Seagate has announced an 18 TB helium-based enterprise drives in volume as part of the Exos X18 family. Seagate recently introduced their 18TB flagship IronWolf Pro hard drive for SMB/SME NAS units and today, the company is unveiling the 18 TB Exos enterprise version of the same drive.
According to Seagate, the new 18 TB Exos drive delivers high performance and mass capacity for hyperscale data centers to efficiently and cost-effectively manage ever-increasing amounts of data. The Exos hard drives are designed for hyperscale applications with proven enterprise-class reliability and data security.
The Exos X18 lineup features a high capacity helium 3.5-inch 7200 RPM nearline enterprise drive offering 18TB with both SATA and SAS interfaces. It enables high-capacity storage solutions that ensure customers can scale capacity in a cost-effective way. The Seagate Exos X18 is a 7200 RPM CMR (conventional magnetic recording) drive with a 256MB multi-segmented cache.
It features additional reliability features, and firmware tweaks to provide features geared towards data centers and enterprise storage arrays.
The MTBF increases from 1.2M in the IronWolf Pro to 2.5M hours for the Exos X18. The maximum sustained disk transfer rate also increases from 260 MB/s to 270 MB/s. Seagate quotes maximum operating power of 9.4W, with idling average at 5.3W. The IronWolf Pro 18TB idles at 5.2W.
On the announcement, Ken Claffey, vice president and general manager of enterprise data solutions at Seagate Technology said:
Seagate’s Exos X18 hard drives and upgraded Exos AP controllers enable enterprises to effectively tackle challenges associated with the exponential rise in data volumes by increasing system capacity and reducing deployment complexity. With the ever-increasing demand from enterprise data centers for greater storage capacity and efficiency, Seagate offers the industry’s leading density and configurability with ease of deployment for data lakes and private storage clouds.
The Exos X18 supports hyperscale, datacenter, and enterprise NAS system storage challenges by enabling ultra-fast data transfers, lower power and weight compared with traditional nearline drives, increased random reads/write (IOPS) than previous generations with 512e and 4KN formatting. Exos X18 includes built-in data protection through Seagate Secure technology that provides for safe, affordable, fast, and easy drive retirement.
The 18TB Exos X18 hard drive is now up for sale for an MSRP of $561.75.
