Record Capacity for HDD: 12TB on He12 by Western Digital With PMR in 1H17, Then Coming 14TB with SMR

Western Digital Corp. expanded its data center SSD and HDD portfolio with the introduction of next-generation storage solutions designed to help IT managers address the intensive data and performance demands of enterprise, cloud and hyperscale workloads.

The new solutions include the fast HGST-branded Ultrastar SN200 NVMe-compatible PCIe SSD series, which offers random read performance of up to 1.2 million IO/s in key workloads (1), and the company’s fastest and highest capacity SAS SSD to date, the HGST-branded Ultrastar SS200 Series SSD.

The company also introduced its fourth-generation helium-based HelioSeal enterprise HDD, the 12TB (2) HGST-branded Ultrastar He12 drive. Additionally, the company announced it will extend the He12 platform to 14TB, leveraging Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR).

“We have raised the bar in enterprise storage with our most advanced and highest capacity enterprise SAS SSD, NVMe SSD, and HDD solutions to date,” said Mark Grace, SVP of devices, Western Digital. “The unparalleled performance of the new Ultrastar SN200 Series NVMe PCIe solution brings outstanding responsiveness and throughput to even the most demanding data center applications, while our new Ultrastar SS200 Series SSD delivers the ideal balance of speed and capacity to the high volume workloads and critical applications that are best addressed by the capabilities of SAS SSDs. Additionally, the He12 HDD is a great addition to our enterprise HDD family, leveraging the HelioSeal platform to deliver the highest capacity with exceptional power efficiency. With their outstanding reliability and QoS, these new additions to our industry-leading data center portfolio enable customers across the spectrum to meet their evolving and dynamic data center demand.”

Ultrastar SN200 SSD Delivers
Next-Gen NVMe PCIe Storage Capacity, Speed
It is the highest capacity NVMe PCIe SSD available in 2.5-inch and Half-Height, Half-Length (HH-HL) form factors. Leveraging memory technology, it is the company’s fastest NVMe PCIe SSD to date, offering up to 100% more sequential read, and up to 61% more random read performance than the company’s previous-generation NVMe-compliant SSD (3), the HGST-branded Ultrastar SN150 SSD. Available in capacities ranging from 800GB to 7.68TB, the performance and capacity of the new NVMe PCIe SSD, in combination with its QoS, make it for workload-intensive cloud and hyperscale environments that demand instant response times, such as ecommerce, search and social networks, as well as environments processing massive volumes of data in real-time, including intensive analytics.

Ultrastar SS200 SAS enterprise SSD Transforms Data Centers
It is the highest capacity and highest performing SAS SSD from the company to date. It is built to efficiently deliver capacity, low-latency performance and the endurance needed to help data center managers address the rapidly growing volume and velocity of data from today’s critical applications, while at the same time balancing their TCO. Offered in capacities up to 7.68TB, it brings new capabilities and possibilities to storage arrays, hyperconverged and software-defined architectures that require dual-port design with a SAS interface.

The enterprise Ultrastar SS200 SSD is available in two endurance classes to meet customers’ needs, including 1 and 3 random drive writes per day (DWPD) (4). Leveraging advanced NAND management technology, the SSD offers read performance up to 1,800MB/s sequential/up and to 250,0000 4KB IO/s random without compromising on write performance (up to 1,000 MB/s sequential/up to 86,000 4KB IO/s random) (5). This makes it for a variety of data intensive, critical enterprise and cloud-based applications. In addition, it leverages the company’s latest generation Guardian Technologyplatform, a proprietary and comprehensive set of features and technologies that improve endurance and reliability, help safeguard against data loss, and further ensure QoS.

Ultrastar He12 Helium HDD
The He12 is Western Digital’s fourth-generation helium HDD, featuring an industry-first eight-disk design, to deliver 12TB capacity using PMR technology in a standard 3.5-inch form factor. It is the world’s highest capacity HDD drive for active random workloads. Utilizing company’s HelioSeal process that seals helium in the drive to help provide the highest capacity HDD and power efficiency, the He12 comes in a single 12TB capacity point and offers either a SATA or SAS interface both using Advanced Format. HelioSeal technology utilizes helium with 1/7 the density of air, enabling the use of thinner disks, while maintaining a stable recording interface. The He12 design adds an eighth disk, two more than the highest capacity air-based drive, which enabled the capacity increase to 12TB, 50% more than the highest air-based design. This additional capacity provides for increased storage density, reducing associated data center infrastructure required to store a given amount of data. It also encompasses a low-power design without compromising performance, which helps reduce overall cost of ownership. The He12 is for application that requires massive amounts of cost-effective storage.

The company will extend the He12 platform further, leveraging SMR to provide more capacity from the same essential hardware. The SMR version of the drive will deliver 14TB and will support, in particular, many cloud service providers that have implemented SMR support in their software architectures to more cost effectively store ever increasing data associated with the services they provide.

Features and Specifications:

Ultrastar SN200 NVMe PCIe SSD Series
    •    PCIe Gen 3 and NVMe 1.2 compatible
    •    Offering 70/30 mixed R/W random performance of up to 560,000 4KB IO/s (6)
    •    Storage capacity up to 7.68TB in both 2.5-inch SFF and HH-HL AIC form factors
    •    Enterprise-grade reliability: Flash-aware RAID, end-to-end data-path protection, advanced ECC, secure erase, PowerSafe power-loss protection

Ultrastar SS200 SAS SSD
    •    Enterprise-grade 12Gb SAS SSD; backward compatible with 6Gb SAS
    •    Available in capacities from 400GB to 7.68TB in 2.5-inch drive form factor
    •    Read Performance: Up to 1,800MB/s sequential read and up to 250,000 4KB IO/s in random reads
    •    Write Performance: Up to 1,000MB/s sequential writes; endurance of 3 or 1 random drive writes per day for 5 years
    •    Data Security: Instant Secure Erase (ISE) and Self-Encrypting Drive (SED) options including TCG Enterprise

Ultrastar He12 Helium HDD
    •    HelioSeal: Western Digital’s fourth generation, based on HelioSeal technology, bringing the highest capacity HDD to market sooner than competing technologies
    •    World’s first 8-disk design, 12TB capacity, available with either 12Gb SAS or 6Gb SATA interface
    •    Data Security: Instant Secure Erase, sanitize and safely redeploy HDDs using the Instant Secure Erase feature
    •    SED Features: Help protect end user data with encryption (Self Encrypting Drive)
    •    Reliability: Amongst the industry’s highest MTBF rating at 2.5 million hours with a 5-year limited warranty

The Ultrastar SN200 NVMe SSD Series and the Ultrastar SS200 SAS SSD are currently sampling to select customers, and will be available in the first quarter of the 2017 calendar year.

The company is also currently sampling to select OEMs the Ultrastar He12, which will be available the first half of the 2017 calendar year, and the 14TB SMR HDD, which will be available in the middle of 2017 calendar year.

(1) Denotes demonstrated speed in HH-HL version only.
(2) TB = 1 terabyte (TB) = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. Actual user capacity less.
(3) Denotes speed increase to HH-HL version only.
(4) DW/D endurance specification using 4KB random write workload for 5 years.
(5) Based on endurance class of 3 drive writes per day for 5 years.
(6) Best-in-class claim based on 6.4TB HH-HL version only.