Hitachi Data Systems announced this week a high-end storage array that runs long-promised data pooling and replication software that will let users support multi-vendor storage systems from one interface.

The TagmaStore Universal Storage Platform was unveiled at an event in New York.

Virtualization, or pooling of data on arrays from different vendors, has been a desire of customers who want to consolidate their storage platforms and manage them together.

While David Bratt, technology architect for H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Fla., has not had a chance to beta-test the new product, he is interested in it because it would solve many of his daily problems.

"Virtualization is a huge advantage for me for management purposes, as well as a cost savings, since I can attach more servers through a single Fibre Channel port," says Bratt, who manages a heterogeneous storage environment with a Hitachi 9570V and 9910V, direct-attached SCSI storage and IBM's proprietary Serial Storage Architecture system.

"Better storage utilization is also an outcome," Bratt says.

Hitachi's new Hitachi Virtual Volume Manager will allow as much as 32 petabytes of data to be virtualized in a single pool.

TagmaStore will have three models, which will scale to 332 terabytes. The entry-level Model USP100 will scale to as much as 77 terabytes. The Model USP600 has a capacity of 154 terabytes and as many as 128 Fibre Channel ports for connection to host computers. The largest model, the USP1100, scales to 332 terabytes and has 192 Fibre Channel connections.

The array will include virtualization software, called Universal Replicator, on a blade in a storage controller and have the capability to replicate information across unlimited distances to dissimilar storage arrays for disaster-recovery purposes. Hitachi will be the first major vendor to integrate heterogeneous rather than homogeneous virtualization and replication features onto a storage controller.

"The box is an über-array with significant amounts of cache and performance," says an analyst who asked not to be identified. "Not only will the Hitachi array be able to pool data from a variety of sources but it will be able to use a single replication and management technology to move data between different arrays."

The array will support Fibre Channel, IBM's mainframe connectivity ESCON/FICON technologies and iSCSI, which lets users attach storage-area networks (SAN) to an Ethernet network. The array is expected to combine network-attached and SAN data into one virtualized storage pool.

Analysts say the Hitachi announcement could give the company an important tool to battle competitors. According to Gartner, Hitachi external controller-based storage accounts for about 8% of the market, trailing EMC, which has a 21% market share, and HP, which has almost 19%. The product also addresses the need for a heterogeneous storage virtualization strategy.

"Vendors have done a disservice to the industry - we've had vendors trying to misconstrue basic [logical unit] and volume management as virtualization," says Stephanie Balaouras, senior analyst for The Yankee Group. "But true heterogeneous systems integration and the virtualization of replication and back-up technologies hasn't been there."