Development Tools For Seagate Kinetic for Open Compute

Seagate Technology plc delivered two development tools related to its Kinetic Open Storage platform: the Kinetic Ethernet Drive interface and the Kinetic T-Card development adapter.

Both innovations, which have been accepted by the Open Compute Foundation as open standards available to Open Compute Project (OCP) solution providers and system builders, debuted at OCP Summit V.

“Seagate is committed to driving open source innovation and empowering an active ecosystem of system builders and software developers with the tools they need to deploy cutting-edge storage solutions and drive this truly revolutionary platform,” said Mark Re, Seagate’s CTO. “A true game changer, the Kinetic Open Storage platform will provide this community with the ability to deliver innovative, first-of-their-kind, scale-out storage architectures at the industry’s lowest TCO.“

Building on its support of open source innovation, the company is making its Ethernet Drive interface specification and T-Card development adapter available to the OCP. Both Kinetic drive connector specifications will enable the community to design, test, and deliver applications and system designs built upon the Kinetic open storage platform providing a path to object-based solution development at a reduced time to market.

“Seagate’s Kinetic technology has enabled us to further innovate on top of the Open Compute Project system design and allows us to increase storage density and reduce performance bottlenecks,” said Steve Ichinaga, SVP and GM, Hyve Solutions, a division of Synnex. “This new open storage platform is another great example of the innovations arising from the Open Compute Project community allowing us to better address the needs of our scale-out storage cloud customers.“

“Seagate has been a true world-class partner providing us with best-in-class support as we develop cutting-edge systems based on this truly ground-breaking platform- making this a win win for both us and our customers,” said Dr. Sunlai Chang, CTO, Wiwynn Corp.

Seagate Kinetic Development Tools Debut
The Kinetic Ethernet Drive interface enables solution providers to transition existing SAS or SATA based chassis designs to systems by replacing HDD SATA or SAS backplanes with Ethernet backplanes. While the platform’s T-Card development adapter enables software developers to write and pre-test applications by communicating over the connectors to Kinetic Open Storage HDDs. Both specifications are designed to conform to the dimensions, specifications, power signal assignments, and physical placement of industry standard SAS drives.

Announced in 2013, the Kinetic Open Storage platform is a device-based open source platform that leverages a traditional HDD drive assembly, the key/value API, and Ethernet connectivity to enable performance, scale, simplicity and a lower TCO for scale-out storage architectures.