Seagate Starts Shipping Commercial Exos HAMR HDDs

[T0@st]

Seagate has revealed that it has received revenue for Exos Corvault systems during a fourth quarter and fiscal year 2023 conference call—the latest server range is equipped with heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) hard drives. We heard about evaluation samples being sent out to an important data center client around Spring time, but fresh corporate announcements have revealed that the first commercial HAMR-based systems have been picked up by paying customers. Gianluca Romano, the firm's chief financial officer stated: "Importantly, we shipped our first HAMR-based CORVAULT system for revenue as planned during the June quarter. We expect broader availability of these CORVAULT systems by the end of calendar 2023."

Seagate's chief executive, Dave Mosley, also revealed that higher capacity HAMR-based nearline hard drives have been sent out for testing in the field. He boasts that this was achieved during corporate cost cutting initiatives: "We reduced production output by approximately 25% compared with peak volume in order to drive better supply/demand dynamics and enhance profitability as the markets recover. And all of these accomplishments were made while delivering on our 30 TB+ HAMR product development and qualification milestones with volume ramp on track to begin in early calendar 2024...Initial customer qualifications are progressing well. We are on track to begin volume ramp in early calendar 2024. We are also preparing qualifications with a broader number of customers, including testing for lower capacity drives targeting VIA and enterprise OEM workloads." He also outlined plans to keep PMR and SMR hard drive technologies alive for another generation: "Development efforts on what may be our last PMR product are nearing completion and will extend drive capacities into the mid- to upper 20 TB range." Clients who are reluctant to jump onto HAMR could be offered some alternatives—24 TB+ models based on PMR+TDMR and SMR+TDMR configurations are roadmapped for release by the end of the year.




Seagate Technology's blurb states: "While data creation is growing exponentially, IT teams and budgets are not. That's why we built Exos CORVAULT. As a set-and-forget solution, you can store mass data with less human intervention. The system heals itself on the fly thanks to Seagate Autonomous Drive Regeneration (ADR). That means fewer opportunities for human error and more cost savings."

Learn more here.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[natr0n]

Self healing hard to believe.

 

[kondamin]

are they shingled and pendicular too?

 

[vbq7qK68eyYAH4iR]

We reduced production output by approximately 25% compared with peak volume in order to drive better supply/demand dynamics and enhance profitability as the markets recover.

No doubt news before the end of the next financial quarter.

Due to weak demand, we're raising our prices to keep margins high. Customers will continue to pay, because who are they going to, our competitor who will raise prices and reduces volume, too?

 

[kondamin]

No doubt news before the end of the next financial quarter.

it's like there is some sort of price controling cartel and no real competition, so weird and unheard of in the industry.

 

[Solaris17]

are they shingled and pendicular too?

looking at the whitepaper it looks like any other storage rack from EMC, Pure, HPE etc. The backplane and software gymnastics are what is doing the magic.

In the case of the announcement they are most likely talking about there SAS Exos 2x20 MACH2 drives. which is the series IIRC that will first get the HAMR treatment.

Looking at the wiki

Heat-assisted magnetic recording - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

It appears this is more an evolution of PMR/SMR but in the context of the writing almost seems to indicate its a successor to PMR itself. I could be wrong though.

 

[Jism]

Give it a couple of years and SSD's will pretty much wipe the use of ancient disks. Storage is getting cheaper - and even if it was for the large amount of GB's you can still use proper slow storage that would be still faster then old HDD's.

They have bin sitting too long on the idea that HDD's never would be obsolete. HDD's where quite a long time always the slowest thing inside a computer.

 

[Solaris17]

Give it a couple of years and SSD's will pretty much wipe the use of ancient disks. Storage is getting cheaper - and even if it was for the large amount of GB's you can still use proper slow storage that would be still faster then old HDD's.

They have bin sitting too long on the idea that HDD's never would be obsolete. HDD's where quite a long time always the slowest thing inside a computer.

I think your right to a degree. Even if densities improve they could always maybe put them in a thicket enclosure and expand that way. Though im not sure how they would maintain speed given the trace length. In either case I dont think its impossible to think through.

However, while I think you are right when it comes to "a computer" and "most peoples" needs (with SSD/nvme pushing 8TB in consumer land) it will take DRASTICALLY longer for the niche this product serves to be replaced.

We are not close at all to replacing disk shelved with SSDs. From an expense and practicality standpoint at all.

