With an industry-leading 10TB capacity, the Ultrastar Archive Ha10 offers a time-to-market capacity advantage for archival environments and applications where data is sequentially written and randomly read, such as social media, cloud storage, online backup, life sciences as well as media and entertainment.
HGST recognizes SMR as a core technology necessary in driving areal density increases. By overlapping or “shingling” the data tracks on top of each other, higher areal density can be achieved within the same physical footprint. Based on feedback from customers whose data center environments demand predictable performance and control of how data is handled, HGST has implemented a host-managed SMR solution. The sequential write behavior of host-managed SMR complements active archive workloads.
Today, many hyper scale cloud providers are discovering that most of their active archive applications are already sequential, creating the ideal environment for SMR HDDs to thrive. The capacity enterprise HDD market is adapting to this shift, creating demand for purpose built drives, making the Ha10 an ideal solution due to its capacity, data integrity and desired predictable performance. Currently, HGST estimates that active archive/deep archive applications are generating 20-35 percent of the data being stored today. Based on current customer data, HGST is projecting that this statistic will grow to more than 50% in the next five years.
The Ultrastar Archive Ha10 is the third of HGST’s helium-based HDDs launched in less than two years. It underscores the sustainability, applicability, and success of its HelioSeal technology with well over one million units deployed to date. HGST continues to address data growth and long-term data retention by investing in a multi-generational path of SMR-based HDDs with HelioSeal.
Based on the proven HelioSeal platform, the Ultrastar Archive Ha10 is expected to lead the market in reliability and data integrity. The drive is rated at two million hours mean time between failure (MTBF), offers a five-year limited warranty, a 10-15 unrecoverable reduced bit error rate, rotational vibration safeguards, and 600K load/unload cycles, making it the optimal enterprise-class solution for active archive workloads.
“HGST’s helium-filled drives boasts industry-leading storage density, low power consumption and proven reliability with 2.5M hours MTBF. By layering SMR on top of helium, we are enabling massively-scalable, TCO-driven storage solutions with the performance and durability necessary for the long term retention of archived data,” says Brendan Collins, vice president of product marketing, HGST.
Initial rollout of the 10TB HDD is focused on cloud and OEM storage customers who have the in-house capability to develop the software required. To benefit from the value proposition of Ultrastar Archive Ha10, host applications need to be first sequentialized, which requires adjustments in the software stack to take advantage of the areal density gain, and consequently, the sequential write behavior of host-managed SMR. This not only ensures the predictable performance that enterprise and cloud customers expect, but also provides maximum control and arbitration at the host system level, which customers prefer.
HGST is providing an Open Source Software Development Kit (SDK) known as “libzbc” to facilitate Linux application development and implementation of new SMR command sets. Access to the SDK can be found here.
The HGST Ultrastar Archive Ha10 HDD is not a drop in replacement for today’s enterprise-capacity HDD. Potential users should visit the website www.hgst.com/10TBnow to see if their application or solution qualifies for the HGST Ultrastar Archive Ha10 program.
www.hgst.com/ultrastararchive
