Lyve Drive Mobile System 2020

Designers: Jordan Nollman, Sprout Studios, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Manufacturer: Seagate Technology PLC., Cupertino, California, USA

Lyve Drive is a modular data storage system built for the future of the datasphere. With increasingly data-heavy workflows, Lyve Drive provides seamless enterprise solutions for data creation points, transport, and cloud storage.  

Commercial enterprises that rely on complex data flows (media and entertainment, autonomous vehicle training, etc.) are poised to benefit the most from these features. The modular design of the Lyve Drive system and its variety of storage capacities provide industries with unlimited scalability for any level of data management.

Lyve Drive is the first mobile data storage system that is truly scalable, modular, and tailored for enterprise workflows of any scale. The sheer volume of data that enterprises create brings with it an inherent set of challenges. Among these are storage capacity limitations, transport and transfer security errors, data access latency problems, and hardware compatibility issues.

Lyve Drive shuttles are built for security with a form factor that protects each unit during transport and built-in locking mechanisms that provide additional safety from unintended contact.

Each Lyve Drive storage device tackles data latency by combining local high-speed data ingestion and retrieval with customized workflow logistics. This creates continuous access to important information without costly interruptions.

One of the main challenges in enterprise workflows is a lack of storage device consistency. A patchwork of hardware creates compatibility roadblocks, slowing down progress and adding cost. The Lyve Drive ecosystem alleviates the roadblocks with a cohesive, self-contained, and form-factor driven approach.

The Lyve Drive system is innovative not only for its continuous form-factor across the family of products, but for its attention to the user. The Unified Data Experience (UDX) was created for a  user that may have little-to-no IT expertise. The user experience of a single hard drive in the field is the same as inserting a storage array into Lyve Drive rack mount system at the cloud level. Because of the form-factor across the family of products, useability is both intuitive and approachable.

Smaller drives nest into larger arrays, which will then nest into even larger, micro-modular data centers. This ecosystem helps enterprise users scale and customize their data flows at their own pace.

With agility in mind, the Lyve Drive family of products allow commercial enterprises to smoothly customize their data workflow to meet a specific use case. Because of the Lyve Drive design language, the products are intuitive, technologically cohesive, and all-encompassing. This system spans all points of a data workflow, eliminating the device patchwork typically found within large-scale enterprises. Streamlining these workflows dramatically improves access to data, avoids costly latency and compatibility issues, and allows for a more secure transport of large data amounts.

Lyve Drive is ahead of the game when it comes to massive data logistics. The sheer amount generated from autonomous vehicle training alone, requires a paradigm shift in how we efficiently manage petabytes of data. Industries such as smart manufacturing and smart agriculture generate similar levels of data, and there are roughly 200 other current industry use cases that are in need of data workflow solutions. These logistic challenges have a huge impact on how the future of data evolves world-wide, but the solutions need to be agile enough to tackle a wide range of industries.

Part of the challenge is tailoring workflows to be cost effective and eco friendly. Lyve Drive workflows create an opportunity to ‘rinse and repeat’ the same hardware, avoiding the need to produce unnecessary devices. Within these workflows, data is created, stored on a device,  retrieved, and offloaded onto a larger array. Then the original device is wiped, and sent back into the field for reuse — creating a continuous loop.

The Lyve Drive Modular System is designed with portability as the main design requirement. Therefore, large integrated handles are the primary touchpoint and visual focus of the Lyve Drive enclosures. A rugged internal construction is matched with a minimal exterior design that provides user feedback with a simple light ring. Airflow perforations and all connections are recessed for protection. All Lyve Drive shuttles have incorporated locking features for security during transport.