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HITACHI IT OPERATIONS DIRECTOR, INTRODUCED

worldwide in April by Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), combines

three sets of functionalitysecurity management, asset manage-

ment, and software distribution.

Server virtualization has been the No. 1 IT initiative for the

past two years, according to research from IT analyst and busi-

ness strategy rm, Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG). To take

advantage of advanced mobility functions, a networked storage

environment is required, says senior analyst Bob Laliberte of

ESG. This creates much stronger interdependencies between

these domains, and makes integrated visibility across layers of

abstraction created by virtualization vitally important. ESG

views the priorities as rst to get visibility, then to effectively

manage, and lastly, to automate. As environments grow more

complex and abstract, automated solutions like Hitachi IT Op-

erations Director will be required to minimize time-consuming

manual processes and enable future growth.

IDC Views Challenge of Medium-Sized Data CentersThe medium-sized data center is typically managed by a lean IT

staff challenged to administer and troubleshoot a complex and in-

terdependent set of IT resources. The tools they use are typically

written to address specic vendor implementations and operating

domains, such as networks, servers, and storage devices.

These tools can detect events and issue alerts related totheir own span of control, but according to IDC analyst Mary

Johnston Turner, they provide little insight into how the perfor-

mance of a specic device impacts the end-to-end service levels

experienced by an end user. To get a comprehensive view of

the overall health of the data center and nd the root cause of

application performance problems in systems that are intercon-

nected, is difcult.

The medium-sized data centers are experiencing the same

challenges of operating complexity as large-scale data centers,especially challenges related to the expanding use of virtual

servers, network storage, and Web 2.0 applications. At the same

time, business user service-level requirements are becoming

more demanding. When respondents in medium-sized organiza-

tions were asked to identify the

top challenges resulting from

implementation of a virtual

infrastructure, they selected

management issues, followed by concerns about business/IT

alignments, IT organization structure, and unanticipated man-

agement requirements for IT staff. (See Fig. 1.)

Although enterprise data centers have a wide range of

software tools in place and specialists available to focus on new

technologies, the medium-sized data centers need to rely on

already overtaxed generalists to take on more responsibilities,

IDCs Turner states. These generalists tend to share roles and

responsibilities and coordinate verbally and via ad hoc processes

to make up for the lack of sophisticated tools. While this often

works adequately, trends are converging to stress this structure.

These trends include: IT teams feeling economic pressure to

do more with less and spread IT resources even thinner; increas-

ing deployment of technology such as virtualization, with the

goal of reducing costs; and rising awareness of the business costs

associated with application performance problems, IDC states.

The IT professionals in medium-sized data centers need

tools with the following attributes, according to IDC: broad vis-

ibility across a range of server, storage, and network resources;

easy installation and discovery; an intuitive user interface; auto-

mated root cause analysis; and cost-effectiveness.

IT Operations DirectorIT Lifecycle ManagementDirectors focus on three areas of IT lifecycle management

asset management, software distribution, and security manage-

mentis the result of feedback from customers on what was

needed, says Brett Hesterberg, technical product manager for

the Hitachi Global IT Software Business Unit.

The asset management functionality discovers informa-

tion about hardware and software installed on laptops andPCs. It enables administrators to compare purchased software

licenses to actual software installs, Hesterberg says. Information

can be entered into the tool so that administrators can see the

associated costs of all deployed assets.

Hitachi IT Operations Suite Monitors and Manages ITInfrastructure to Help Companies Address IT Complexity

The combination of two easy-to-use products, Hitachi IT Operations Director andHitachi IT Operations Analyzer, provides mid-to-large-sized companies with a powerfulset of IT lifecycle management tools and infrastructure monitoring tools

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Software distribution is assisted by

an installation wizard. Director has the

ability to guide installations, which can

lower security risk by ensuring critical

software is consistently installed in the

environment, says Hesterberg.

Security management is enabled by

customizable policies that can automati-

cally correct problems on managed com-puters. For example, Director can be set

to block unregistered USB devices from

connecting to a computing device, or set

to uninstall prohibited software automati-

cally. Alerts can be triggered by specic

events set by administrators, and le-level

audits can be conducted when needed,

Hesterberg says.

These three areas of function are de-livered within Director by a single software

license, which HDS sees as a differentiator

for the product. HDS positions IT Opera-

tions Director in the small to medium business (SMB) market, and

Director has the ability to scale for large businesses as well.

IT Operations Director is integrated with the previously re-

leased IT Operations Analyzer so that the entire asset discovery

performed by Analyzer can be pulled into Director.

AnalyzerMonitoring the Heterogeneous InfrastructureHitachi IT Operations Analyzer, an all-in-one availability and

performance monitoring software application, provides essential

capabilities to efciently and cost-effectively monitor heteroge-

neous servers, switches, and network and storage devices. Ana-

lyzer features automated root cause analysis, simplied network

path view, agentless architecture, an award-winning unied,

intuitive Web-based interface, proactive alerting, multivendorplatform support, and an open platform.

Analyzer 2.5 is enhanced with IPMI (Intelligent Platform

Management Interface) framework support, allowing servers to

be monitored via plug-ins even when the OS is not running. IT

departments need to know the health of the devices in their IT

infrastructures. Analyzer gives IT organizations integrated insight

into the performance and availability of their infrastructures.

A chief differentiator for Analyzer is root cause analysis.

We use a proprietary method to correlate events in the datacenter to let users know the root cause of a problem, such as a

switch going down, so that management does not have to con-

duct an extensive diagnosis, says Hesterberg.

Through a single interface, Analyzer shows the availabil-

ity and performance of the heterogeneous servers, local area

network, storage area network, and storage devices on a network.

Root cause analysis enables the reduction of the mean time to

diagnose IT environment outages by up to 90 percent. Analyzer

can integrate with ISV applications and third-party devices via

plug-ins, providing unied monitoring of the entire infrastructure.

ESG analyst Laliberte sees the challenge for HDS being to

raise awareness of its expertise in data center software. Com-

petition will come from existing storage vendors with solutions,

independent software vendors, and even virtualization vendors,

he says. While the presence of HDS and its channel partners as

strategic advisors in many SMB IT shops will help the company

reach the market, their challenge is to get organizations to un-

derstand they are a serious player in the infrastructure software

solutions space, Laliberte adds.HDS plans call for Analyzer and Director to extend

functionality to address a wider range of computing devices,

including mobile devices. We are watching because in the end,

IT is likely to be responsible for asset and security management

around a wider array of devices, says Hesterberg.

Hitachi IT Operations Director is priced competitively and

is available for a free 30-day trial. Director is licensed in 100-de-

vice packs to serve laptops, PCs, servers, or any other connected

device for a price of $4,000, or $40 per device. Director scales to3,000 devices. Hitachi IT Operations Analyzer sells in 25-device

packs and is priced at $4,300 for each pack.

Expect HDS to be a player to contend with in IT lifecycle

management. n

For more information, go to: www.itoperations.com

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Figure 1 Source: IDCs Virtual Infrastructure Management Survey, 2008

Number 1 Challenge Created by Use of Virtualization