 

[Jism]

For storage you do not need high end SSD disks. You can, just as they do with 2nd name brands in TV land use older panels and still have some sort of resale value. If it's for storage i think you can get away with a large bank of older generation(s) SSD's really - the more the better and the more redundant it is. The power consumption as well would drasticly go down since some HDD's can consume up to 10W a disk into a server. You'll need beefy cooling for that as well to even taim a 2U ~ 4U filled with disks. That can run into the hundreds of watts on disks alone.

I'm not sure - i feel like HDD's have bin behind on tech for quite alot of time, and also the statement to lower production and thus to thrive up prices for new disk is also a signal to keep shareholders happy. They had the tech for so long dominated in their hands but refused to continue to work to still keep HDD"s relevant. I mean tape storage is still a thing, and the sizes on those are into the petabyte's - it's just slow as a turd to maintain still.

The avg price in Euro's for a 1TB SSD / Samsung is within 70 euro's. That grants you up to 550MB of read / write. 70 euro back then would get you a 40 to 80GB HDD spinning at usually 5400RPM. Crazy how times are changed.

 

[Solaris17]

For storage you do not need high end SSD disks. You can, just as they do with 2nd name brands in TV land use older panels and still have some sort of resale value. If it's for storage i think you can get away with a large bank of older generation(s) SSD's really - the more the better and the more redundant it is. The power consumption as well would drasticly go down since some HDD's can consume up to 10W a disk into a server. You'll need beefy cooling for that as well to even taim a 2U ~ 4U filled with disks. That can run into the hundreds of watts on disks alone.

I'm not sure - i feel like HDD's have bin behind on tech for quite alot of time, and also the statement to lower production and thus to thrive up prices for new disk is also a signal to keep shareholders happy. They had the tech for so long dominated in their hands but refused to continue to work to still keep HDD"s relevant. I mean tape storage is still a thing, and the sizes on those are into the petabyte's - it's just slow as a turd to maintain still.

The avg price in Euro's for a 1TB SSD / Samsung is within 70 euro's. That grants you up to 550MB of read / write. 70 euro back then would get you a 40 to 80GB HDD spinning at usually 5400RPM. Crazy how times are changed.

I mean we must be talking about totally different things. With samples of this drive reaching 30-50TB and readily available at 20TB I am not sure how you think any SSD availible will suffice. Datacenter and rack space is at a premium you cant just install 26 new racks to get the same amount of storage that 1 shelf will afford you, and you sure as shit are not getting consumer drives or SSDs anywhere inside of these.

These will be WD Golds, Seagate EXOS, backed by Intel/Kingston or Micron DC SSD drives as cache. When you are dealing with Pure, EMC, Nimble, you are not thinking about budget per server devices for some $5/mo VPS host. These appliances run linked to clusters, corporate or otherwise and backup client data, research data, or just corporate data.

You wouldnt get something like a 990pro anywhere near these devices.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

Give it a couple of years and SSD's will pretty much wipe the use of ancient disks. Storage is getting cheaper - and even if it was for the large amount of GB's you can still use proper slow storage that would be still faster then old HDD's.

They have bin sitting too long on the idea that HDD's never would be obsolete. HDD's where quite a long time always the slowest thing inside a computer.

It already is in the consumer space, but flash has a long way still before it will dominate in datacenters and cloud solutions. As it stands right now flash isn't really used for storage in datacenters, but instead for massive caching systems.

Theres other technologies too that is coming to hard drives, which is at the demand of companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. to provide more throughput as drives capacities grow.

 

[Minus Infinity]

I shudder at the thought of the price GB for a 30TB HAMR drive. Self healing capability sounds great, but I wonder how well it works and what it heals. If if can repair bad sectors on the fly then that's impressive.

Give it a couple of years and SSD's will pretty much wipe the use of ancient disks. Storage is getting cheaper - and even if it was for the large amount of GB's you can still use proper slow storage that would be still faster then old HDD's.

They have bin sitting too long on the idea that HDD's never would be obsolete. HDD's where quite a long time always the slowest thing inside a computer.

I've been giving it years and years and we still don't even have 8TB drives widely available other than Scamsung QVO garbage. How many years must we wait and what will the price be. Until then spinning rust still has it's place especially for those of use with massive photo and/or video libraries

 

[Solaris17]

but I wonder how well it works and what it heals.

Looks like rackcdn has a PDF that goes into ADR (which is what exos corevault is using)

https://146a55aca6f00848c565-a7635525d40ac1c70300198708936b4e.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/images/96a89bfd93ff3752e89e34106db57564de626d54.pdf

Looks like its head based.

