WDC Western Digital Corporation

SAN JOSE, Calif., Oct. 13, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Helping the world harness the power of data, HGST, a Western Digital Company (NASDAQ: WDC) today announced that multiple devices from its SAS enterprise hard disk drives (HDDs), as well as PCIe and SAS solid state drives (SSDs) have been certified by VMware as interoperable storage tiers for VMware Virtual SAN™. VMware Virtual SAN is a new hypervisor-converged, storage platform for VMware vSphere® environments that brings the benefits of software-defined storage to the data center. Leveraging certified HGST HDD and SSD solutions, customers have access to the only high-capacity, high-performance, high-resilience storage portfolio designed to be flash-accelerated for virtual environments.

"VMware has been a partner with HGST for many years. We are pleased to have them as part of our VMware Virtual SAN ecosystem, and look forward to working closely with them as they introduce even more products that interoperate with our platforms," said Gaetan Castelein, senior director, Storage and Availability, VMware.

The HGST drive certification for VMware Virtual SAN involved a five-stage process that included review, performance, reliability, compatibility and overall integrity. The certification process ensures that the overall solution meets VMware Virtual SAN customer expectations. There are specific certification tracks for SAS and PCIe drives and HGST is now the only vendor to have VMware Virtual SAN certification for its SAS HDDs and SSDs, as well as its PCIe SSDs. Listed within the VMware Compatibility Guide, the Ultrastar® C10K1200, HGST s1122 PCIe Accelerator, HGST FlashMAX® family and HGST S842 SAS SSDs offer VMware Virtual SAN customers the flexibility to granularly scale-up or scale-out their storage environment, while maintaining superior performance and endurance for mission-critical applications.

"This is a win for HGST, a win for VMware and most importantly a huge win for VSAN customers," remarked Steve Duplessie, founder and senior analyst of the Enterprise Strategy Group. "The performance gains a customer can attain are massive."

"The future of the data center lies in making data and storage more accessible and faster across all infrastructure environments, and we see this being enabled and accelerated by our portfolio of leading devices and solutions," said Mike Gustafson, senior vice president and general manager, HGST Flash Platforms Group. "HGST has the only complete certified, storage device portfolio that allows customers large and small to leverage the advanced technology and performance tiers of VMware Virtual SAN. With our solutions, customers can easily scale up or scale out their virtual machine infrastructure with the reliability and performance they have come to expect from HGST."

For more information on the HGST s1122, FlashMAX and s842 please visit www.hgst.com

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About HGST

HGST is a wholly owned and independently operated subsidiary of Western Digital Corporation (NASDAQ: WDC). HGST sets the pace for storage innovation and is helping the world harness the power of data. Building on its reputation for producing reliable HDDs, SSDs, and developing tighter integration with software, HGST is optimizing storage efficiency and reliability for today's data-centric economy. Founded by the creators of the hard drive, HGST serves a broad range of market segments, including enterprise, cloud, OEM, mobile, consumer electronics and personal storage. HGST was established in 2003 and maintains its U.S. headquarters in San Jose, California. For more information, please visit www.hgst.com.  

One GB is equal to one billion bytes, and one TB equals 1,000 GB (one trillion bytes). Actual capacity will vary depending on operating environment and formatting.

Ultrastar and FlashMAX are registered trademarks of HGST, Inc. and its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. All other products and services listed herein are trademarks of their respective companies.

VMware and Virtual SAN are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and other jurisdictions. The use of the word "partner" or "partnership" does not imply a legal partnership relationship between VMware and any other company.

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SOURCE HGST, A Western Digital Company