Western Digital is at Microsoft Ignite demonstrating how its SSDs, HDDs and storage server platforms help data center architects deliver scale-out performance and extreme storage density.

Visitors to Western Digital's booth will experience live demonstrations of the world's highest capacity HDDs that deliver the best TCO value at scale – the 18TB CMR and 20TB SMR Ultrastar HDDs with energy-assisted recording technology.

It is also highlighting its latest Ultrastar 96-layer NVMe SSD familes and Ultrastar Serv60+8 hybrid storage server, along with their Ultrastar Data60 storage enclosure.

Additionally, the company is introducing its sixth-generation SAS SSD, the Ultrastar DC SS540, for all-flash arrays (AFAs), caching tiers, high-performance computing (HPC), and software-defined storage (SDS) environments.

The Ultrastar DC SS540 SAS SSDs is the company's 6th generation of SAS SSDs that deliver up to 470K/240K random read/write IOPS. The DC SS540 offers reliability of 2.5 million hours mean-time-between-failure (MTBF) with 96-layer 3D NAND from Western Digital’s joint venture with Intel. The new SAS SSD family is designed for all-flash arrays (AFAs), caching tiers, HPC and SDS environments.

Ultrastar DC SS540 leverages existing SAS platform architecture and various security and encryption options. It offers dual/single port, and multiple power options. It comes in capacities up to 15.36TB with soft SKU options to cover mainstream endurance choices and also reduce SKU management efforts for OEMs and channel customers.

The Ultrastar DC SS540 will enter mass production fin CYQ1 2020.