Seagate Announces Seagate Mach.2 Exos 2X14 HDD With Up to 524 MB/s Sequential Speeds

[Raevenlord]

Seagate has announced what currently amounts to the fasted HDD storage available in the market. The Seagate Mach.2 Exos 2X14 is available in a 14 TB capacity. What Seagate has, smartly, done, is integrate a dual 7 TB HDD system within a helium-filled 3.5" chassis. The drive features a standard 7200 RPM spindle speed, offers 256 MB cache, and uses a single-port SAS 12 Gb/s interface.The Exos 2X14 should be recognized by systems as two independently addressable logical drives.

Seagate's Exos 2X14 boasts a 524 MB/s sustained transfer rate (outer diameter) of 304/384 random read/write IOPS, and a 4.16 ms average latency - but of course, being an HDD solution with spinning platters and actuators, random performance still suffers tremendously against even its SATA SSD counterparts. Power consumption has understandable gone up for this solution - an Exos 2X14 drive consumes 7.2 W in idle mode and up to 13.5 W under heavy load. Seagate is offering its PowerBalance features integrated into the Exos 2X14, which aims to reduce its power consumption within the 12 W power envelope usually associated with 3.5" HDDs, but Seagate says this "does come with a performance reduction of 50% for sequential reads and 5%-10% for random reads." The need for higher IOPS-per-TB performance in their HDD space so as to allow datacenters to offer adequate performance for high-capacity storage continues to bear fruits.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[PilleniusMC]

Man, I want one (or 24) of these, but the price...

 

[TheLostSwede]

I'll let others "evaluate" this new spinning rust first, as it doesn't look very reliable.

 

[windwhirl]

Man, I want one (or 24) of these, but the price...

I'm guessing it won't be available to anyone other than customers with big orders the first few months.

Still, my mouth waters.

 

[PilleniusMC]

I'm guessing it won't be available to anyone other than customers with big orders the first few months.

Still, my mouth waters.

I do know people who could get me them, but I want to know prices first.

 

[dragontamer5788]

Hmmm. I'm of the opinion that simply buying 2x 3.5-inch 7TB drives would be more worthwhile.

I like the idea of giving more sequential-speeds per unit, but I don't think that many people are actually limited by hard drive bandwidth. But... maybe I'm wrong on that. Clearly this strategy delivers more IOPS and bandwidth in a given rack-unit (4U or whatever). But certainly not IOPS or Bandwidth per dollar.

 

[WhitetailAni]

There's something to note here: If you connect it to a Windows box it will NOT show up as a 14TB drive, instead 2 7TB drives due to the way it's designed.
It's not too hard to make this one 14TB drive with Storage Spaces (or you could run Raid 1 for data redundancy) but that is an important distinction.

 

[PilleniusMC]

Hmmm. I'm of the opinion that simply buying 2x 3.5-inch 7TB drives would be more worthwhile.

I like the idea of giving more sequential-speeds per unit, but I don't think that many people are actually limited by hard drive bandwidth. But... maybe I'm wrong on that. Clearly this strategy delivers more IOPS and bandwidth in a given rack-unit (4U or whatever). But certainly not IOPS or Bandwidth per dollar.

Depends on your goals, especially because this is SAS3 not SATA3, for a high-ish density storage server these are pretty great, because they have the benefit of higher bandwidth per physical device. If you just want storage, then it doesn't matter.

 

[windwhirl]

Hmmm. I'm of the opinion that simply buying 2x 3.5-inch 7TB drives would be more worthwhile.

I like the idea of giving more sequential-speeds per unit, but I don't think that many people are actually limited by hard drive bandwidth. But... maybe I'm wrong on that. Clearly this strategy delivers more IOPS and bandwidth in a given rack-unit (4U or whatever). But certainly not IOPS or Bandwidth per dollar.

Yeah, datacenters or other people with massive storage needs and average speed requirements might find much better use for this, mostly for density while improving speed stats compared to traditional hard drives. Everyone else might be better off getting SSDs for speed or classic hard drives for density if speed is not a problem.

EDIT: Ninja'ed, lol

 

[dragontamer5788]

Depends on your goals, especially because this is SAS3 not SATA3, for a high-ish density storage server these are pretty great, because they have the benefit of higher bandwidth per physical device. If you just want storage, then it doesn't matter.

I'm not seeing it. You can get 40x HDDs rather easily from a number of manufacturers, and maybe 80HDDs on top-of-the-line Supermicros or whatever per 4U or so.

At 200MB/s per 8TB HDD, that's 8GB/s of bandwidth in the 40x HDD configuration, or sufficient to max out a 2x40 Gbit fiber connection. Hmmm... ~100 IOPS per HDD is ~4000 IOPS for the whole device. This Mach 2 EXOS would be a significant cost to increase that to 8000 IOPS (for 40x HDDs), or maybe 16000 IOPS (for 80x HDDs).

 

[PilleniusMC]

I'm not seeing it.

You can get 40x HDDs rather easily from a number of manufacturers, and maybe 80HDDs on top-of-the-line Supermicros or whatever per 4U or so.

