Company Announces Worldwide Availability of
16TB and 18TB Capacities for Ultrastar® HDDs, WD Gold™ HDDs and
Ultrastar Storage Platforms, Serving a Diverse Set of Workloads
from Big Data and Enterprise/SMB Storage to SDS and Hyperscale
Deployments
News Highlights:
- Western Digital’s market-leading HDD innovations – including
the first commercial implementation of energy-assisted magnetic
recording (EAMR) technology, the industry’s first triple-stage
actuator (TSA), and the sixth generation product with HelioSeal®
technology – extend across its enhanced data center portfolio to
deliver the highest areal density and unmatched total cost of
ownership (TCO) value for a variety of customer and market
needs.
- New WD Gold 16TB and 18TB HDDs are now available in the channel
for system integrators and resellers serving enterprises and SMBs
who need more reliable storage for big data and enterprise storage
workloads compared to traditional desktop-class HDDs.
- Shipping since March to select hyperscale and enterprise OEM
customers, including Datto, DDN and Dropbox, the new 16TB and 18TB
Ultrastar DC HC550 CMR HDDs are now available for cloud, large
enterprise customers and other data center architects looking for
the highest capacity with low power for designing more efficient
infrastructures. The 20TB Ultrastar DC HC650 host-managed SMR HDDs
continue to ship for qualification.
- The Ultrastar Data60 and Data102 JBODs and the Serv60+8 storage
server now feature 16TB and 18TB Ultrastar CMR HDDs, delivering the
industry’s highest storage density in a fully optimized platform
for added durability and data reliability for software-defined
storage (SDS) environments. Ultrastar platforms with 20TB SMR HDDs
are expected to be available next quarter.
Continuously innovating to help organizations keep pace with
rapidly expanding volumes of data, Western Digital (NASDAQ: WDC)
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. Through Western
Digital’s vertical integration capabilities and broad portfolio,
the company continues to be uniquely positioned to help customers
meet data demands as they design their storage infrastructures for
better efficiency and productivity.
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Western Digital Ultrastar® DC 16/18TB
HDDs, WD Gold™ 16/18TB HDDs, Ultrastar Serv60+8 Storage Server
(Photo: Business Wire)
“Western Digital’s expanded family of data center HDD solutions
clearly addresses a variety of customer needs, which puts them in a
unique early position to capitalize on cloud and OEM customer
transitions to 18TB, and even to 20TB for those optimizing the
benefits of SMR,” said John Chen, vice president at TRENDFOCUS.
“Capacity-enterprise HDDs will continue to dominate the nearline
and secondary storage market as there is simply no other
cost-effective substitute for data at scale. As a result, we expect
nearline disk drive exabytes shipments to grow at a 32.5% CAGR,
reaching 1.9 zettabytes by 2024.”
Western Digital HDD Technology Innovation with 18TB and 20TB
Ultrastar HDDs
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.
“We are excited to test Western Digital's latest 18TB Ultrastar
HDD reliability and capacity innovations and look forward to
identifying technologies that deliver powerful value to our
customers,” said Joe Carvalho, vice president, Infrastructure
Engineering at Datto, the leading global provider of cloud-based
software and technology solutions delivered through managed service
providers (MSPs).
Extending the WD Gold Family with New 16TB and 18TB
Enterprise-Class Hard Drives
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 featuring 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.
Ultrastar Platforms and Storage Server Now Available with
16TB and 18TB Ultrastar CMR HDDs
Also announced today are Western Digital’s Ultrastar Data60 and
Data102 JBODs, and Serv60+8 storage server 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
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 and
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.1
“With these two features—IsoVibe and ArcticFlow—Western Digital
has managed to incorporate its extensive knowledge of drives into
these platforms to help them function optimally in the field. Any
modern IT organization must take these innovations into account
during any storage hardware evaluation. Something as seemingly
behind-the-scenes as a drive platform could help organizations
reduce the hidden costs of storage,” said Scott Sinclair, senior
analyst at ESG.
“Cloud service providers and systems integrators today have one
thing in common: they all require a multi-tiered storage strategy,
leveraging multiple technologies to manage the explosion of
valuable data and breadth of workloads. Unlike any other vendor in
the space, Western Digital develops, manufacturers and markets
NAND, SSDs, HDDs and platforms,” said Yusuf Jamal, senior vice
president of Western Digital’s Devices and Platforms Business. “The
depth and breadth of our data center portfolio enable us to deliver
the right innovations at the right time to help all of our data
center customers—from hyperscale cloud customers to enterprises and
SMBs—solve their most important data infrastructure
challenges.”
Western Digital continuously innovates, pushing the boundaries
of science and technology to deliver products that enable greater
data infrastructure efficiency and productivity with best-in-class
TCO. Its broad data center portfolio includes its 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.
Stay connected to Western Digital:
Twitter, LinkedIn, Blog, Facebook, YouTube
Resources
- Industry Paper: The Hidden Cost of IT Is Weighing Down Digital
Business, Scott Sinclair and Monya Keane, ESG, April 2020
- Blog: Three Technologies that Make HDD Magic
- Blog: Reducing the Hidden Costs of Storage
- Video: Continuous Innovation for 18TB/20TB Ultrastar HDDs
- Technical Brief: Continuous Innovation for Highest Capacities
and Lower TCO
About Western Digital
Western Digital creates environments for data to thrive. As a
leader in data infrastructure, 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. Our data-centric solutions are comprised of the Western
Digital®, G-Technology™, SanDisk®, and WD® brands.
1 Based on observed drive return data, does not change product
specifications and does not constitute a warranty
One terabyte (TB) is equal to one trillion bytes and one
petabyte (PB) is equal to one thousand terabytes. Actual user
capacity may vary depending on operating environment.
© 2020 Western Digital Corporation or its affiliates. All rights
reserved. Western Digital, the Western Digital logo, HelioSeal,
OpenFlex, Ultrastar and WD Gold are registered trademarks or
trademarks of Western Digital Corporation or its affiliates in the
U.S. and/or other countries. The NVMe and NVMe-oF word marks are
trademarks of NVM Express, Inc. All other marks are the property of
their respective owners. Product specifications subject to change
without notice. Pictures shown may vary from actual products. Not
all products are available in all regions of the world.
Forward-Looking Statements
This news release contains certain forward-looking statements
that involve risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited
to, the expected availability, benefits, capabilities, capacity,
performance, speed and/or other features of the WD Gold HDDs,
Ultrastar HDDs, Ultrastar storage platforms and storage servers,
growth opportunities and market and industry trends. There are a
number of risks and uncertainties that may cause these
forward-looking statements to be inaccurate including, among
others: future responses to and effects of the COVID-19 pandemic;
changes to specifications from standards organizations, 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, divestitures,
mergers and joint ventures; difficulties or delays in
manufacturing; and other risks and uncertainties listed in the
company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission,
including the company's most recently filed periodic report, to
which your attention is directed. You should not place undue
reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as
of the date hereof, and the company undertakes no obligation to
update these forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent
events or circumstances.
View source
version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200708005164/en/
Matthew Flynn Western Digital Public Relations 1-949-672-6750
matthew.flynn@wdc.com
T. Peter Andrew Western Digital Investor Relations
1-800-695-6399 peter.andrew@wdc.com investor@wdc.com
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