Hitachi Automation Director

Accelerate resource delivery, reduce risk and maximize performance. Spend more time delivering business value.

DATASHEET

Automate Data Center Operations

One of the biggest drains on a data center team’s time is the administration of IT infrastructure resources. Provisioning storage, configuring virtual machines (VMs), SAN orchestration and setting up data protection services represent operational tasks that can easily consume up to 45% of IT staff time.

These processes are time consuming, and they take IT away from focusing on innovation and delivering value-added business initiatives. Operational tasks can also require many steps that introduce the potential for critical errors. Such errors can Figure 1. Predefined service templates make it easy to “choose and go.” result in applications outages, reduce performance and even result in data loss. HAD operations use best practices performance and data path resiliency ensuring that resources are consistently requirements. Automation can help by ensuring resources configured to meet business needs and are quickly and properly configured while ■■ Storage service delivery. Provision service level agreements (SLAs). staff work on the delivery of more complex storage resources with quality of service (QoS) and storage array data protection services. Unlike many of today’s automa- Choose and Go tion software offerings, Hitachi Automation services, to meet recovery and uptime Defining an initial set of automation pol- Director (HAD) supports a broad range of SLAs. icies can take time. To help kick-start tasks and infrastructure resources to accel- ■■ Application-specific automation. the process, Hitachi Vantara includes a erate operational success. Provide resources to applications and broad range of predefined workflows for perform application-specific tasks, like Act Faster, With Less Risk configuring resources (see Figure 1). HAD acquiring Oracle ASM information. enables teams to quickly work on: Designed to orchestrate the delivery and ■■ Advanced data protection services. control of Hitachi and third-party infra- ■■ Virtual machine deployment. Operate Instruct Hitachi Data Instance Director structure resources, HAD minimizes the and configure VMware, Hyper-V and (HDID), our application-aware data time spent provisioning and managing KVM (OpenStack cloud) resources to protection and copy data management resources by upwards of 90%. By using support virtualized workloads. software, to set up and constantly mon- intelligent workflows administrators can ■■ SAN orchestration. Define Cisco itor snapshots, cloning, metro clustering streamline delivery of hypervisor, network, or Brocade SAN zones to meet and remote replication. storage and data protection services. Each policy is based on best practices HITACHI AUTOMATION DIRECTOR FEATURE HIGHLIGHTS defined by our worldwide services organization and available as an easy-to-use ■■ Infrastructure automation allows intelligent workflows to streamline delivery of hypervi- policy (workflow), in which staff enter a few sor, network, storage and data protection services in less time. parameters. ■■ Application and hypervisor support covers key applications, including: Oracle; Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server and Hyper-V; VMware vSphere and OpenStack. Make AI-Assisted Decisions ■■ AI-assisted decision-making allows real-time analysis to determine storage resource HAD leverages AI to make real-time deci- usage or network zoning requirements to meet SLAs. sions about resource usage, enabling ■■ Customizable service templates with minimal required input can be used across differ- adaptive workflows that improve resource ent administrative users. Create once and use many, for efficiency. utilization, application performance and ulti- mately user experiences. Today, HAD offers ■■ Robust API integrates with analytic software and third-party IT service management tools. AI-assistance in:

■■ Smart storage provisioning. AI exam- These tools can simplify operations, but Business Benefits ines arrays assigned to a storage policy only if they work together. Hitachi Vantara Improve Operational Efficiency and and checks available capacity plus busy includes an API that other applications can Accelerate Innovation rate on each to avoid bottlenecks. call to have HAD automate tasks for them. ■■ Enable staff to spend up to 45% more ■■ Fabric-aware provisioning. AI takes Through this API, HDID, Hitachi Storage time on strategic initiatives that move the input on zoning requirements, including Advisor (HSA), and Hitachi Infrastructure company forward. number of paths and multipathing require- Analytics Advisor (HIAA) are completely ■■ Optimize configurations to eliminate over- ments. Then it examines the network integrated and provide a unified manage- provisioning and reduce capital expense. topology and devices to implement the ment platform. best zoning configuration. ■■ Accelerate application deployment to The benefits of this API extend beyond more quickly implement new revenue ini- Customize To Fit Your Needs Hitachi software. Third-party IT service tiatives and operational efficiencies. management tools like ServiceNow can No two data centers are the same. They ■■ Ensure that best practices are consis- call the HAD API to provision storage while each have their own mix of systems and tently followed to meet strict service managing service ticket requests. software as well as their own best prac- level goals and optimize resource tices. To ensure that HAD can support the configuration. unique needs of each organization, it is built Combine Analytics With Action with a customizable service catalog and Another key initiative in data center mod- Services and Training service-builder function. ernization is leveraging analytics to predict Hitachi Vantara Global Services and Hitachi and recommend action. With tools like valued partners help you to quickly realize The service builder allows service tem- HIAA, data center staff can predict potential the benefits and cost savings of Automation plates from Hitachi and our development issues and resources needed to achieve Director with assessment, planning and community to be imported, making it easier SLAs. HIAA can also prescribe fault resolu- design, installation, management and sup- to automate new application tasks. It also tion and resource adjustments, so the data port services. allows administrators to either create their center runs at peak efficiency. own, or customize the parameters of HAD predefined workflows. To turn analytics into action, Hitachi tightly integrates HIAA with HAD. HIAA predicts Increase Simplicity With API how QoS should be configured, then calls Integration HAD to make changes to QoS settings As data centers are modernized, orga- automatically. This approach reduces time nizations often implement additional spent on manual operations and begins the management tools in their environments. journey to autonomous operations.

Hitachi Vantara

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