Western Digital is known for creating various storage solutions, especially hard drives and SSDs. The new 'Ultrastar Transporter, Edge Storage' device falls into this category (kind of), thanks to its massive 368TB of NVMe flash storage capacity. In reality, it's something of a data center on the go, a briefcase or suitcase with dual-port 200GbE ethernet ports that is TAA compliant for government and remote use.
Western Digital is positioning it as a high-performance server that businesses and organizations can set up in edge and data center locations. Weighing in at 30 pounds, it's definitely portable for something that can store hundreds of terabytes of data.
"The ability to have high-performance, large-capacity storage where you need it is critical in current times of edge use cases and the proliferation of multi-cloud, multi-datacenter infrastructures," the product description reads. "Organizations that can leverage data center or cloud-like storage services even when a network connection may not be feasible due to cost or poor connectivity have a real advantage in getting the job done."
The durable "transport case" has wheels like a suitcase for easy transportation, ensuring portability. Again, the impressive part is the whopping 368TB of NVMe flash storage. With the 'Ultrastar Transporter, Edge Storage' device from Western Digital, it might be more feasible to transport large amounts of data from location to location instead of relying on an internet connection.
Spec-wise, it has a 12-core Intel Ice Lake Xeon 4310 CPU, 128GB of DDR4 RDIMM memory, a 1300W Titanium PSU, and dual 2TB SN740 NVMe SSDs in Raid 1 as the main system storage. From there, you've got the aforementioned dual-port 200GbE ethernet ports, a VGA port, and a bunch of PCIe Gen4 slots for the 368TB of SSD action.
It's an impressive device and not something we expect to see outside the professional realm. One can't help but wonder what a LAN party with one of these would look like.
