Seagate meets price consternation with Constellation

Vendor hopes to gain sway with cost-conscious CFOs with new line of hard drives

Seagate has launched a new product family which it hopes will pacify bean counters over the escalating price of storage.

Seagate has launched the Constellation line of hard drives for Tier 2 nearline storage applications.

The two new drive models, the 2.5in Constellation and the 3.5in Constellation ES hard drives, include a combination of features that enable high capacities, increased power efficiency, enterprise-class reliability and data security. Both drives also include Seagate’s PowerChoice, the obligatory green application. Seagate claimed PowerChoice can cut power consumption by up to 54 per cent.

Demand for greater storage capacity will expand in all directions, said Gartner analyst John Monroe, a research vice president. But storage system purchases will come under increasing scrutiny, he warned. Storage managers are going to have to justify themselves, and their cost per gigabyte figures had better be good.

“Performance will not be ignored, but a flexible balance of capacity, cost per GB, power and speed will become more crucial in fulfilling end-user storage demands at varied price points,” he said.

The Constellation 2.5in hard drive comes in two sizes: 160GB and 500GB, with both 3Gbps SATA and new SAS 2.0 interface running at 6Gbps speeds. The Constellation family will begin shipping this quarter.

Dell is a big admirer of the new form factor coming from Seagate, according to Praveen Asthana, director of Dell Storage. He said Dell would be putting Seagate’s new drives "on the rack".

“Dell is pleased to partner with Seagate and be one of the first companies to offer the Constellation family of drives to our customers,” he said.