Recap Huawei IDI Forum 2026

Last week in Paris, Huawei held its Innovative Data Infrastructure Forum 2026, the company’s annual European data storage conference. The event offered attendees a product update and deeper insight into Huawei’s AI-driven storage strategy. Around 1,000 participants, partners and end-users alike, gathered from across Europe.

To appreciate the scale of Huawei’s presence in data storage, two figures stand out: more than 8,000 R&D engineers dedicated to storage, and over 30,000 OceanStor customers worldwide. These numbers are all the more striking given that the company only launched its own data storage product line in 2002. In 2025 alone, Huawei shipped roughly 30EB globally, according to Yuan Yuan, VP, data storage product line.

Beyond industry benchmarks such as MLPerf, analyst firms including Gartner, IDC, Forrester, and Coldago have recognized Huawei as a leading player across block, file, and object storage. The portfolio also aligns with Coldago’s U3 model, Universal, Unified, and Ubiquitous storage.

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As with the rest of the industry, AI is the central force shaping Huawei’s development roadmap. The logic is straightforward: a solution capable of handling AI workloads like training and inference can support virtually any workload. The storage team frames its strategy around two pillars, AI data infrastructure and AI-powered data infrastructure, with a focus on three areas: knowledge bases, KV cache, and memory banks, alongside key themes of AI storage, disaggregated architecture, resiliency, and hybrid data intelligence.

Several products received refreshes, updates, and extensions:

The OceanStor A800 replaces the retiring A600 as the flagship AI data platform, targeting both training and inference. Existing OceanStor Dorado users can add the Data Engine Node to access capabilities from the A series
On the AI data lake side, a new all-flash OceanStor Pacific model was introduced, the 9926 for capacity (11PB in 2U) and the 9928 for high-performance workloads requiring strong IOPS and bandwidth
For KV cache, development continues with the OceanDisk line
The OceanProtect backup appliance has also been refreshed, incorporating a proprietary Huawei SSD design combining SLC and QLC, along with a new compression card powered by 11 advanced algorithms that dramatically reduces the storage footprint
Cyberthreat protection capabilities have been enhanced with AI-based services for faster threat anticipation and response
On the media front, 122TB SSDs are generally available, and 245TB drives are nearing readiness
Regarding the magnetic disk archiving project, Yuan Yuan indicated it could be discontinued if it does not reach general availability within the next two years

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On the protocol and access side, speakers emphasized the native implementation of block, file, and S3 protocols and APIs, a critical advantage at scale when ultra-low latency is required. Active-active business continuity and disaster recovery, along with intelligent tiering, have both been updated. Additionally, DME (Omni-Dataverse) now provides a unified data access layer that simplifies processing and routing.

As for AI capabilities, the live demonstrations spoke for themselves, showcasing months of intensive engineering work moving at a rapid pace. We anticipate key new advancements during Huawei Connect in Shanghai in September.