Xyratex Ltd.  is the first storage subsystem manufacturer to qualify and integrate Seagate’s high efficiency disk drive, the Cheetah NS. Xyratex has integrated the Cheetah NS into its 4Gb SBOD storage system, the RS-1602-F4-SBD, and fully qualified it in all legacy Fibre Channel RAID, SBOD and JBOD solutions.

The Cheetah NS is a new 10K rpm disk drive designed for mission-critical network storage applications that require the highest available storage capacity and the lowest possible power consumption. This innovative drive uses the same design platform as Seagate’s Cheetah 15K.5 drive and its proven perpendicular recording technology to enable a series of advantages. These include vastly improved capacity and performance statistics and a 33 percent reduction in power consumption when compared to standard 3.5 inch form factor 10K rpm enterprise drives.

“The need to provide solutions with reduced energy consumption is changing the look and feel of IT environments,” said Sherman Black, senior vice president and general manager, Seagate Enterprise Compute Business. “The Cheetah NS drive provides measurable energy savings and operational advantages that will complement the enhanced storage system technology Xyratex delivers to market. Our latest drive technology will assist Xyratex in delivering solutions that meet data center managers’ power, performance and capacity requirements. We look forward to working with Xyratex to roll out this latest drive technology.”

Xyratex’s robust storage enclosures are engineered and vigorously tested to maximize reliability, cooling and capacity. Integrating Cheetah NS drives, which use power efficiency and advanced operations to run at lower temperatures, provides an enterprise solution that delivers twofold power savings: power consumption levels are reduced and lower system heat generation decreases data center air conditioning requirements. Together, these savings reduce total cost of ownership.