Reliability and drive endurance, two of the biggest worries looming over solid-state drives (SSDs) in the data center, are steadily becoming less of a concern.

HGST, formerly Hitachi Global Storage Technologies before it was acquired by Western Digital, laid claim to the most reliable serial-attached SCSI (SAS) SSDs for enterprise storage systems this week. HGST’s Ulrich Hanson, vice president of SSD Product Marketing, wrote in a blog post, “that our Ultrastar 12Gb/s SAS SSD products have been tested and are now rated for 2.5 million hours mean time between failure (MTBF), 25 percent higher than the status quo.” Rival SSDs are typically rated for 2 million hours.

“That means HGST drives are proven to be 25 percent more reliable to better protect all of the valuable data stored in demanding enterprise data center environments,” added Hanson. And the company is striving to push those specifications further.

“As data center managers increasingly look to optimize infrastructure to address either performance or long-term capacity needs, HGST is investing to increase the reliability of its flash storage to ensure it can deliver products that excel under the most arduous workloads,” Hanson stated.

Expect HGST’s Ultrastar SSDs to factor into the ROI calculations of data storage systems giant EMC.

“HGST remains a key partner that EMC customers use for All-Flash and hybrid storage array needs,” said Mike Kerouac, president of Global Product Operations at EMC, in a statement. “The 2.5 million hours MTBF rating is significant as it helps ease the infrastructure selection process and assure EMC customers that HGST is an ideal solution for improving TCO.”

In March, HGST announced that its helium-filled Ultrastar He8 and He6 hard disk drives (HDDs) had also achieved a 2.5 MTBF rating, providing a long-lived storage foundation for cloud data centers.

Platters spin more easily in helium compared to regular air, resulting in less wear and tear. In addition, the lightweight gas helps data centers run a little cooler and lower energy costs. Helium HDDs run 4 to 5 degrees Celsius cooler than air-based HDDs. An 8 terabyte (TB) helium drive consumes 5.1 watts at idle, 44 percent less than a typical 6TB HDD, according to the company.

Over a million of HGST’s helium drives have made their way into storage deployments, according to Brendan Collins, vice president of product marketing. Helium is clearly the way forward for HGST, he noted, adding that “the rapid industry adoption of this revolutionary technology affirms our commitment to Helium as the foundation for all future scaling technologies.”

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