Shulou(Shulou.com)06/01 Report--

According to the Cisco Visual networking Index, by the end of 2013, the number of mobile connected devices will exceed the total number of people on the planet. Mobile computing, cloud computing, etc., will create and transfer data at an unprecedented speed, so how will storage respond? From the consumer point of view, in the mobile era, people require mobile devices to be lighter and thinner, such as ultrabooks, and the development of hard drives must also adapt to this trend, move towards thinning, and continue to improve performance-to-price ratio. From the enterprise point of view, the scale of cloud data centers is getting larger and larger, and now there are some very large-scale data centers, which may occupy more than 10 football fields and have at least 100000 servers internally. It is a problem that data center users must seriously consider while improving equipment performance and efficiency while reducing power consumption and total cost of ownership.

The parallel development of hard disk and SSD

HGST (Yuke Global Storage Technology Co., Ltd.), an independent subsidiary of Western Digital, provides personalized storage solutions for the mobile market, personal market and data center market. Research by HGST shows that by 2020, more than 80 per cent of the world's data will still be stored on hard drives. BrendanCollins, vice president of product marketing at HGST, said that hard disk and SSD will grow in parallel in the future, and will have their own technological innovations, rather than overlap, which is an important reason why hybrid storage is so popular today.

Statistics from IDC show that from 2012 to 2016, the overall global hard disk market grew by 7.8%, of which the enterprise market grew by more than 47%, while the personal storage market grew by nearly 22% and the PC hard drive market declined slightly. In the laptop market, sales of built-in 2.5in mechanical hard drives, especially 7mm mechanical hard drives, will continue to grow, and the mash-up of mechanical hard drives and SSD will become more and more popular. BrendanCollins said HGST will continue to develop 9.5mm and 7mm lightweight laptop hard drives because of their better cost, performance and reliability.

Enterprise data Center "acceleration"

SSD is becoming more and more popular in the enterprise storage market. According to HGST's research, the overall global SSD market will grow by 32 per cent from 2012 to 2016, of which high-end SASSSD products will grow by 78 per cent. "the barriers to entry for SATASSD are relatively low. A few years ago, there were more than 100 SSD vendors around the world, most of which only offered SATASSD," says Mr BrendanCollins. "the barriers to entry for SASSSD are higher, and HGST is focused on it." HGST has launched 12Gb/sSASSSD.

BrendanCollins said that storage is not only a product, but a platform, which should include hardware and software. To this end, HGST has acquired VeloBit, a maker of high-performance Isign O storage software, which can enhance HGST's software capabilities in the enterprise SSD market. In addition, in order to enrich the existing SSD product line, HGST will soon complete the acquisition of STEC, another well-known SSD manufacturer, in order to acquire its intellectual property rights and engineers and enhance the overall strength of SSD products.

Cold data storage has a bright future.

HGST's research shows that only 10% to 15% of the data in the data center is accessed frequently, while the rest is "cold data". Previously, cold data was usually stored on magnetic tape. Now, it is found that there is a gap between high-performance hard drives with latency of 10ms to minutes and tapes with latency of minutes or even hours, which is the ideal home for cold data such as social data, pictures, medical data and archived data.

BrendanCollins said HGST is doing research on cold data storage, which will be completely innovative because it is not easy to reduce the storage cost of cold data to 1 cent per GB, or even close to the cost of magnetic tape. To meet the high-capacity, low-cost storage requirements, HGST has developed the latest helium-sealed hard disk, which will be put on the market by the end of this year. Helium sealed hard disk is to replace the sealed air in the hard disk with helium. because the density of helium is only 1 / 7 of that of air, the resistance is reduced, so the vibration of the disk during operation will be greatly reduced. Test data from HGST show that the power consumption of helium-sealed hard drives is 37% lower than that of traditional hard drives, and the total cost of ownership is reduced by 22% and 33%. BrendanCollins concluded by saying that the cold data storage market is a market with great potential.

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