Scott Horn

Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in storage solutions, recently announced that its Enterprise Performance 15K HDD and its 1200 SSD 12Gb/s SAS drives have been certified by VMware as interoperable storage tiers for VMware Virtual SAN. An industry first, Seagate 12Gb/s hard disk drives (HDD) and solid state drives (SSD) now support Virtual SAN for VMware vSphere®, a new hypervisor-converged storage platform, delivering the benefits of faster, more reliable and cost-effective shared data for traditional data centers and emerging cloud infrastructures. “We congratulate Seagate for obtaining VMware Virtual SAN™ certification,” said Gaetan Castelein, Senior Director, storage and availability, VMware. “We look forward to continuing our work with Seagate to deliver 12Gb/s technology that provides efficient, reliable and scalable solutions for customers.” With VMware Virtual SAN certification for 12 Gb/s SAS HDDs and SSDs, Seagate drives went through a rigorous certification process to ensure that the overall solution meets VMware Virtual SAN customer requirements. Upon certification, the drives are validated to take advantage of all VMware Virtual SAN benefits including high performance and radically simplified storage. “We are pleased to partner with VMware to provide a path for the future with 12Gb/s support for VMware in data centers,” said Scott Horn, Seagate Vice President of Marketing. “The only VMware certified 12Gb/s solution in the industry, these drives coupled with the VMware vSphere platform deliver the optimum performance in terms of speed, scalability and efficiency— a winning combination that will enable us to provide unparalleled performance.” “Lenovo enterprise customers demand cutting-edge storage technology and Seagate’s 12Gb/s SAS delivers just that providing high-performance and robust enterprise reliability that they can trust,” said Darrel Ward, Vice President, enterprise storage, enterprise business group, Lenovo. “VMware’s certification of this technology only reinforces our assertion that Seagate is a technology leader when it comes to storage solutions.” A step forward in scale-out storage architectures, the Seagate Enterprise Performance 15K HDD and Seagate 1200 SSD offer VMware Virtual SAN customers significant benefits of greater scalability and manageability as well as superior reliability and endurance for mission-critical applications. Both family of drives are listed on the VMware Compatibility Guide. Strong Industry Support: Dell “At Dell, we take pride in our ability to introduce industry-leading solutions that increase storage performance while maintaining data integrity, system reliability and exceptional value,” said Brian Payne, Executive Director, Dell server solutions. “We’ve worked in lock-step with VMware and Seagate to ensure customers who want to deploy Virtual SAN can do so on the best platform in the industry. VMware’s certification of Seagate 12GB/S SAS hard disk drives further exemplifies this point and complements Dell’s latest server and storage portfolios.” Supermicro “Supermicro offers the widest range of 12Gb/s SAS3 server and storage solutions on the market supporting Seagate’s new 12Gb/s SAS 15K HDD/1200 SSDs,” said Don Clegg, Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at Supermicro. “With our combined VMware certified FatTwin Virtual SAN solutions, enterprise and cloud providers can now accelerate deployment of cost effective, virtualised infrastructure, delivering customers higher performance and greater efficiency with increased reliability.”