At 200MB/s per 8TB HDD, that's 8GB/s of bandwidth, or sufficient to max out a 2x40 Gbit fiber connection.

That wouldn't be the goal of these though, also 90 HDDs per enclosure, the goal of these is per drive speed, which is important for things like resilvering, also price compared to performance, because these are going to be a lot cheaper than similar sized SSDs

EDIT: also smaller scale things like company network storage, where you don't have that much money and space at hand, because these giant storage systems still need something that runs them.

 

[dragontamer5788]

the goal of these is per drive speed, which is important for things like resilvering

But these present themselves as 2x drives to the OS. So wouldn't resilvers be per OS-drive? That'd be ~262MB/s per 7TB OS-drive... and each HDD is seen as 2x7TB for 524MB/s total.

 

[PilleniusMC]

But these present themselves as 2x drives to the OS. So wouldn't resilvers be per OS-drive? That'd be ~262MB/s per 7TB OS-drive... and each HDD is seen as 2x7TB for 524MB/s total.

According to what I read Linux reads them as a bundled device, so it acts like a single device, just Windows shows that as two fully separate entities. I'm not fully sure about this, that is just what I have read from different statements about the 2X14.

EDIT: Seemingly what I read was only half true, it can act as one in most systems due to it being only a logical, but not physical, split, it can be fully individually addressed too though.

 

[claes]

I don’t understand this at all. What is the controller doing to exceed the theoretical limit of each unit within the drive if they’re each perceived as individual devices by the OS?

EDIT: Seemingly what I read was only half true, it can act as one in most systems due to it being only a logical, but not physical, split, it can be fully individually addressed too though.

If this is the case then doesn’t it mean the controller is performing some RAID-esque management of both units? Sounds like a disaster for reliability but I admittedly have no idea how this thing works.

 

[dragontamer5788]

According to what I read Linux reads them as a bundled device, so it acts like a single device, just Windows shows that as two fully separate entities. I'm not fully sure about this, that is just what I have read from different statements about the 2X14.

EDIT: Seemingly what I read was only half true, it can act as one in most systems due to it being only a logical, but not physical, split, it can be fully individually addressed too though.

I'm assuming that the Linux "support" is just bog-standard LVM configuration, and that the drive presents itself as two logical units. Its not very hard for you to LVM drives together (much like Window's storage spaces).

But obviously, I haven't used these drives yet. I'm curious how they really are used.

 

[PilleniusMC]

I'm assuming that the Linux "support" is just bog-standard LVM configuration, and that the drive presents itself as two logical units. Its not very hard for you to LVM drives together (much like Window's storage spaces).

But obviously, I haven't used these drives yet. I'm curious how they really are used.

If I'm getting one (or more) of these I'm going to for sure try to tell you how these can be used (unless you want your own )

 

[AsRock]

There's something to note here: If you connect it to a Windows box it will NOT show up as a 14TB drive, instead 2 7TB drives due to the way it's designed.
It's not too hard to make this one 14TB drive with Storage Spaces (or you could run Raid 1 for data redundancy) but that is an important distinction.

And they will double those numbers, it's probably already done.

2x28 LMAO.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

People need to realize these drives are not, and never were targeted for normal consumer markets. These will be used in data centers, cloud, etc.

 

[Caring1]

Math fail in the name, they should be 2X7 HDD.

 

[mechtech]

hmmm

So my old 256GB plextor M3s ssd I gave a buddy is still running strong as a primary drive, almost 10 years old.

Plextor PX-M3S SSD Review

Like their recent M2P SSD, the Plextor PX-M3S uses a Marvell 9174 processor, however…

www.storagereview.com

When todays' generation hdds can do that call me.

 

[windwhirl]

hmmm

So my old 256GB plextor M3s ssd I gave a buddy is still running strong as a primary drive, almost 10 years old.

Plextor PX-M3S SSD Review

Like their recent M2P SSD, the Plextor PX-M3S uses a Marvell 9174 processor, however…

www.storagereview.com

When todays' generation hdds can do that call me.

Not like this is meant for normal consumers anyway.

 

[mechtech]

Not like this is meant for normal consumers anyway.

True enough.

My comment still stands about all current day hdds though.

 

[claes]

I don’t understand this at all. What is the controller doing to exceed the theoretical limit of each unit within the drive if they’re each perceived as individual devices by the OS?


If this is the case then doesn’t it mean the controller is performing some RAID-esque management of both units? Sounds like a disaster for reliability but I admittedly have no idea how this thing works.

TIL that SAS supports multiple LUNs

https://www.seagate.com/files/www-content/solutions/mach-2-multi-actuator-hard-drive/files/sc702.2-2101us-mach-2-faq.pdf

 

[newtekie1]

When todays' generation hdds can do that call me.

I would not put it past an Exos or similar drive lasting 10+ Years.

 

[windwhirl]

I would not put it past an Exos or similar drive lasting 10+ Years.

I have old PATA drives from the previous century that are still completely functional. Doesn't seem out of the norm.