Western Digital today announced that it is extending its HDD technology and capacity leadership into its broader portfolio of data center solutions. Leveraging innovations from the Ultrastar 18TB and 20TB HDD technology platform, the WD Gold family now features new 16TB and 18TB CMR HDD capacities. Also available are an upgraded line of Ultrastar JBOD platforms and an Ultrastar hybrid storage server featuring Ultrastar 16TB and 18TB CMR HDDs.
Western Digital Intros WD Gold & Ultrastar HDDs Up To 20 TB - The First Time We See The Implementation Of EAMR On A Commercially Available Drive
Western Digital continues to innovate on multiple technical vectors such as energy assist, mechanical design, materials, and recording technologies. Announced in September 2019 and currently shipping, the 20TB Ultrastar DC HC650 host-managed SMR HDDs and 16TB and 18TB Ultrastar DC HC550 CMR HDDs are the industry's first commercial implementation of EAMR technology.
Together with Western Digital's HelioSeal design for outstanding power efficiency, and mechanical innovations such as the industry's first TSA to enhance head-positioning accuracy and deliver greater capacity capabilities, these drives deliver leading areal density. These nine-disk drives also enable customers to more efficiently provision and scale their data center environments with unmatched TCO value.
Following the recent availability of WD Gold NVMe SSDs, Western Digital has again expanded its WD Gold family of drives for channel customers to include 16TB and 18TB CMR HDD models. Available now and features a five-year limited warranty, the new WD Gold CMR HDDs are specifically designed for use in enterprise-class server and storage systems and are purpose-built for heavy workloads and a broad array of big data applications.
With up to 2.5M hours MTBF, WD Gold HDDs deliver enhanced levels of dependability and durability, as well as vibration protection technology for improved, consistent performance. WD Gold HDDs are designed to handle workloads up to 550TB per year, which is among the highest of any 3.5-inch hard drive. The new WD Gold drives also feature Western Digital's HelioSeal technology that enables high capacities with a low power draw.
Along With The New Drive, WD Has Also Provided Storage Servers With A Max Capacity Of 1.836 Petabytes
Also announced today are Western Digital's Ultrastar Data60 and Data102 JBODs, and Serv60+8 storage servers that have been upgraded to leverage the company's enterprise-class 16TB and 18TB Ultrastar DC HC550 CMR HDDs. With up to 1.836PB in a 4U, these new platforms are available now and come with a five-year limited warranty. Ultrastar platforms with upgrades to Ultrastar DC HC650 20TB SMR HDDs are expected to follow next quarter.
The Ultrastar Data60 and Data102 are key elements of next-generation disaggregated storage and SDS infrastructure. The Ultrastar Serv60+8 is a high-capacity hybrid storage server with a compute included. These Ultrastar platforms address the demanding needs of large enterprise customers, OEMs, cloud service providers, and integrators that require dense, shared HDD or hybrid storage.
The Data60 and Data102 provide the flexibility to specify the HDD and SSD combinations with up to 24 drive slots configured with SSDs, while the Serv60+8 offers a choice of CPUs, memory, & drives. All of this enables organizations to balance capacity, performance, and cost.
Leveraging its knowledge of drive characteristics and systems, Western Digital has implemented two design innovations across these platforms for added data reliability. Western Digital's patented IsoVibe vibration isolation technology helps ensure consistent performance is maintained even under heavy workloads.
Additionally, Western Digital's innovative ArcticFlow thermal zone cooling technology enables drives to operate at lower and more consistent temperatures than conventional systems, resulting in lower fan speeds, reduced vibration, lower power consumption, quieter operation, and ultimately higher reliability. The combination of IsoVibe and ArcticFlow has been demonstrated to reduce field drive returns by 62 percent compared to Western Digital's previous-generation platforms.
Its broad data center portfolio includes it's the family of Ultrastar HDDs and SSDs; WD Gold HDDs and SSDs; OpenFlex NVMe-oF open composable infrastructure; Ultrastar storage platforms; RapidFlex NVMe-oF controllers; and the Ultrastar memory extension drive. Western Digital is also championing Zoned Storage, an open-source, standards-based initiative building upon the synergies of SMR HDDs and ZNS SSDs that enables data centers to scale efficiently.
