Addressing the total cost of ownership (TCO) requirements of data center customers, Western Digital has announced its nine-disk mechanical platform. The vendor will sample its 18TB Ultrastar DC HC550 CMR HDD and 20TB Ultrastar DC HC650 SMR HDD products to select customers by the end of 2019 with production ramp expected in the first half of 2020.
Western Digital’s nine-disk mechanical platform includes energy-assisted recording technology. The company is combining this new nine-disk platform and energy-assisted recording to deliver the world’s highest capacity drives to OEM and hyperscale data center customers.
“Western Digital continues to innovate to deliver efficient, purpose-built storage with excellent TCO with the optimal combination of industry-leading areal density, mechanical innovations and materials advancements,” said Christopher Bergey, senior vice president and general manager of Data Center Devices, Western Digital. “Leveraging our success in bringing energy-assisted recording to market with our expertise in mechanical design, we can deliver this scalable HDD platform with significant capacity increases to our customers, particularly in the transition from 14TB to 18TB.”
Western Digital will offer a portfolio of Capacity Enterprise HDDs, with cost-optimized configurations for every “important” capacity point: six-disk 10TB Ultrastar DC HC330 air-based HDD; eight-disk 14TB Ultrastar DC HC530 helium-based HDD; nine-disk 18TB Ultrastar DC HC550 helium-based HDD; and a nine-disk 20TB Ultrastar DC HC650 helium-based HDD.
“As data continues to pour into the data center, there is an appetite for meaningful capacity increases that ultimately achieve better TCO,” said John Chen, vice president at TRENDFOCUS. “Western Digital has chosen capacity points of 10TB/14TB/18TB built around six-, eight- and nine-disk platforms to provide sufficient segmentation for the increasingly complex workloads driving the next wave of hyperscale growth.”
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Availability
Western Digital’s 10TB Ultrastar DC HC330 and 14TB Ultrastar DC HC530 are available now. The vendor will sample the 20TB Ultrastar DC HC650 SMR HDD and the Ultrastar DC HC550 CMR HDD in 18TB and 16TB capacities to select customers by the end of this year, with qualification and volume shipments beginning in the first half of 2020.
“We continue to collaborate with Western Digital to deliver host-managed SMR and traditional CMR HDD high-capacity solutions across a broad ecosystem,” said Rick Kutcipal, product line manager, Data Center Solutions Group at Broadcom. “Broadcom is a leading supplier of enterprise storage infrastructure. Our goal is to enable customers to create optimal infrastructure designs that reduce risk while lowering total system cost. By continuing to deliver the highest capacities, Western Digital and Broadcom will enable customers to reap both time-to-market and TCO benefits for generations to come.”
