Western Digital Corp., a global data storage technology and solutions leader, today announced the HGST-branded Ultrastar SS300, the company's highest-performing SAS SSD to date. It is the latest addition to the company's family of Ultrastar 12Gb/s SAS SSDs, which are used to meet the rigorous data demands of many of the world's largest companies today. Developed in partnership with Intel, the new Ultrastar SS300 delivers best-in-class random performance, offering speeds of up to 400,000 IOPS random read and up to 200,000 IOPS random write.

"Today, we raise the bar with our newest 12 Gb/s SAS SSD, the Ultrastar SS300," said Ulrich Hansen, vice president of SSD product marketing at Western Digital. "Built with high-endurance 3D NAND flash memory, the Ultrastar SS300 offers best-in-class speed, outstanding capacity and intelligent power options that enable customers to tailor storage systems and server solutions that are just right for their demanding needs. These benefits are delivered with the same tremendous reliability that has helped to make Ultrastar 12 Gb/s SAS SSDs popular around the globe."The Ultrastar SS300 is ideal for the intensive data demands of virtualized storage systems, databases and private and hybrid cloud environments. It offers capacities up to 7.68TB, giving data center architects the potential to reduce the number of drives, consolidate servers and open up valuable rack space. The new Ultrastar SS300 is offered in a variety of endurance classes and comes with a range of features and power settings. This includes a 14-watt power envelope that can unlock additional performance capabilities and an ultra-low power setting for more efficient energy consumption. With this variety of options and high capacity, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) have a greater flexibility to create next-generation data center storage systems that address a wide variety of workloads and total cost of ownership (TCO) requirements.

"The use of Intel technology in the Ultrastar SS300 12Gb/s SAS SSD complements Western Digital's commitment to offering exceptional solutions to meet their customers' needs," said Bill Leszinske, vice president of strategic planning, marketing and business development at Intel Corporation. "Our long-standing relationship with Western Digital to develop SAS SSDs has been very productive, providing leadership solutions for the storage community worldwide."

Additional Ultrastar SS300 12Gb/s SAS SSD features and specifications include:

• Sequential read and write speeds of up to 2050 MB/s2
• Four endurance choices, from 0.5 to 10 drive writes per day
• Offers a choice of security options, including Instant Secure Erase (ISE), Self-Encrypting Drive (SED)-compliant with TCG Enterprise and SED-compliant with TCG Enterprise with FIPS 140-2 certification

The Ultrastar SS300 SSD is currently shipping to OEM partners. It joins Western Digital's broad range of HGST-brand and SanDisk-brand enterprise grade storage solutions, which includes innovative helium enterprise hard disk drives as well as SAS, NVMe and SATA SSD solutions.