Andy Gremett
Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Product Solutions Marketing
December 17, 2025
It’s 8:00 AM on a Monday. A critical business unit just launched a new customer-facing application, and traffic is surging. The infrastructure team gets the call: “We need more storage—immediately.” In the past, this would trigger a scramble—manual provisioning, configuration errors, delays. But today, the team opens their CI/CD pipeline, runs a Terraform script, and within minutes, a secure, scalable storage cluster is live in the cloud. No panic. No bottlenecks. Just seamless scale.
Infrastructure teams are under pressure to deliver scalable, reliable storage fast. That’s why Hitachi Vantara is introducing Terraform with Hitachi VSP One SDS, which provisions a cloud-based storage cluster in just 4 minutes, instead of hours.
Terraform is an open-source Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tool that enables declarative provisioning of infrastructure across cloud and on-prem environments. It allows teams to define infrastructure in code, making deployments consistent, repeatable, and version controlled.
This kind of rapid response isn’t just ideal—it’s increasingly expected.
IaC brings the same discipline and agility to operations that developers rely on for applications. Tools like Terraform make this approach accessible and powerful, enabling ITOps teams to deliver infrastructure that’s not only reliable but instantly available. With rapid response, delays in infrastructure provisioning which slow down critical projects and innovation are a thing of the past. Whether it’s a sudden spike in demand (bursting) or a new application rollout, speed and agility are now essential.
Imagine scaling that response across multiple teams or regions — a tactic that Gartner recently defined as one of the top 10 strategic technology trends. With Terraform, deploying a 3-node storage cluster in AWS takes just four minutes—no manual steps, no errors. Instead of navigating AWS consoles or manually provisioning resources, ITOps teams can run a Terraform script. In just four minutes, a fully operational, 3-node Hitachi VSP One SDS cluster is deployed in AWS.
The Terraform module for VSP One SDS automates every step from defining variables to provisioning EC2 instances, configuring networking, and launching the VPS One SDS portal. All it takes is a few inputs in a terraform.tfvars file, region, instance type, drive count, encryption settings, and Terraform handles the rest. This automation reduces manual work, minimizes human error, and accelerates deployment timelines, allowing teams to do more with less.
By leveraging infrastructure as code (IaC), organizations can integrate storage provisioning directly into CI/CD pipelines, aligning with modern DevOps practices and enabling continuous delivery of infrastructure alongside applications.
Enterprises need the flexibility to run workloads wherever it makes sense, without sacrificing control or performance. With VSP One SDS and Terraform, ITOps teams can provision storage in AWS with enterprise-grade reliability, maintain consistent operations across environments, and scale on demand.
Some real-world hybrid cloud use cases with Terraform include:
Integrating Terraform with CI/CD pipelines transforms infrastructure provisioning into a repeatable, version-controlled process. This synergy with DevOps enables faster iterations, automated testing environments, and seamless scaling. Whether deploying new clusters for analytics or tearing down dev/test environments post-validation, Terraform ensures agility without compromising governance or security.
VSP One SDS is a core component of the Hitachi VSP One Data Platform, a unified data platform that simplifies data infrastructure across block, file, object — across on-prem and in the cloud. By deploying VSP One SDS in AWS, Azure or GCP, organizations extend the power of VSP One into the cloud, enabling consistent operations, policy enforcement, and data services across environments.
VSP One SDS delivers enterprise performance, security, and scalability, making it ideal for mission-critical workloads in hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Its software-defined architecture ensures flexibility without compromising reliability, helping IT teams meet evolving business demands.
Terraform’s open-source nature also means no vendor lock-in for infrastructure management tools. Teams can standardize on Terraform across multiple cloud providers and on-prem environments, ensuring consistent workflows and avoiding proprietary issues. Additionally, the ability to spin resources up and down on demand empowers businesses to control cloud costs effectively and only pay for what they use, when they use it.
Getting started is simple. Clone the Terraform module from Hitachi’s GitLab repository, configure your variables, and run Terraform apply. Within minutes, you’ll have a secure, scalable VSP One SDS cluster running in AWS. And when you're done? A single Terraform destroy command removes all resources with no cleanup headaches.
Whether you're modernizing infrastructure or scaling for growth, automation and IaC are the keys to agility. Start small, iterate fast, and let tools like Terraform transform how your team delivers infrastructure.
Ready to accelerate your cloud storage strategy?
Andy Gremett is Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Product Solutions Marketing, at Hitachi Vantara.
