MBX Systems, designer and manufacturer of custom server appliances, recently made multiple notable announcements regarding its continual effort to improve cloud storage platforms. The company first announced that it has joined the Seagate Cloud Builder Alliance, which is part of the Seagate Partner Program established to support the strategic partnership between leading players in the cloud building sector. The alliance is structured around a common goal of building next-generation cloud storage solutions that utilize Seagate technology, hardware and services.
“System builders play an important role in cloud storage initiatives,” said Mark Wojtasiak, global marketing manager for cloud at Seagate. “We created our Cloud Builder Alliance program to strengthen their ability to design, integrate and deliver the most robust hardware to support cloud storage technology. Having MBX on board gives us another strong partner with long experience in building high-quality custom server platforms to help businesses take advantage of the benefits of the cloud.”
MBX Systems was founded in 1995 and has had a seven-year relationship with Seagate prior to joining the alliance, regularly using Seagate drives as a critical part of its custom servers and solutions utilized for cloud computing, network storage and applications.
MBX leverages Seagate drives
MBX has and continues to use a variety of Seagate drives for storage applications. It recently released one of the first storage systems that are built using Seagate’s new Enterprise Value HDDs, the MBX X-60. Seagate’s Enterprise Value HDDs are designed to be particularly affordable, energy-efficient and high-capacity. These drives feature an optimized design for storing exabytes of unstructured data that are constantly accumulating in always-active cloud environments. They have capacities as high as 3 terabytes and feature advanced vibration tolerance. Utilizing these Seagate drives, the MBX X-60 is a fully configurable appliance that is particularly well-suited for high-density cloud storage needs.
The company recounted in a recent release how it designed more than 75 platforms for Cleversafe’s patented object-based storage solution, regularly implementing changes to the platforms so that the newest and highest performance Seagate components are always being used.
“The benefit of belonging to the Seagate Cloud Builder Alliance is that we have an inside track to Seagate resources,” said Jeff Luckett, director of engineering at MBX Systems, in a recent release. “Our Innovation Lab is filled with a full range of Seagate products to test with different platform configurations and scenarios for our own reference designs as well as those we’re developing for customers. With pre-release access to new drives as well as the ability to tap into Seagate’s technical expertise when needed, we offer application developers even greater assurance that they will receive leading-edge, fully validated hardware platforms to handle their own customers’ critical workloads.”
How MBX and Seagate cloud storage hardware is making an impact
IDC recently released a report projecting a 30 percent annual growth in yearly storage capacity sales between 2013 and 2017. IDC analyst Natalya Yezhkova told PCWorld, however, that this growth is slower than a few years ago, and this is largely due to a shift in how organizations are using storage. More businesses are focusing on efficient storage use, and many are looking to cloud computing storage to help them achieve new levels of efficiency.
Data Center Knowledge contributor Rich Miller explored how the cloud can be leveraged to boost efficiency and reduce the environmental impact of data centers. Miller noted that organizations have become aware of how their data center infrastructure is contributing to global warming and adding up to significant amount of wasted energy. As businesses become collectively more focused on efficiency, migrating to a cloud platform could be particularly advantageous. In fact, Eric Masanet, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Northwestern University, told the source that shifting workloads to cloud platforms can help corporations reduce the impact of their data centers’ energy use by as much as 85 percent.
This demonstrates how cloud builders like MBX and the rest of the Seagate Cloud Builder Alliance are producing solutions that not only positively impact business, but also improve energy consumption and the environment.
