Hitachi, NTT Com Achieve 600km Data Synchronization
Hitachi Ltd. and NTT Communications Corporation (NTT Com) jointly announced the successful demonstration of their planned distributed data center infrastructure, verifying its technical viability. The infrastructure deploys the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform One Block (VSP One Block) provided by Hitachi Vantara and the IOWN All-Photonics Network (APN), a core technology of the IOWN initiative that achieves ultra-high-speed and low power consumption.
VSP One Block is a storage solution that uses virtualization to manage multiple storage units across locations as a single entity, ensuring reliable business continuity during disasters. Recognized for its exceptional capabilities, it leverages best-in-class synchronous data replication and advanced protection technologies to enable seamless recovery and continuous operations. The IOWN APN, developed by the NTT Group, is a network technology that offers low power consumption, high capacity, low latency, and high-quality communication. During the demonstration, the combination of these two innovative solutions achieved round-trip times for long-distance data synchronization well within the times recommended by Hitachi, confirming that seamless system recovery is possible even during disasters.
The demonstration was conducted collaboratively, with each company fulfilling the following roles:
- Hitachi / Hitachi Vantara: Virtual storage connection and evaluation of VSP One Block connectivity to the IOWN APN verification equipment
- NTT Com: APN functionality and performance evaluation using the IOWN APN verification setup.
The increased frequency of major natural disasters in Japan and the corresponding need to strengthen resilience have accelerated the adoption of disaster recovery systems among corporations in mission-critical sectors such as finance and infrastructure. However, the rising costs of system construction and maintenance, the need to ensure business continuity during a disaster, and the extensive recovery times remain major burdens for companies in these sectors.
Simultaneously, the rise of generative AI is driving explosive growth in the demand for data processing, intensifying the environmental impact due to increased energy consumption. As a result, there are high expectations for the realization of distributed data centers across Japan that make use of green energy. This technical verification forms part of the efforts to enable real- time connectivity between geographically distant data centers, allowing businesses to use them as if they were a single, unified data center. By connecting data centers over long distances, it becomes possible to strategically locate them in regions with more space and renewable energy resources, thereby avoiding the concentration of data centers in urban areas.
Achieving the IOWN vision of a rich, inclusive society that embraces diversity requires the adoption of innovative technologies, such as optical networks and generative AI. Realizing sustainable data centers to support these advancements is critical to this goal.
