• Welcome to TechPowerUp Forums, Guest! Please check out our forum guidelines for info related to our community.

Western Digital Expands Mid-Range Enterprise Hard Drive Offerings

btarunr

Editor & Senior Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Oct 9, 2007
Messages
47,300 (7.53/day)
Location
Hyderabad, India
System Name RBMK-1000
Processor AMD Ryzen 7 5700G
Motherboard ASUS ROG Strix B450-E Gaming
Cooling DeepCool Gammax L240 V2
Memory 2x 8GB G.Skill Sniper X
Video Card(s) Palit GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER GameRock
Storage Western Digital Black NVMe 512GB
Display(s) BenQ 1440p 60 Hz 27-inch
Case Corsair Carbide 100R
Audio Device(s) ASUS SupremeFX S1220A
Power Supply Cooler Master MWE Gold 650W
Mouse ASUS ROG Strix Impact
Keyboard Gamdias Hermes E2
Software Windows 11 Pro
Known for enabling new levels of enterprise total cost of ownership (TCO) with HelioSeal helium hard drive technology and industry leading capacity drives, Western Digital Corporation is expanding its portfolio for enterprise customers with a new, mid-range series of 4 terabyte (TB), 6TB and 8TB air-based hard drives. The new products enable corporate data centers having data set sizes smaller than found in hyperscale environments to harness the power of data across a broad spectrum of Big Data applications such as analytics and distributed file systems.

Western Digital leads the high-capacity enterprise hard drive market for hyperscale and cloud environments with its 10TB, 12TB and 14TB drives, where the company's HelioSeal helium-sealing technology is required for the highest capacities and densities to deliver the lowest (or best) TCO. However, many applications have small data sets or benefit from optimal performance from implementation of a cluster of lower capacity, air-based hard drives. Many traditional data center systems still rely on moderate capacity points for RAID-based block-and-file systems.



"The power of Big Data is driving the need for higher capacities across a broad spectrum of applications," said Brendan Collins, vice president of marketing, Devices Business Unit, Western Digital. "Today, mid-range applications are preparing to move from 1TB and 2TB configurations to higher capacities. Our new enterprise solutions blend the technology and TCO leadership of Western Digital's capacity enterprise product line with a high-density, air-based hard drive design, allowing OEMs to offer data centers a solution to keep Big Data on-premises, rather than transition entirely to the cloud."

Distributed file systems such as Apache Hadoop often have workloads that require higher access density in order to maintain performance when running Big Data analytics jobs. The "sweet spot" capacities for these applications are 4TB, 6TB and 8TB. Western Digital's new enterprise solutions are designed for this space, while providing enterprise-level performance and specifications for storage OEM partners to serve end customers with a range of capacity and price points while maintaining the enterprise integrity demanded by today's data center architects.

Available immediately for qualification, the new Ultrastar 7K6, supporting 4TB and 6TB capacity points, utilizes a new 4-disk, enterprise class, air-based design. The new products provide up to 12 percent faster performance than the prior generation Ultrastar 7K6000 and is designed for traditional storage and server applications as well as distributed and scalable computing, including block-and-file storage architecture. Later this quarter, the company will deliver an Ultrastar 7K8 8TB solution, which is based on an air-based design and is the ninth generation of the company's 5-disk platform. Further information regarding the Ultrastar 7K6 and 7K8 is available on the website.

The 4TB, 6TB and 8TB offerings will be ready for volume ramp during the second calendar quarter of 2018. Western Digital's media cache and flash-based non-volatile cache (NVC) are implemented to improve write performance. These new enterprise drives will be available in either SAS or SATA interfaces and provide an enterprise-class MTBF rating of 2M hours.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site
 

Ruru

S.T.A.R.S.
Joined
Dec 16, 2012
Messages
12,982 (2.96/day)
Location
Jyväskylä, Finland
System Name 4K-gaming / media-PC
Processor AMD Ryzen 7 5800X / Intel Core i7-6700K
Motherboard Asus ROG Crosshair VII Hero / Asus Z170-K
Cooling Alphacool Eisbaer 360 / Alphacool Eisbaer 240
Memory 32GB DDR4-3466 / 16GB DDR4-3000
Video Card(s) Asus RTX 3080 TUF OC / Powercolor RX 6700 XT
Storage 3.3TB of SSDs / several small SSDs
Display(s) Acer 27" 4K120 IPS + Lenovo 32" 4K60 IPS
Case Corsair 4000D AF White / DeepCool CC560 WH
Audio Device(s) Sony WH-CN720N
Power Supply EVGA G2 750W / Fractal ION Gold 550W
Mouse Logitech MX518 / Logitech G400s
Keyboard Roccat Vulcan 121 AIMO / NOS C450 Mini Pro
VR HMD Oculus Rift CV1
Software Windows 11 Pro / Windows 11 Pro
Benchmark Scores They run Crysis
At least there is space for cat videos.
 
Joined
Sep 15, 2011
Messages
6,762 (1.40/day)
Processor Intel® Core™ i7-13700K
Motherboard Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Elite AX
Cooling Noctua NH-D15
Memory 32GB(2x16) DDR5@6600MHz G-Skill Trident Z5
Video Card(s) ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 3080 AMP Holo
Storage 2TB SK Platinum P41 SSD + 4TB SanDisk Ultra SSD + 500GB Samsung 840 EVO SSD
Display(s) Acer Predator X34 3440x1440@100Hz G-Sync
Case NZXT PHANTOM410-BK
Audio Device(s) Creative X-Fi Titanium PCIe
Power Supply Corsair 850W
Mouse Logitech Hero G502 SE
Software Windows 11 Pro - 64bit
Benchmark Scores 30FPS in NFS:Rivals
How does this HGST drives compares to WD Black drives?
 
Joined
Aug 20, 2007
Messages
21,541 (3.40/day)
System Name Pioneer
Processor Ryzen R9 9950X
Motherboard GIGABYTE Aorus Elite X670 AX
Cooling Noctua NH-D15 + A whole lotta Sunon and Corsair Maglev blower fans...
Memory 64GB (4x 16GB) G.Skill Flare X5 @ DDR5-6000 CL30
Video Card(s) XFX RX 7900 XTX Speedster Merc 310
Storage Intel 905p Optane 960GB boot, +2x Crucial P5 Plus 2TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs
Display(s) 55" LG 55" B9 OLED 4K Display
Case Thermaltake Core X31
Audio Device(s) TOSLINK->Schiit Modi MB->Asgard 2 DAC Amp->AKG Pro K712 Headphones or HDMI->B9 OLED
Power Supply FSP Hydro Ti Pro 850W
Mouse Logitech G305 Lightspeed Wireless
Keyboard WASD Code v3 with Cherry Green keyswitches + PBT DS keycaps
Software Gentoo Linux x64 / Windows 11 Enterprise IoT 2024
So I guess Ultrastar 7k6000 is not "last in air" afterall... lol

ultrastar 7K6000.png


How does this HGST drives compares to WD Black drives?

Faster, noisier, longer mtbf. Typical Enterprise part. Much more money too.
 
Top