Western Digital is responding to the explosive growth of AI-generated data by enhancing its disaggregated storage solutions, which now include both hard drives and SSDs. At Computex 2025, the company expanded its Open Composable Compatibility Lab (OCCL), introduced new SSD qualifications for its OpenFlex Data24 NVMe-over-Fabric (NVMe-oF) platform, and unveiled new storage hardware: the Ultrastar Data102 ORv3 JBOD and the OpenFlex Data24 4100 with single-port SSDs.
Scott Hamilton, Western Digital’s senior director of product management, explained that these developments support customers scaling flexible storage infrastructures, as AI and data-intensive workloads require storage beyond traditional server constraints. Disaggregated storage, driven by software-defined storage solutions, is now gaining even more relevance as AI workloads push the limits of server capacity, demanding maximum compute density and efficient external storage.
The company’s Ultrastar JBOD HDD enclosures are designed for Open Compute Project (OCP) racks, which are wider for better cooling and offer easy front access and vertical DC power management. Hamilton emphasized the ongoing importance of SAS-connected hard drives for storing large volumes of data needed for AI inference and machine learning, serving as cost-effective repositories before the data is moved to higher-performance storage.
The OpenFlex Data24 4100 targets cloud-based architectures that benefit from redundancy, using single-port SSDs. Furthermore, Western Digital is fostering interoperability by qualifying SSDs from other vendors, such as Kioxia, Phison, Sandisk, and ScaleFlux, to offer customers increased flexibility in building their storage infrastructure.
The OCCL, established in 2018, is a vendor-neutral hub aimed at accelerating the adoption of open, fabric-attached, and software-defined storage solutions. The lab’s latest iteration, OCCL 2.0, offers tools and best practices for deploying and optimizing disaggregated storage infrastructures.
Finally, Western Digital has partnered with Ingrasys (a Foxconn subsidiary) to create a high-density top-of-rack (TOR) switch with embedded storage, leveraging Western Digital’s RapidFlex NVMe-oF bridge technology. This innovation reduces the need for separate storage networks and enables greater disaggregation, making NVMe SSDs function like Ethernet-attached drives, ideal for scalable, tiered AI storage.
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Gary Hilson is a freelance writer with a focus on B2B technology, including information technology, cybersecurity, and semiconductors.