WD has announced availability of its innovative WD Se line of hard drives, the first designed for scale-out data centre deployments.
Built on an enterprise-grade platform for reliable 24x7x365 data centre operation, WD Se is tailored to deliver the right combination of performance, reliability and robustness for large-scale replicated environments, mid-sized network attached storage (NAS) deployment, and backup/archiving applications.
WD Se is a true enterprise-class drive with the right blend of affordability and capabilities to address the massive growth of semi-structured data, which is accelerating the scale-out of data centres of all sizes. Now shipping in capacities up to 4 TB, the new WD Se hard drives enables customers to balance their data growth challenges in multi-drive enclosures without compromising enterprise-class features.
“Today’s cloud data centre installations require a cost-effective way to build large-scale storage systems, while maintaining the 24×7 reliability necessary to minimise total cost of ownership,” said Richard E. Rutledge, senior vice president of WD’s data centre storage business unit. “WD’s utilisation of vast amounts of manufacturing and engineering data has forced us – like many other companies – to use map-reduce methodologies to effectively analyse our data. The WD Se hard drives are used in our own big data centre, where we have gained real-world experience with Apache Hadoop.”
WD Se drives also address the fast-growing SMB to mid-range network-attached storage (NAS) market. The robust enterprise-class design and higher workload capabilities for SMB-focused 6-bay-plus table-top NAS units and rack-mount multi-tenant NAS solutions with up to 24 bays, provide NAS integrators a complement to WD Red hard drives, which are for small NAS systems. WD’s other data centre hard drives – WD Xe and WD Re – round out the high-end of the NAS market, offering higher durability and performance for large-scale rack-based NAS systems. Together, WD Se, WD Xe, WD Re and WD Red provide a total portfolio of robust storage devices to match every size and scale of NAS deployment.
In addition to undergoing at least 5,000,000 hours of functional and thermal testing and over 20,000,000 hours of additional testing under actual workloads in server and storage systems, WD’s Se hard drives feature:
- A dual processor for twice the processing power to maximise performance;
- Enhanced Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFF) technology that includes sophisticated electronics to monitor the drive and correct both linear and rotational vibration in real time;
- Dual actuator technology improves head positional accuracy over the data track(s);
- StableTrac whereby the motor shaft is secured at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilise platters for accurate tracking during read and write operations delivering a consistent level of performance for applications;
- Multi-axis shock sensor automatically detects the subtlest shock events and compensates to protect the data;
- RAID-specific, time-limited error recovery (TLER) prevents drive fallout caused by the extended hard drive error-recovery processes common to desktop drives, and;
- Dynamic fly height technology where each read-write head’s fly height is adjusted in real time for optimum reliability.
Price and Availability
WD’s Se hard drives, shipping in capacities from 2 TB to 4 TB, are available through select distributors and resellers. Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) for the WD Se is US$139 for the 2TB (WD2000F9YZ); US$200 for the 3TB (WD3000F9YZ); and US$264 for the 4TB (WD4000F9YZ). WD’s Se drives are covered by a five-year limited warranty