 

[Bwaze]

I shudder at the thought of the price GB for a 30TB HAMR drive. Self healing capability sounds great, but I wonder how well it works and what it heals. If if can repair bad sectors on the fly then that's impressive.


I've been giving it years and years and we still don't even have 8TB drives widely available other than Scamsung QVO garbage. How many years must we wait and what will the price be. Until then spinning rust still has it's place especially for those of use with massive photo and/or video libraries

Yeah, Samsung QVO 8TB SSD drives were announced in 2019, they launched in 2020, with really sub-par specs (writes that fall as low as 80 MB/s once the cache is full, really?), and since then we haven't seen anything even remotely competing in consumer space.

In 4TB we finally have much better options - like Crucial P3 Plus SSD 4TB, M.2, for 160 - 170 EUR. And plenty fast for most uses, about 20x faster than Samsung QVO

But I really need 8TB drive for my photo library. There were some announcements for 8TB M.2 drives to be launched later this year and in next year, but it was very poorly covered in press, so I wouldn't be surprised if all those products get postponed in the recent drive for lowering costs instead of offering products we would buy.

 

[persondb]

HAMR feels like it's taking too long to arrive, and HDDs can't really fight SSDs without it.

 

[mashie]

I mean we must be talking about totally different things. With samples of this drive reaching 30-50TB and readily available at 20TB I am not sure how you think any SSD availible will suffice. Datacenter and rack space is at a premium you cant just install 26 new racks to get the same amount of storage that 1 shelf will afford you, and you sure as shit are not getting consumer drives or SSDs anywhere inside of these.

These will be WD Golds, Seagate EXOS, backed by Intel/Kingston or Micron DC SSD drives as cache. When you are dealing with Pure, EMC, Nimble, you are not thinking about budget per server devices for some $5/mo VPS host. These appliances run linked to clusters, corporate or otherwise and backup client data, research data, or just corporate data.

You wouldnt get something like a 990pro anywhere near these devices.

There are 60TB 2.5" SSDs, the problem is that they have the cost of a decent car. Spinning rust isn't going anywhere unfortunately. I would happily replace my 140TB of HDDs with SSDs if they were cost effective.

 

[Solaris17]

There are 60TB 2.5" SSDs, the problem is that they have the cost of a decent car. Spinning rust isn't going anywhere unfortunately. I would happily replace my 140TB of HDDs with SSDs if they were cost effective.

I’m aware. Except they are SAS/U.2 and not 2.5”.

 

[mashie]

I’m aware. Except they are SAS/U.2 and not 2.5”.

Since when is U.2 not physically 2.5"?

 

[Solaris17]

Since when is U.2 not physically 2.5"?

Because it’s an interface not a size specification. It is 2.5 inches in area only the drives are thicker.

Here I will break it down.

Your big players in this space are going to be Micron, Nimbus and Seagate. They are the ones pushing the boundries of SSD flash atm. Most of these products only a few have had the chance to touch physically. Most announcements are made because of the break through, but these drives take years to test and circulate at big FAANG companies for feedback.

Even then when it is "available" for purchase generally you need a "use case" or be a business.

Finally; I mean just look at them. Lets start

Micron: You will be looking at the ION line. This is where there higher densities usually are. Currently you can get 6500 series.

https://media-www.micron.com/-/media/client/global/documents/products/product-flyer/6500_ion_nvme_ssd_product_brief.pdf?la=en&rev=0551c45ada82469aa6162c87473e2b06

These max out at 30TB and come in EL.1 form factor and are about the size of your arm. I have had the ability to touch these and its as close to "nvme" as your going to get.
The next is U.3 (SAS) form factor which looks like a normal hard drive; but its not.

Next up is Nimbus (Toshiba): They have the big boy drive atm for "public" company consumption. It is 100TB and is part of the exadrive line.

https://nimbusdata.com/docs/ExaDrive-DC-Datasheet.pdf

This is a 3.5" drive on QLC NAND that comes in SATA only.

Finally we have Seagate:

They have a 60TB prototype they released a few years back. These drives AFAIK have not made it to market and because they were prototypes were not part of an official product stack. They were 12gb/s SAS but I dont know much else about it.

None of these as you already know are economical, but I belive even the Microns are QVO. These are meant for storage with faster drives caching even still. They certainly were not designed to fit in anyones case and while I expect these capacities to get even more consumer availability we have been stuck on 8tb for just that reason. Servers are allowed to break this mold by simply putting the nand in another server specific form factor.