Western Digital today announced new additions and enhancements to its IntelliFlash data center systems portfolio, giving customers even greater choice and flexibility to design modern hybrid-cloud infrastructures that accelerate the speed of business and help extract greater value from data. By doubling available performance and density, combined with enhanced capabilities for data migration and hybrid-cloud mobility, Western Digital's IntelliFlash family of NVMe-flash, all-flash and hybrid-flash arrays delivers a superior overall value proposition for accelerating today's most demanding workloads and mission-critical applications where low latency and high data availability are paramount.

New IntelliFlash N-Series N5100 Removes the Barrier for Adoption of NVMe

The introduction of the IntelliFlash N5100 provides a new entry-level NVMe performance offering, ideally suited for customers looking for an affordable solution to accelerate business applications with NVMe. The N5100 complements the current N-series lineup of N5200 and N5800 models, offering extreme performance for data-intensive applications that require the lowest latency response times possible. The enhanced IntelliFlash OS 3.10 creates a unified framework, so mixing and matching IntelliFlash arrays for specific workloads is seamless.

Double the Performance

IntelliFlash OS 3.10 is the culmination of the company's silicon-to-systems vertical innovation efforts in flash management software designed to extract maximum performance from NVMe flash. With OS 3.10, the N5800 pushes the limits of NVMe by doubling its performance, delivering best-in-class random performance amongst fully-featured mid-range all-flash arrays with up to 1.7M IOPS and latency as low as 200µsec, resulting in significant business productivity gains through workload consolidation.

"Today's data-driven businesses demand that IT support a myriad of needs ranging from virtualized environments through distributed operations to real-time analytics. This is placing new levels of performance, scalability, and efficiency demands on data center infrastructure," said Scott Sinclair, senior analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG). "For those looking to modernize their data centers and consolidate workloads, the new IntelliFlash NVMe all-flash arrays should be a serious consideration. We've had a first-hand look at the IntelliFlash OS 3.10 and the NVMe N-series and are impressed with its extremely high levels of performance, its low latency, and its robust feature set."

Double the Density

IntelliFlash OS 3.10 further improves storage economics with support for 15TB Ultrastar SSDs, doubling the density on select IntelliFlash models. By adding 15TB NVMe SSDs, the new IntelliFlash HD2160 doubles the density of the HD-series 2RU (rack unit) offering from 184TB raw to 368TB. IntelliFlash NVMe-based N-series and SAS-based HD-series platforms benefit from high-capacity scale-up options to deliver a substantial increase in workload consolidation while reducing overall hardware footprint. Customers can choose to scale up to 2.5PB of flash in a single array with the high-density HD2160 SAS-based all-flash array, or combine an N-series array with SAS-based expansion to achieve the right mix of performance and economics to meet the demands of a wide range of workloads. IntelliFlash systems start at 19TB raw capacity and can scale to 2.5PB raw flash capacity in 14RU.

Seamless Live Dataset Migration

It has never been easier for customers to adopt newer generations of IntelliFlash and NVMe technology as they scale to meet capacity needs. With the introduction of Live Dataset Migration, customers can seamlessly move legacy IntelliFlash data pools to the latest IntelliFlash arrays, or support other migration needs - whether on-premises or in hybrid-cloud environments. No reconfiguration or application recoding is required. Live Dataset Migration maintains high productivity and business continuity by enabling LUN migration of iSCSI/FC LUNS while the system is operating, so customers can quickly take advantage of storage that better meets the changing needs of the data.

Enhanced Hybrid-Cloud Data Mobility

IntelliFlash OS 3.10 also enables simplified data mobility to the cloud with its Amazon S3 cloud connector for seamless AWS connectivity, or to other S3-enabled platforms like Western Digital's ActiveScale object storage system. Customers can place snapshots in AWS for hybrid-cloud configurations to protect data offsite and cost-effectively move cold or archive data off primary storage without heavy lifting.

"We have built upon our unique expertise in silicon all the way up to systems to ensure our customers have unparalleled value and performance-without compromise," said Phil Bullinger, senior vice president and general manager of Western Digital's Data Center Systems business unit. "IntelliFlash OS 3.10 is a powerful platform, making it easier with the best economics for customers to upgrade legacy storage infrastructure to NVMe-adding a new entry-level price point offering with the IntelliFlash N5100, doubling available performance and density on select models, adding expansion options for cost-effective scalability, and providing even more data mobility across hybrid cloud environments to accelerate mission-critical workloads."

Additional enhancements in IntelliFlash OS 3.10 include SMB3 optimization for Windows File Server 2016 deployment on Hyper-V, simplified VMware deployments and management of VMware vSphere datastores, enriched administrative features such as Powershell Toolkit for automating Windows storage, and the robust IntelliCare predictive-analytics health monitoring service.