HGST, a Western Digital Company, announced that a broad swath of its products have been certified for VMware Virtual SAN (VSAN). The move to software-defined storage architectures is fueling a broad rethinking of the status quo for datacenter architectures, and VSAN is one of the industry’s key approaches to migrating away from centralized SAN storage appliances.
HGST has certified a range of its hard drives and SSDs to work with VSAN, giving users the option to leverage multiple interoperable storage tiers with HGST products in VSAN environments. VMware added a spate of HGST devices to the VMware Compatibility Guide, including the Ultrastar He6 SAS 512n, the C10K1800 SAS 512n and the C15K600 SAS 512n HDDs.
4Kn HDDs aren’t included on the VSAN compatibility list, but this is due to VMware’s lethargic response to 4Kn compatibility in general. 4Kn format HDDs are poised for broader penetration into the enterprise at large, but until VMware pulls the trigger, the company will remain one of the primary inhibitors to 4Kn’s broader adoption. VMware has signaled that it will support 4Kn in the future, but it has not provided a meaningful timeline.
HGST’s VSAN-certified SSD products include the entire HGST FlashMAX PCIe SSD family, the s1122 PCIe Accelerator, the S842 and S846 SAS SSDs, and the entire family of 12 Gb/s SAS Ultrastar SSD800MH.B and SSD1600MM SSDs.
Mike Cordano, President of HGST, indicated at last year’s HGST Press and Industry Analyst Briefing that a 2 million hour MTBF is the trademark of HGST products. He might need to expand upon that statement, as HGST also announced that the entire range of Ultrastar 12 Gb/s SAS SSDs are now also rated for a 2.5 million hour MTBF. The usual rating for enterprise SSDs is 2 million hours, so this represents a 25 percent increase in comparison to the majority of competing products. The announcement of a 2.5 million hour MTBF for SSDs follows HGST’s recent announcement that all of its helium products are also certified for the higher MTBF period.
