Western Digital: Ultrastar 18/20TB and 16/18TB CMR HDDs With 9 Platters

Western Digital Corp. (WD) is extending its HDD technology and capacity into its broader portfolio of data center solutions.

Leveraging innovations from the Ultrastar 18 and 20TB HDD technology platform, the Gold family now features 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.

“WD’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, VP, 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 exabyte shipments to grow at a 32.5% CAGR, reaching 1.9ZB by 2024.“

HDD technology with 18 and 20TB Ultrastar HDDs

WD 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 16 and 18TB Ultrastar DC HC550 CMR HDDs are industry’s first commercial implementation of EAMR technology. Together with the company’s HelioSeal design for 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 9-disk drives also enable customers to more efficiently provision and scale their data center environments with TCO value.

“We are excited to test WD’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, VP, infrastructure engineering, DAtto, provider of cloud-based software and technology solutions delivered through MSPs.

Extending WD Gold family with 16TB and 18TB enterprise HDDs

Following the recent availability of Gold NVMe SSDs, the company has again expanded its Gold family of drives for channel customers to include 16 and 18TB CMR HDD models. Available now and featuring a 5-year limited warranty, the WD Gold CMR HDDs are designed for use in enterprise-class server and storage systems and are purpose-built for heavy workloads and an array of big data applications.

With up to 2.5 million hours MTBF, Gold HDDs deliver enhanced levels of dependability and durability, as well as vibration protection technology for improved, consistent performance. These HDDs are designed to handle workloads up to 550TB per year, which is among the highest of any 3.5-inch HDD. These drives also feature the firm’s HelioSeal technology that enables high capacities with a low power draw.

Ultrastar platforms and storage server available with 16TB and 18TB Ultrastar CMR HDDs

Also announced are Ultrastar Data60 and Data102 JBODs, and Serv60+8 storage server that have been upgraded to leverage the company’s enterprise-class 16 and 18TB Ultrastar DC HC550 CMR HDDs. With up to 1.836PB in a 4U, these platforms are available and come with a 5-year limited warranty. Ultrastar platforms with upgrades to Ultrastar DC HC650 20TB SMR HDDs are expected to follow next quarter.

Ultrastar Data102

Ultrastar Data102 hybrid storage platform specifications
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Ultrastar Data60 and Data102 are elements of next-gen disaggregated storage and SDS infrastructure. The Ultrastar Serv60+8 is a high-capacity hybrid storage server with compute included. These platforms address the 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.

Ultrastar Data60 specifications
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Ultrastar Data60+8 storage hybrid server specifications
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Leveraging its knowledge of drive characteristics and systems, the company has implemented 2 design innovations across these platforms for added data reliability. The firm’s patented IsoVibe vibration isolation technology helps ensure consistent performance is maintained under heavy workloads. Additionally, 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 higher reliability. The combination of IsoVibe and ArcticFlow has been demonstrated to reduce field drive returns by 62% compared to the firm’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, 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, WD develops, manufacturers and markets NAND, SSDs, HDDs and platforms,” said Yusuf Jamal, SVP, devices and platforms business, WD. “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.“

The company innovates, pushing the boundaries of science and technology to deliver products that enable data infrastructure efficiency and productivity with TCO. Its 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. The firm 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.

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

⁽¹⁾ Based on observed drive return data, does not change product specs and does not constitute a warranty.
1TB is equal to one trillion bytes and 1PB is equal to one thousand terabytes. Actual user capacity may vary depending on operating environment.

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