Seagate Exos EX2U24

Overview

The Exos EX2U24 sits alongside the EX2U12 in Seagate's SCALE family, offering the same pure SAS-attached expansion architecture but with 24 compact 2.5" drive bays instead of 12 large-format 3.5" bays — doubling drive density in the same 2U rack space. Like the EX2U12, it's a JBOD enclosure rather than an intelligent RAID array, connecting directly to a host server or existing storage controller via SAS.

The higher bay count makes it particularly well suited to SSD-heavy deployments, where 2.5" form factors are the norm, or any environment where maximising drive count per rack unit matters more than per-drive capacity.

Key Specifications

Why Choose the EX2U24

The core case for the EX2U24 is density. Where the EX2U12 prioritises larger individual drives in a 3.5" format, the EX2U24 packs twice as many 2.5" bays into the same 2U of rack space — a better fit for SSD deployments or any workload where you need more independently addressable drives rather than raw per-drive capacity.

Architecturally it shares the same JBOD approach as the rest of the SCALE family: no separate storage controller to license or manage, direct SAS attachment to your existing server infrastructure, and full hot-swap support across drives, I/O modules and power supplies so maintenance doesn't mean downtime.

As with the EX2U12, it's designed to chain with other SCALE enclosures, so a deployment can start with a single unit and grow as capacity needs increase without a platform change.

Common Use Cases

• SSD-dense expansion — Environments standardising on 2.5" SSDs where drive count matters more than individual drive capacity.
• High-IOPS workloads — More independently addressable spindles/SSDs per rack unit than an equivalent 3.5" enclosure.
• Space-constrained data centres — Maximising usable drive capacity where rack space or floor space is limited.
• Mixed SCALE deployments — Combined with EX2U12 or larger enclosures in the same chain to balance capacity and density.

Further Reading