Seagate introduces Kinetic HDDs with Ethernet interface

Seagate Technology has introduced its first Kinetic-series hard disk drives for cloud storage applications. The Kinetic HDDs come with their own built-in operating system and can be plugged directly to Ethernet ports, thus, eliminating multiple layers of legacy software and hardware infrastructure.

Seagate Kinetic hard drive features 4TB capacity, dual SGMII Ethernet 1Gb/s ports, an application processor, 512MB of RAM, 64MB of cache as well as its own micro operating system that is a part of Kinetic Open Storage platform. The micro-OS manages storage media space itself and does not require any legacy file system or even a host server, which greatly simplifies modern storage platforms. Since every Kinetic hard drive is essentially a micro-server, storage applications now need to “talk” directly to Kinetic object storage HDDs, not to host servers. Performance is further enhanced by eliminating storage server bottlenecks via direct IP addressing of each drive, thereby improving system level throughput.

According to Seagate, its Kinetic platform (and Kinetic HDD) 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. This reduces TCO, improves performance and adds flexibility. Moreover, this lets Seagate to incorporate future HDD innovations without host software changes as servers and operating systems are shielded from device changes through the Kinetic open source API.

“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 revolutionizing the data storage economics for today’s cloud and beyond.”

Seagate’s Kinetic open storage platform is currently supported by multiple CSPs and hardware manufacturers, including AOL, Hewlett-Packard, Digital Sense, Internet Initiative Japan, Supermicro, SwiftStack and many others.

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KitGuru Says: Seagate’s Kinetic platform makes a lot of sense for datacentres that require massive amounts of storage as well as ability to quickly add storage capacities once needed. Basically speaking, the majority of future datacentres will benefit from the flexible approach Seagate offers. Of course, not all CSPs will transit to Seagate’s platform, but the technology itself makers a great sense.

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