Seagate's Kinetic Open Storage platform simplifies large-scale storage architectures Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in storage solutions, recently unveiled its revolutionary, new object-based storage drive— the Seagate® Kinetic HDD. Based on the Seagate Kinetic Open Storage platform, Kinetic HDD dramatically reduces total cost of ownership (TCO) by combining an open source object storage protocol with Ethernet connectivity to eliminate multiple layers of legacy software and hardware infrastructure— greatly simplifying cloud storage architectures. Introduced in 2013, the Seagate Kinetic Open Storage platform has garnered broad industry support from cloud and enterprise customers, as well as software and hardware systems partners, including AOL, Digital Sense, and Hewlett Packard, which have collaborated to support the open Kinetic API and helped to enable this new storage technology to come to market. “Over the past decade, the unprecedented explosion of data has been driven by social media, smartphones, tablets, and the rapid growth of every sort of Internet-connected device,” said Scott Horn, Seagate vice president of marketing. “Cloud service providers (CSPs) are increasingly looking for solutions that will simplify infrastructure, improve scalability and reduce costs— Kinetic HDD addresses these needs revolutionising the data storage economics for today’s cloud and beyond.” The Kinetic Open Storage platform dramatically simplifies large-scale storage architectures by eliminating the overhead of an entire storage server tier, which in turn lowers equipment costs. Fewer number of storage servers also reduces power consumption and headcount expenses associated with managing storage, resulting in lower operating costs, for a combined savings of up to 50 percent. “The Seagate Kinetic Open Storage platform is a compelling technology that has the potential to empower data centers with more scalable solutions at an industry-low TCO,” said Dave Reinsel, IDC’s group vice president for storage and semiconductors. “Seagate’s move into this space is a strategic addition to its core storage business as it aligns with the open community, as well as with the needs of CSPs that are looking for new architectures to manage their vast and growing lakes of data.” “The Seagate Kinetic Open Storage platform is a compelling technology that has the potential to empower data centers with more scalable solutions at an industry-low TCO" “The Kinetic Open Storage platform will help AOL improve data center efficiency by reducing the number of servers required to store data for modern scale out applications,” said Dan Pollack, chief architect - storage operations for AOL. “The addition of Kinetic devices to the storage environment creates architectural flexibility when deploying systems. Kinetic storage also improves TCO when storing the enormous data sets required by applications, while simplifying management and reducing the effort required to operate reliable data storage systems.” “HP is working closely with Seagate in our exploration of Ethernet connected drives. At HP, we focus on continually driving meaningful innovation in big data solutions and believe Kinetic technology could have a significant impact on the way data intense applications operate in the future,” Jimmy Daley, director, modular compute and storage at HP. The Kinetic Open Storage platform improves drive and rack level performance by eliminating the need for legacy file systems and shifting HDD storage media space management to the drive itself. It delivers a streamlined architecture allowing storage applications to talk directly to Kinetic object storage HDDs. Performance is further enhanced by eliminating storage server bottlenecks via direct IP addressing of each drive, thereby improving system level throughput. The platform enables servers and storage to be scaled independently and developed more rapidly. Cloud data centers can add servers and storage at entirely different rates, matching each precisely to their needs. In addition, HDD innovation can progress more rapidly as servers and operating systems are shielded from device changes through the Kinetic open source API. “The TCO works out amazingly! We are seeing up to a 75 percent reduction in costs as compared to our current storage systems. As such, we strongly believe we have a far more competitive and cost-efficient cloud offering for our customers,” said Michael Tran, CTO, Digital Sense. The Kinetic Open Storage platform improves drive and rack level performance by eliminating the need for legacy file systems and shifting HDD storage media space management to the drive itself “Our core mandate is to develop turn-key solutions that accommodate compute, network and storage components for private infrastructures,” said Takashi Sogabe, lead engineer service development section, application development product division of Internet Initiative Japan. “With this in mind, we are currently evaluating the Seagate Kinetic Open Storage platform. These drives coupled with object storage deliver optimum applications in terms of flexibility, scalability and efficiency— a winning combination that will enable us to deliver unparalleled apps in the very near future.” Seagate is demonstrating the Kinetic Open Storage platform at OpenStack Summit Paris 2014, LE PALAIS DES CONGRÈS, Paris, France, showcasing Kinetic HDD at booth D11. The company will also partner with solutions provider Rausch showcasing their product Bigfoot, which is based on the platform as well, at OpenCompute booth E48. Seagate will present, “Disruptive Economics with the Seagate Kinetic Open Storage Platform: Simplify, Scale, Disaggregate,” at 2:30 p.m. (CET) on Tuesday, November 4 at the Sponsor Demo Theater as well as unveil a technology demonstration of the first object-based Kinetic SSD.

Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in storage solutions, recently took the wraps off the industry’s first dedicated surveillance hard disk drive (HDD) featuring Seagate Rescue™ services — the Seagate® Surveillance HDD. Engineered specifically for surveillance and video analytics applications, the Surveillance HDD is a world-class drive that employs data recovery services designed to restore data from malice or accidental failure, keeping systems in the field longer and reducing post deployment expenses. “Over 413 petabytes of data were produced in just one day by video surveillance cameras installed worldwide in 2013 — that’s 150,000 petabytes of data every year, most of which are stored on high-capacity surveillance systems for archive or video analytics purposes,” said Scott Horn, Seagate vice president of marketing. “That data is invaluable to the user to either meet industry regulations or leverage for content analysis or security — so when data loss occurs it’s an expense to the customer. Seagate’s Surveillance HDD with Rescue services addresses this issue head on and alleviates these concerns.” A fast and easy recovery process, Seagate Rescue services can typically restore data within two weeks depending on the type of recovery — with up to a greater than 90 percent success rate in data recovery. Activated at time of purchase, the rescue plan provides three years of data recovery at the fraction of what it would cost to recover data lost due to anything from computer viruses to natural disasters and more. Designed to support surveillancerecordings from a number ofcameras no matter their resolutionrequirements, Surveillance HDDsupports up to 32 channels “Over 50 percent of users who had an accident with their drive have experienced data loss,” said Balaji Thangaraj, vice president for research at Boston Analytics. “The Seagate Surveillance HDD with Seagate Rescue Services provides consumers and system integrators alike with the critical reliability they expect in an easy, affordable solution, enabling them to gain peace of mind that their content is protected.” “Seagate’s expansion not only into a new capacity but into a new business with their Rescue services is an exciting endeavor for both Seagate and Dahua,” said Lu Yacong, CTO of sales center, Dahua Technology. “Systems reliability has always been a primary focus for us both, but Rescue services goes a step beyond allowing our customers the unique opportunity to protect their data from the unpredictable.” A seventh-generation optimized surveillance HDD, the drive now expands to capacities of up to 6TB and can store up to 600 hours of high-definition (HD) content making it the industry’s highest-capacity drive designed specifically for surveillance applications. Designed to scale video storage, the drive also incorporates options for rotational vibration (RV) sensors enabling it to reliably perform in systems with up to 16 drives, making it ideal for small-to-medium businesses, who typically do not have IT support, but where bulk storage for HD video and back up are highly valued. Designed to support surveillance recordings from a number of cameras no matter their resolution requirements, Surveillance HDD supports up to 32 channels and easily handles the higher write workloads required by surveillance systems. The drive supports large streaming workloads for longer periods of time meeting industry archive and resolution demands. These features, coupled with the optional R/V sensors and Seagate’s Rescue service, improve drive performance in multi-drive and RAID systems and increase the value of surveillance data by delivering the highest data integrity possible. A seventh-generation optimisedsurveillance HDD, the drive nowexpands to capacities of up to6TB and can store up to 600 hoursof high-definition (HD) content Boasting industry-leading reliability, the Surveillance HDD has a 1 million hour MTBF, (mean time between failure) allowing the product to be kept in the field longer while reducing the cost of field deployment and maintaining customer retention. The drive is also engineered for low power consumption and heat emissions allowing solution providers greater design flexibility. Seagate will be attending the ASIS 2014 this week in Atlanta, Georgia with partners Dahua, MBX and SED. Seagate Surveillance HDD is available starting in 1-4TB capacities. Surveillance HDD in 5-6TB configurations will be available in by the end of 2014. Strong Partner Support “We have enjoyed great success with Seagate drives for years and are excited for the new potential of offering the Rescue services to Hikvision customers,” said Zheng Weirong, product manager of China marketing center of Hikvision. “With the volume of video recordings growing, these services give our customers the extra confirmation they need to rest assured their data is safe.” “As a longtime partner, we have always appreciated the support Seagate extends to add value to our solutions,” said Leechin Su, president of Leadertech Systems of Chicago. “Storage density is becoming a greater concern as camera resolution increases and NVR systems are tasked to hold more recorded video information. Seagate’s release of 6TB drive capacity will allow us to meet customer needs in a smaller form factor, and that’s a winner for all involved. The release of their Rescue services is just another way for Seagate to offer our customers the opportunity to differentiate our solutions offerings to deliver truly unique solutions to end customers.” “As IP surveillance continues to grow, we are thrilled to expand our partnership with Seagate to introduce Seagate’s new 6TB Surveillance HDD with Rescue Services in our solutions,” said Shawn Ho, senior director of product marketing at NUUO. “The value of the data our customers store in our NVR solutions is critical and Seagate’s new portfolio underlines their commitment to customers by offering the end user the peace of mind for the extra protection of their data.”