP Director
software.
Figure 3: Efficiency benefits of Hitachi Unified Compute Platform for vSphere Pro

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The Data Center of the
Future—and the Present
The increased efficiency and ease of
management UCP Pro for VMware
vSphere offers translate into bottom-
line results. This converged solution,
with its unique UCP Director software,
offers organizations simplicity and
efficiency, with a single purchase order,
a single solution stack, single-pane-of-
glass management from vCenter,
one-source support, 99.999 percent
availability and deployment in as short
a time as two days.
Those concepts turn into dollars when
UCP Pro for VMware vSphere is
implemented. The results are docu-
mented, measurable time reductions
and cost savings in test and develop-
ment activity, deployment, staff
productivity, asset utilization and power
usage. See Figure 4 for details.
The Software-Defined Data Center delivers far greater
value, efficiency and flexibility than the traditional data
center. The single-platform, just-in-time data center exists
today, but it’s also the data center of tomorrow. Today’s
data center is in rapid decline; the new paradigm of the
SDDC is the future of the data center model. The Hitachi
UCP family of offerings for VMware vSphere, it’s also the
here and now.
Figure 4: Tangible results customers have experienced with the Hitachi Unified
Compute Platform for VMware vSphere Pro
www.hds.com
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