Western Digital has introduced its new 22TB CMR and 26TB UltraSMR hard disk drives (HDDs) that are currently being tested by select hyperscale cloud customers.
The reason the storage giant has been able to dramatically increase hard drive capacity over the years is due to its ever-expanding technology portfolio that includes its exclusive OptiNAND technology, Power-Assisted PMR (ePMR), the three stage actuator (TSA), HelioSeal and now UltraSMR.
Western Digital's new ePMR drives leverage the company's OptiNAND technology to unlock higher levels of data capacity, performance and resiliency. For example, their new 22TB CMR hard drive incorporates OptiNAND to provide areal density on a 2,2TB/platter HelioSeal platform with ten drives.
While the average consumer probably doesn't need a drive of this capacity, cloud providers and other tech giants can use Western Digital hard drives to store more data in less space, which could help lower the cost of ownership. cloud storage services last. . users
UltraSMR
Combining OptiNAND with proprietary firmware that takes advantage of hardware advancements at the hard drive system level, Western Digital's new UltraSMR technology features large block encoding with an advanced error correction algorithm that increases the number of tracks per inch ( TPI) to allow for higher capacity hard drives.
The first hard drive to use this new technology is the company's new 670TB Ultrastar DC HC26 UltraSMR hard drive, which offers 2,6TB per platter and offers 18% more storage capacity. However, as cloud providers add more and more SMRs to their data center roadmaps, the drive's 26TB capacity could serve as a tipping point to accelerate adoption.
Ashley Gorakhpurwalla, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Western Digital's HDD business unit, provided additional information on the company's HDD technology portfolio in a press release, saying:
"As a long-time partner of the industry's leading cloud providers, we understand your unique requirements for building a next-generation cloud infrastructure and have invested in several hard drive innovations that we've developed alongside our areal density technology. Our intent in adopting this development strategy was not only to meet the capacity demands of the world's largest cloud titans, but to provide a roadmap that would also support the economic evolution of their data centers for decades to come. With ePMR, OptiNAND, and now UltraSMR as the foundation of Western Digital's HDD roadmap, our cloud customers can continue to rapidly scale their business by leveraging our innovations to lower their total cost of storage.
The 570TB Ultrastar DC HC22 hard drive will soon begin shipping in bulk to the channel, while the 670TB Ultrastar DC HC26 UltraSMR hard drive is expected to begin shipping to select customers this summer.