Seagate's Mach.2 Technology Doubles HDD Performance, Microsoft Jumps Aboard

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Two actuators equals twice the IOPS

Seagate's multi-actuator technology is a simple concept that doubles the performance of a hard drive by using two actuators, and the idea certainly isn't new. In fact, the company has already developed drives with multiple actuators in the past, but they weren't economically viable due to higher component costs.

Now the company has perfected the method to effectively double HDD performance, which you can read about here, and devices are in the wild.

In every cloud data center, floor space is at a premium, and for many applications, cloud providers are trying to get more IOPS out of the same slot. The 14TB Exos 2X14 connects over SAS and presents itself to a server as two 7TB volumes rather than as a single drive. With two actuators, IOs can transfer independently of each other within a single HDD. One actuator addresses the top half of the drive, while the other actuator services the bottom half.

At lower costs per GB and high capacities, HDDs are a good choice for applications such as content delivery networks (CDNs), video streaming, mail servers, backup/shuttle services, Hadoop, and other cloud applications.

But, as capacity increases, performance needs to scale as well. Traditional single actuator HDDs just aren’t cutting it. That’s why Seagate’s Exos 2X14 enterprise hard drive features the company’s MACH.2 dual-actuator technology, and Microsoft has jumped in as an early adopter.

Seagate partnered with Microsoft architect Aaron Ogus deployed the technology in the Microsoft Cloud space and worked on Exos 2X14’s development directly from its infancy.

Seagate’s 14TB Exos 2X14 enterprise hard drive is the first to feature the company’s MACH.2 multi-actuator technology, and Microsoft has just finished initial testing.

To support all of Microsoft’s CSP services including Azure and Exchange, the company will deploy Seagate’s new Exos MACH.2 drives. The company took a look at interoperability and compatibility with the data center infrastructure as well as robustness, reliability, and ease of integration with its Project Olympus system architecture. Of course, performance factored in.
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