HGST Announces Active Archive High-Density Storage Platform – Up To 10PB In A Single Rack!

HGST (formerly Hitachi Global Storage Technologies), a leading producer of enterprise storage solutions, and a Western Digital company, is announcing their Active Archive platform to create high-density storage arrays. Seen here, Mike Tang, Senior VP and GM, Elastic Storage Platforms Group, HGST, introduces HGSTs Active Archive Platform Solutions in San Francisco.

The true value of data is only realized if it is readily accessible to applications and analytical systems when it is needed.  HGST’s Active Archive solutions are believed to be the only cost-effective method of allowing organizations to realize the value of data — quickly and always available data.

Active Archive represents a new category of storage that is optimized for greenfield data growth, and servers newly created data that otherwise is not able to be stored and readily accessed with classic technologies.  Active Arhive’s new storage capacities are measured in PB (petabytes), rather than TB (terabytes) or GB (gigabytes).  Active Archive platforms can deliver density exceeding 10PB in a single datacenter rack.

Both of the racks shown in the image below contain 2PB of storage density.  The tall rack on the right requires 360 individual drives to attain that capacity.  The Active Archive platform on the left attains the same 2PB of density with only 190 individual drives, and occupies only a fraction of the physical space.

Hardware and software innovations included in the Active Archive platform provide 5X the density and power efficiency of commonly used scale-out offerings, and a 10X increase compared to classic storage array solutions.  The ability to store and access more information with no increase in investment allows organizations to be more flexible and competitive.

HGST’s proven expertise with the highest-density hard drives is the basis for the physical design of Active Archive platforms, at the chassis and rack level.  HGST’s HelioSeal HDD (helium-filled) platform offers the high capacity and low power consumption needed.  New recording density achievements, including HGST’s Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR), will play an important role in further meeting the needs of future Active Archive platform offerings.

Active Archive also utilizes specialized software to drive additional efficiency in its platform.  It also removes complexity and makes the platforms easy to set up, deploy, and extract value from.  HGST is also working on developing tighter integration with advanced software, laying the foundation for more intelligent and flexible storage solutions.

HGST has begun delivery of sample Active Archive platforms to strategic partners for testing and analysis.