HGST ships Helium filled HD with 49% higher performance per watt per TB

As most of you know storage whether it is RAM, SSD, or good old HD has a cost and power impact in the data center.  HGST announced today a new Helium filled HD.

First Hermetically Sealed, Helium HDD Platform Provides Path for Higher Capacity Storage, While Significantly Lowering Power and Cooling, and Improving Storage Density
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Cloud Expo Silicon Valley (Booth #209), November 4, 2013 – HGST, a Western Digital company (NASDAQ: WDC), today announced that it is shipping the 6TB Ultrastar He6 hard disk drive (HDD). Key OEM, cloud and research leaders working closely with HGST to qualify the drive include HP, Netflix, Huawei Unified Storage, CERN, Green Revolution Cooling and Code42, as well as some of the world’s largest social media and search companies. Revealed in September 2012, HGST’s cutting-edge HelioSeal™ platform provides a path for higher capacity storage for decades to come while significantly lowering customer total cost of ownership (TCO). Leveraging the inherent benefits of helium, which is one-seventh the density of air, the new Ultrastar He6 drive features HGST’s innovative 7Stac™ disk design with 6TB, making it the world’s highest capacity HDD with the best TCO for cloud storage, massive scale-out environments, disk-to-disk backup, and replicated or RAID environments.

I first saw this news in ComputerWorld’s post, then found the press release.  Here are some of the stats.

TCOptimized™ - Driving Down Data Center TCO with HeliumThe amount of data that companies need to store is growing exponentially, but IT budgets remain flat. With 6TB, a low 5.3 idle watts, a reduced weight of 640g, and running at 4-5°C cooler, the new Ultrastar He6 lowers data center TCO on virtually every level. Key TCO benefits when compared to a 3.5-inch, five-platter, air-filled 4TB drive include:
Highest Capacity HDD on the Market; 6TB, Seven-disk Design, Providing the Best TCOLowest Power Consumption with Best Watts-per-TB
-23 percent lower idle power per drive -49 percent better watts-per-TBBest Density Footprint in a Standard 3.5-inch Form Factor -50 percent higher capacity
Lighter Weight than a Standard Five-disk 3.5-inch Drive–50g lighter even with two more disks, offering 50 percent more capacity–38 percent lower weight-per-TB- 

One of the companies referenced is Netflix.  Isn’t Netflix all in AWS. NO.

“The Netflix Open Connect delivery platform is a highly optimized video content delivery network. We serve billions of hours of streaming video per quarter to over 40 million subscribers,” said David Fullagar, director of Content Delivery Architecture, Netflix. “As part of our efforts to optimize the delivery ecosystem for Netflix and our Internet Service Provider partners, we strive to build better and better streaming appliances. The high storage density and lower power usage of the Ultrastar He6 hard drives allow us to continue with that goal, and create a great customer experience.”