Tech Shout!

Seagate has announced that its innovative Savvio 2.5-inch small form factor enterprise hard drives have achieved unprecedented levels of adoption among leading system suppliers and solution builders. The rapid adoption rate of this ground-breaking solution marks a new trend in the enterprise as a shift from the 3.5–inch to the 2.5–inch form factor accelerates.

John Rydning, IDC’s research manager for hard disk drives said, “Enterprise storage customers are juggling demands for space and power in addition to improved performance and cooling efficiencies in data centers.” Rydning added, “A growing number of customers are beginning to realize the benefits of a smaller 2.5–inch form factor enterprise hard disc drive as a solution to these datacenter challenges.”

Savvio drives are fast becoming the hard drive of choice for major system suppliers and channel solution builders. Ace system suppliers including HP, IBM, and Sun are boosting their systems’ efficiency with storage powered by Savvio drives. HP has standardized its server product line to this 2.5–inch form factor across the vast majority of its new ProLiant, Integrity & BladeSystem offerings with compatibility in Storageworks MSA external storage. IBM offers the 2.5–inch drive in all of its BladeCenter servers and includes Savvio drives in the majority of its newest System x servers. Sun has adopted 2.5–inch enterprise class drives across its entire server portfolio, from entry level, to data center, to blade server product lines.

Whether in blade servers, compact 1U, 2U, or larger 3U or 4U servers, or storage arrays, Savvio drives are spearheading a new era of high-density enterprise storage. Savvio drives enable cooler-running systems that deliver higher performance and greater reliability than those based on conventional 3.5–inch 10K–rpm enterprise drives.

“The demand for our new ProLiant G5 Servers and BladeSystem C-Class introduced this year based on the SFF Serial Attached SCSI drives has been tremendous,” said Paul Perez, vice president of Storage, Networking and Infrastructure, at Hewlett-Packard. “Customers clearly understand the performance & efficiency value propositions for the new SFF Serial Attached SCSI system; adoption has surpassed our most aggressive expectations.”

“In today’s space constrained, power hungry datacenters, clients are constantly battling how to pack in more computing power without blowing the energy budget. IBM’s adoption of the Savvio 2.5–inch drives in all our BladeCenter technologies and in a majority of our System x server line is a direct result of the drives’ small form factor and energy-efficiency benefits. It is one of many components that enable our servers to provide enterprise class, energy-smart performance for businesses large and small,” said Alex Yost, director of Product Management for System x, IBM.

“We have adopted Savvio drives across our Sun Fire and Sun Blade server product lines, which are fast, energy-efficient and environmentally friendly solutions,” said David Simmons, senior director, x64 rackmount server and workstation marketing at Sun Microsystems. “Sun is committed to delivering solutions that enable our customers to get the most out of their data center resources.”

Seagate is actively working with channel-focused infrastructure providers to accelerate the adoption of the 2.5–inch enterprise hard drive standard along with Serial Attached SCSI (SAS). Savvio is supported by a variety of leading makers who provide solutions for the distribution channel, including AIC, Akiwa, Chenbro, Enhance, Enlight, Intel, PDE Technology, Rancho Technology, and SuperMicro.

“System Integrators and OEM customers rely on AIC and its Xtore business unit for unprecedented RSC-1A and RSC-2A SFF SAS server and XJ-1100 JBOD enclosures,” said Gene Lee, corporate vice president of AIC. “Because small form factor enterprise class drives have an improved performance density and lower power/IOPS, we’ve teamed up with Seagate to deliver cost-effective OEM/ODM storage solutions.”

Savvio drives offer a unique business opportunity for whitebox server solution builders looking to adopt Savvio drives as the transition from 3.5–inch to 2.5–inch hard drives accelerates. Savvio drive’s compact size, record-setting reliability and performance make it a powerful value-added addition to any solution builder’s systems.

Seagate also provides a network of support to its partners through its award-winning Seagate Partner Program (SPP). The SPP focuses on providing national, regional and local whitebox and whitebook system builders with the technical expertise and marketing resources needed to deliver Seagate storage to a broader range of customers.

Savvio drives reduce system temperatures and power consumption while enabling more airflow to cool the systems’ processors. Seagate is leading the “Green Revolution” in the enterprise, working to deliver innovative solutions to address power and cooling challenges that data centers encounter.

Smaller platters ensure faster seek times, while the compact chassis enables more drives per system to maximize IOPS/U performance. Savvio drives also make room for additional memory modules and other system components to complement the latest and fastest processors available.

Savvio 10K.2 drives set a new record for the highest reliability rating ever achieved by a disk drive. In addition, non-recoverable error rate has been improved by a factor of 10 to rigorously safeguard data. Savvio drives ensure higher uptime in the most demanding storage environments. And by bringing enterprise-class SFF SAS storage to blade servers, Seagate helps further decrease blade failures and unwanted system replacements.