Features - Storage Innovations:

2.5-INCH SEAGATE SAVVIO ADDRESSES RELIABILITY NEEDS

Seagate introduced Savvio, the world's first family of 2.5-inch enterprise-class disc drives. Savvio disc drives enable a new category of high I/O density storage solutions designed to provide space-constrained Fortune 2000 data centers with higher IOPS (I/O per second) performance in small form factor system configurations with the highest levels of reliability. Savvio was unveiled publicly today at the Intel Developer Forum.

"The Seagate Savvio 2.5-inch enterprise disc drive provides HP design flexibility in creating higher-density, smaller form factor servers and modular storage arrays," said Paul Perez, vice president of storage, networks and infrastructure Industry Standard Servers at HP. "Fortune 2,000 customers are continually demanding higher levels of density and performance from rack-optimized products. Combining the smaller 2.5-inch disc drive size with the expandable Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) interface allows HP to deliver the highest performance density in the storage and server markets."

Savvio disc drives are the latest example of Seagate's unique capability to deliver leading edge products across the broadest range of storage markets and applications. These include enterprise, PC, mobile and CE markets, using legacy parallel ATA and SCSI as well as market leading serial interfaces (SATA, SAS and FC) and multiple form factors, including traditional 3.5-inch and now 2.5-inch mobile and new enterprise-class form factors. The Savvio disc drive's unmatched combination of features including its smaller size, lower power consumption, fast seek time and the industry's highest reliability, make it the ideal storage solution for high I/O density hardware platforms, including new servers, storage arrays and blade servers.

Savvio is a true enterprise-class drive, designed specifically to meet the demanding requirements of enterprise applications. In addition to its fast 10,000 rpm spin speed, the Savvio disc drive has an impressive reliability specification of 1.4 million hours MTBF. And unlike MTBF testing for ATA and SATA disc drives based on desktop-environment conditions, Savvio's reliability rating is specified based on testing in a 7-24-365 100 percent duty cycle enterprise-class workload environment and therefore is ideally suited for meeting the needs of IT professionals challenged by continuing server and storage consolidation.

The Industry Shift To The 2.5-inch Enterprise Standard

Seagate examined end-user IT challenges and determined that server storage consolidation as well as reducing data center space were significant priorities that required further attention at the enterprise level. Seagate initiated the move to the 2.5-inch platform as a solution to these challenges and formally announced this move in May of 2003 with the support of HP, Intel, Microsoft and others. Seagate's leadership and commitment to research and development, and product engineering ultimately provided Seagate with the leverage and unique position to capitalize on its investments and ultimately create the Savvio disc drive.

"Space and power are increasingly regarded as corporate assets that must be managed and preserved, and more and more users are demanding that servers and storage systems take up less physical space and consume less power," said John Monroe, a research vice president at Gartner. "New breeds of 2.5-inch high-performance drives will enable evolving enterprise systems to deliver enhanced speed and reliability while reducing power and space requirements. The shift to a new enterprise HDD form factor is inevitable and inescapable. Gartner predicts that 2.5-inch enterprise-class drives will be the predominant HDD form factor in multi-user environments in 2007."

The Savvio disc drive's small size makes possible the creation of mission-critical, smaller footprint servers that can deliver 50 percent more IOPS on an IOPS/U basis over today's servers with 3.5-inch enterprise drives.

The drive's form factor accelerates hardware consolidation and improves storage array performance. Today, 3U storage racks address up to 70 percent of the market demand. Tomorrow, reduced-footprint Savvio-enabled storage arrays would allow 70 percent more IOPS in a smaller space than many existing arrays, or 150 percent more IOPS/U. For those designing blade servers, Savvio disc drives enable high duty cycle enterprise-class computing on each individual server blade. Savvio-enabled blade servers provide significantly more IOPS-per-blade at higher levels of reliability while increasing the server's scalability and flexibility.