Western Digital Expands Mid-Range Enterprise Hard Drive Offerings for On-Premises Big Data Environments
January 18 2018 - 1:30PM
Business Wire
Known for enabling new levels of enterprise total cost of
ownership (TCO) with HelioSeal® helium hard drive technology and
industry leading capacity drives, Western Digital Corporation
(NASDAQ: WDC) is expanding its portfolio for enterprise customers
with a new, mid-range series of 4 terabyte (TB), 6TB and 8TB
air-based hard drives. The new products enable corporate data
centers having data set sizes smaller than found in hyperscale
environments to harness the power of data across a broad spectrum
of Big Data applications such as analytics and distributed file
systems.
Western Digital leads the high-capacity enterprise hard drive
market for hyperscale and cloud environments with its 10TB, 12TB
and 14TB drives, where the company’s HelioSeal helium-sealing
technology is required for the highest capacities and densities to
deliver the lowest (or best) TCO. However, many applications have
small data sets or benefit from optimal performance from
implementation of a cluster of lower capacity, air-based hard
drives. Many traditional data center systems still rely on moderate
capacity points for RAID-based block-and-file systems.
“The power of Big Data is driving the need for higher capacities
across a broad spectrum of applications,” said Brendan Collins,
vice president of marketing, Devices Business Unit, Western
Digital. “Today, mid-range applications are preparing to move
from 1TB and 2TB configurations to higher capacities. Our new
enterprise solutions blend the technology and TCO leadership of
Western Digital’s capacity enterprise product line with a
high-density, air-based hard drive design, allowing OEMs to offer
data centers a solution to keep Big Data on-premises, rather
than transition entirely to the cloud.”
Distributed file systems such as Apache Hadoop® often have
workloads that require higher access density in order to maintain
performance when running Big Data analytics jobs. The “sweet spot”
capacities for these applications are 4TB, 6TB and 8TB. Western
Digital’s new enterprise solutions are designed for this space,
while providing enterprise-level performance and specifications for
storage OEM partners to serve end customers with a range of
capacity and price points while maintaining the enterprise
integrity demanded by today’s data center architects.
Available immediately for qualification, the new Ultrastar® 7K6,
supporting 4TB and 6TB capacity points, utilizes a new 4-disk,
enterprise class, air-based design. The new products provide up to
12 percent faster performance than the prior generation Ultrastar
7K6000 and is designed for traditional storage and server
applications as well as distributed and scalable computing,
including block-and-file storage architecture. Later this quarter,
the company will deliver an Ultrastar 7K8 8TB solution, which is
based on an air-based design and is the ninth generation of the
company’s 5-disk platform. Further information regarding the
Ultrastar 7K6 and 7K8 is available on the website.
The 4TB, 6TB and 8TB offerings will be ready for volume ramp
during the second calendar quarter of 2018. Western Digital's media
cache and flash-based non-volatile cache (NVC) are implemented to
improve write performance. These new enterprise drives will be
available in either SAS or SATA interfaces and provide an
enterprise-class MTBF rating of 2M hours.
About Western Digital
Western Digital creates environments for data to thrive. The
company is driving the innovation needed to help customers capture,
preserve, access and transform an ever-increasing diversity of
data. Everywhere data lives, from advanced data centers to mobile
sensors to personal devices, our industry-leading solutions deliver
the possibilities of data. Western Digital® data-centric solutions
are marketed under the G-Technology™, HGST, SanDisk®, Tegile™,
Upthere™, and WD® brands.
Forward-looking Statement
This news release includes forward-looking statements, including
the expected availability and performance of the Ultrastar 7K6 and
7K8 and their features and benefits to customers. There are a
number of risks and uncertainties that may cause these
forward-looking statements to be inaccurate including, among
others: the 7K6 and 7K8 may not be available when we expect;
volatility in global economic conditions; business conditions and
growth in the storage ecosystem; impact of competitive products and
pricing; market acceptance and cost of commodity materials and
specialized product components; actions by competitors; unexpected
advances in competing technologies; our development and
introduction of products based on new technologies and expansion
into new data storage markets; risks associated with acquisitions,
mergers and joint ventures; difficulties or delays in
manufacturing; and other risks and uncertainties listed the
company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange commission (the
"SEC"), including our most recently filed periodic report to which
your attention is directed. We do not intend to update the
information contained in this release.
Western Digital, the Western Digital logo, G-Technology,
SanDisk, Tegile, Upthere, WD, Helioseal and Ultrastar are
registered trademark or trademarks of Western Digital Corporation
or its affiliates in the US and/or other countries. Apache Hadoop
is either a registered trademark or trademark of the Apache
Software Foundation in the United States and/or other countries.
All other marks are the property of their respective owners.
As used for storage capacity, one gigabyte (GB) = one billion
bytes and one terabyte (TB) = one trillion bytes. Total accessible
capacity varies depending on operating environment. Product
specifications subject to change without notice. Not all products
are available in all regions of the world.
© 2018 Western Digital Corporation or its affiliates. All rights
reserved
View source
version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180118006182/en/
Western Digital CorporationHeather SkinnerPublic Relations+1
949.672.7920heather.skinner@wdc.comorWestern Digital CorporationBob
BlairInvestor Relations+1 949.672.7834robert.blair@wdc.com
Western Digital (NASDAQ:WDC)
Historical Stock Chart
From Aug 2024 to Sep 2024
Western Digital (NASDAQ:WDC)
Historical Stock Chart
From Sep 2023 to Sep 2024