Western Digital has entered into the traditional enterprise market segment with volume production shipments of its first 10,000RPM, 2.5-inch, small form factor, and SAS interface hard drives.
According to Western Digital, the WD S25 provides up to 300GB of storage suitable for both enterprise server and enterprise storage applications such as high-I/O-driven applications and configurations, as well as data centres and large data arrays.
John Coyne, president and CEO of WD, said: Our entry into the traditional-enterprise market continues the strategic expansion and diversification of WD’s broad market and product portfolio, and significantly increases our addressable revenue opportunity. As with our previous market expansion and diversification efforts, WD will approach the traditional enterprise space with the same focus on quality, customer service, technology and value that has earned us strong positions in every market we serve.
The WD S25 supports 3Gb/s and 6Gb/s SAS interfaces and offers sequential data rate of 128MB/sec. In addition to all the speed required to service any enterprise need, the WD S25 also provides a 1.6m hours mean time between failures (MTBF) . These drives have a small form-factor and are 70% smaller than 3.5-inch drives, allowing more system airflow resulting in lower cooling costs, the company claims.
Tom McDorman, vice president and general manager of WD’s enterprise storage solutions business unit, said: We are thrilled to launch a mission-critical-class hard drive to these high-end OEM customers. This new family of SAS products adds to our existing large capacity SATA near-line enterprise product portfolio. This first product is the foundation upon which we will expand into the previously untapped traditional enterprise market.
