Western Digital Corporation Broadens Portfolio of Solutions for VMware Storage Environments with
HGST-Branded Ultrastar SN150 PCIe NVMe SSD
VMware-Certified In-box Drivers in Optimized PCIe NVMe SSD Simplify Adoption for Software-Defined
Data Centers
VMWORLD 2016 — Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC) today announced that its popular HGST-branded Ultrastar® SN150 PCI Express (PCIe) NVMe solid state drive (SSD) is now certified for use with
VMware® Virtual SAN and vSphere. Optimized for easy set-up, the Ultrastar SN150 SSD for VMware environments reduces latency, and
brings hyperscale-level performance and enhanced Quality of Service (QoS) time to virtualized servers and cloud storage. This can
significantly lower the total cost of ownership of VMware storage environments over traditional storage architectures by reducing
performance tuning and field support costs. In server-side environments where VMware virtualization management is utilized, the
Ultrastar SN150 is an ideal option for data center managers building or deploying systems on VMware Virtual SAN or vSphere.
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Western Digital Corporation HGST-branded Ultrastar SN150 PCIe NVMe SSD for VMware platforms (Photo: Business
Wire)
Part of Western Digital’s HGST-branded Ultrastar data center storage solutions family, the certified Ultrastar SN150 is
available in a low-profile, half-height, half-length (HHHL), add-in card form factor and is one of the first NVMe SSDs in the
industry to utilize VMware’s in-box NVMe driver. For data center administrators, this helps eliminate the hassle of time-consuming
downloads and configurations, and allows faster deployment. The Ultrastar SN150 drive is available in capacities ranging from
1120GB1 to 3820GB and offers speeds which exceed Virtual SAN’s highest performance class (Class F) specifications,
enabling it to easily address the heaviest data workloads in a variety of virtualized server and storage configurations, including
all-flash and hybrid configurations utilizing flash for caching and hard disk drives for storage capacity.
“Our Ultrastar SN150 PCIe drive is one of the most effective ways for data centers to extend their virtualization IT
infrastructure, offering consistently high performance, with very low latency and the speed of NVMe,” said Anand Jayapalan, vice
president of enterprise and client compute solutions marketing at Western Digital. “With its certification, we further broaden
Western Digital’s unmatched portfolio of VMware-certified storage solutions for IT administrators managing the growing data needs
of their most demanding cloud, hyperscale and enterprise applications in all-flash and hybrid Virtual SAN environments.”
“Customers racing to meet dynamic business demands look for strong business partners to simplify the adoption of new
technologies,” said Lee Caswell, vice president of products, Storage and Availability Business Unit, VMware. “We have partnered
with Western Digital to integrate the price-performance benefits of the Ultrastar SN150 PCIe NVMe SSD with the leading
hyperconverged product, VMware Virtual SAN. Our low-risk in-box certified driver approach delights customers and reduces risk for
partners.”
Compared to commonly used Virtual SAN-certified SAS products, the NVMe-based Ultrastar SN150 drive can deliver up to nearly four
times the IOPS performance for 4K random reads and nearly twice the IOPS performance for 4K random writes2. Coupled with
its low latency (~20 microseconds), Ultrastar SN150 SSDs are designed to give consistent, predictable performance. They are
well-suited for latency-sensitive On Line Transaction Processing (OLTP) database workloads, fast Virtual Desktops, and mixed
workloads environments running databases and latency-sensitive applications where response time is critical, such as e-Commerce,
financial applications and in-house applications such as e-mail.
The Ultrastar SN150 drive is the latest addition to the company’s full portfolio of storage solutions for VMware environments.
Western Digital Corporation and its family of WD®, HGST and SanDisk brands today offers more than 200 different storage devices,
software solutions and configurations certified for vSphere and Virtual SAN, including Fusion ioMemory™ PCIe SSDs, SanDisk®
Lightning II SAS SSDs, Ultrastar™ 7K6000 enterprise HDD, FlashSoft™ 4 for vSphere APIs for IO Filtering, and many others. Western
Digital storage products are utilized in all of the top 10 VMmark benchmarks for vSphere, including the latest #1 benchmark
published this month3.
Features and Specifications
- Certified for use on VMware vSphere and Virtual SAN platforms
- Enterprise-grade reliability: Flash-aware RAID, end-to-end data-path protection, advanced ECC, secure
erase, power fail protection
- Supports the PCIe Gen 3.0 server platforms
- Classified at the highest performance category (Class F) for Virtual SAN
- Available in a low-profile, half-height, half-length (HHHL), add-in card form factor
* Additional product details and specifications can be found here.
Western Digital at VMworld
Visit the SanDisk-brand Western Digital booth (#1955) at VMworld 2016 to learn more about the HGST-branded Ultrastar SN150 and
the recent solutions from the company for VMware environments. For more details on Western Digital’s presence at VMware, including
conference break-out sessions in which the company will be discussing the Ultrastar SN150, visit our IT Blog.
HGST
HGST (@HGSTStorage), a Western Digital Corporation (NASDAQ: WDC) brand, helps the world harness the power of data. Our smarter
storage solutions power the markets and companies that shape our lives—enabling possibilities for the cloud, enterprise and
sophisticated infrastructures everywhere. For more information, please visit www.hgst.com #LongLiveData.
About Western Digital
Western Digital is an industry-leading provider of storage technologies and solutions that enable people to create, leverage,
experience and preserve data. The company addresses ever-changing market needs by providing a full portfolio of compelling,
high-quality storage solutions with customer-focused innovation, high efficiency, flexibility and speed. Our products are marketed
under the HGST, SanDisk and WD brands to OEMs, distributors, resellers, cloud infrastructure providers and consumers. Financial and
investor information is available on the company's Investor Relations website at investor.wdc.com.
© 2016 Western Digital Corporation. All rights reserved. Western Digital, WD, Ultrastar, SanDisk, FlashSoft and Fusion ioMemory
are registered trademarks or trademarks of Western Digital Corporation or its affiliates in the U.S. and/or other countries.
VMware, vSphere and Virtual SAN are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States
and other jurisdictions. Other trademarks, registered trademarks, and/or service marks, indicated or otherwise, are the property of
their respective owners.
- 1 gigabyte (GB) = 1,000,000,000 bytes. Actual user storage is less.
- As compared to commonly-used Virtual SAN certified SAS products, and based on published
specifications and internal benchmarking tests.
- Source: http://www.vmware.com/products/vmmark/results.html
Forward-Looking Statements
This news release contains certain forward-looking statements, including new product offerings and product availability, that
are based on current expectations and involve numerous risks and uncertainties that may cause these forward-looking statements to
be inaccurate. Risks that may cause these forward-looking statements to be inaccurate include among others: need for higher
capacity, faster storage solutions may not grow as expected, our product offerings may not be available when we expect or gain
customer acceptance in the timeline we expect, and the other risks detailed from time-to-time in Western Digital’s and SanDisk’s
Securities and Exchange Commission filings and reports. This news release contains information from third parties, which reflect
their projections as of the date of issuance. All statements made in this news release are made only as of the date of this
release. Western Digital undertakes no obligations to update the information in this release in the event facts or circumstances
change after the date of this release.
Western Digital Corporation Media Relations
Laura Bakken, +1-408-801-7653
laura.bakken@sandisk.com
or
Western Digital Corporation Investor Relations
Bob Blair, +1-949-672-7834
robert.blair@wdc.com
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