Some SR readers may recall how Seagate introduced the Cheetah 10K.7 as the last 10K RPM Cheetah, ceding sub-15K operation to its 2.5″ Savvio and SATA nearline-oriented drives. Today, however, the firm backpedals… somewhat.
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The Cheetah NS takes the basic mechanical and electrical platform introduced by Seagate with the Cheetah 15K.5 and shaves the drive’s spindle speed to 10,000 RPM. This reduction allows for an increase in capacity from the 15K.5’s 300 gigs to a total of 400 gigabytes. Thanks to its 15K.5-style (actuator and platters) mechanics, the Cheetah NS sports a svelte 3.9 millisecond seek time, previously unheard of in a 3.5″ form factor 10K RPM drive.
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Leveraged from the same platform as the 15K-rpm Cheetah 15K.5, the Cheetah NS is a new 10K-rpm hard drive that delivers best-in-class capacity, energy savings and performance when compared to standard 3.5-inch form factor 10K-rpm enterprise drives. The Cheetah NS and Cheetah 15K.5 drives provide IT professionals with a choice in optimizing their enterprise systems for capacity or performance. Choose the Cheetah 15K.5 for the highest IOPS-per-gigabyte transactional performance in its class, or the Cheetah NS for the best capacity and price-per-gigabyte available in mission-critical enterprise storage.
The Cheetah NS also features up to 33% more capacity at 400 gigabytes along with a 33% reduction in power and cooling requirements. This additional capacity and reduced cooling profile in the data center means that the Cheetah NS ultimately delivers the lowest Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for a wide range of mission-critical enterprise network storage applications.
Storage Growth and Scale Requirements
According to IDC, disk drive terabyte shipments for data centers are increasing at a rate of approximately 50% per year on average to meet the demands of internal business processing and delivery of content to digital devices and internet users worldwide .
“Data center managers are being asked to support rapid data growth for their organizations while at the same time improve on metrics such as responsiveness and power consumption,” according to John Rydning, IDC’s research manager for Hard Disk Drives. “Storage system OEMs will welcome higher capacity 10,000-rpm disk drives like the Cheetah NS to help their customers meet these challenging demands.”
“The Cheetah NS complements Seagate’s enterprise drive lineup to provide the high capacity, reliability, and performance required for network storage,” said Sherman Black, senior vice president and general manager, Seagate Enterprise Compute business. “From the highest transactional performers that include our Cheetah 15K.5 and Savvio 15K models, to drives built for nearline enterprise storage such as our Barracuda ES, Seagate continues to deliver the premier storage solutions for a wide range of enterprise needs.”
Cheetah NS Benefits
Highest Capacity – The Cheetah NS provides the highest capacity available for mission-critical network storage environments. Using proven perpendicular recording technology, the Cheetah NS enables 33% more storage per drive to deliver up to 400GBs.
Performance – The Cheetah NS delivers higher IOPS performance when compared with standard 10K-rpm drives. With a seek time of 3.9 ms, and operating at 10K-rpm, random performance is increased by 10% while sequential performance is improved by as much as 23%. The Cheetah NS is also available in the most advanced interfaces, 3Gb/sec Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) or 4Gb/sec Fibre Channel.
Energy Efficiency – The Cheetah NS helps energy-constrained data centers maximize efficiency with power consumption rated as low as eight watts. The result is a drive that delivers a best-in-class 34% reduction of power at idle as well as a 33% reduction in operating power compared to other standard 10K drives.
Designed for the demanding workloads of the enterprise, the Cheetah NS is rated with a Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) of 1.4 million hours and is backed by Seagate’s trusted five-year warranty. Seagate is now shipping the Cheetah NS to leading OEM customers. The Cheetah NS is expected to be available to the worldwide distribution channel during the third quarter of 2007.
About Seagate
Seagate is the worldwide leader in the design, manufacture and marketing of hard disc drives, providing products for a wide-range of applications, including Enterprise, Desktop, Mobile Computing, Consumer Electronics and Branded Solutions. Seagate’s business model leverages technology leadership and world-class manufacturing to deliver industry-leading innovation and quality to its global customers, and to be the low cost producer in all markets in which it participates. The company is committed to providing award-winning products, customer support and reliability to meet the world’s growing demand for information storage. Seagate can be found around the globe and at www.seagate.com.
