Hitachi and NTT Docomo Business demonstrate automated disaster recovery over 600km

Hitachi, Ltd., Hitachi Vantara, and NTT Docomo Business have announced the world’s first successful demonstration of a fully automated system recovery across data centers separated by more than 600km. Conducted with support from Red Hat and Oracle Japan, the demonstration utilized NTT’s low-latency, high-speed IOWN APN (All Photonics Network) to maintain data integrity and business continuity during wide-area disasters.

The solution, known as ‘Borderless Data Share’ (BDS), combines Hitachi’s storage virtualization technology with Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization and Oracle AI Database. In the test, which simulated a failure at a primary site, the system automatically detected the fault and triggered a switch to a secondary site. This process included the automatic startup of the operating system and database.

The demonstration achieved business resumption in approximately 10 minutes while maintaining data consistency across the long distance. This level of automation from infrastructure to the application layer aims to meet the requirements of mission-critical systems, such as those in the financial sector, by minimizing downtime and reducing the complexity of disaster recovery designs.