Enterprise SSDs
Solidigm has been extremely bullish on QLC SSDs in the data center. Compared to other flash vendors, their continued use of a floating gate cell architecture (while others moved on to charge trap configurations) has served them well in bringing QLC SSDs to the enterprise market. The company realized early on that the market was hungry for a low-cost high-capacity SSD to drive per-rack capacity. In order to address this using their 144L 3D NAND generation, Solidigm created the D5-P5316. While the lineup did include a 30TB SKU for less than $100/TB, the QLC characteristics in general, and the use of a 16KB indirection unit (IU) resulted in limiting the use-cases to read-heavy and large-sized sequential / random write workloads. Solidigm markets their data center...
Kingston Launches New Enterprise SATA SSDs
Kingston is making a renewed effort in the enterprise storage market this year, starting with the launch of their DC500 family of enterprise SATA SSDs. The new DC500R and...
8 by Billy Tallis on 3/18/2019The Reality of SSD Capacity: No-One Wants Over 16TB Per Drive
One of the expanding elements of the storage business is that the capacity per drive has been ever increasing. Spinning hard-disk drives are approaching 20 TB soon, while solid...
86 by Ian Cutress on 3/13/2019The Memblaze PBlaze5 C916 Enterprise SSD Review: High Performance and High Capacities
The Memblaze PBlaze5 high-end enterprise SSD product line has been refreshed with 64-layer 3D NAND, allowing for better power efficiency and more affordable top-tier performance. The PBlaze5 C916...
13 by Billy Tallis on 3/13/2019The Samsung 983 ZET (Z-NAND) SSD Review: How Fast Can Flash Memory Get?
Samsung's 983 ZET is a high-end enterprise SSD and the first retail drive to feature Samsung's low-latency SLC Z-NAND flash memory. Designed for highly performance-bound workloads that favor IOPS...
46 by Billy Tallis on 2/19/2019The Enterpise TLC Storage Era Begins: Rounding Up 13 SSDs With Samsung, Intel, and Memblaze
It's been a busy year for consumer SSDs. With all the NAND flash manufacturers now shipping high-quality 3D NAND in volume, we've seen more competition than ever, and huge...
36 by Billy Tallis on 1/3/2019Micron Announces Broad Availability Of 5210 ION QLC SSD
Micron's 5210 ION enterprise SATA SSD was announced in May as the first shipping SSD with four bit per cell (QLC) NAND flash memory, but until now it has...
13 by Billy Tallis on 11/8/2018Samsung Launches Broad Range Of Datacenter SSDs
Today Samsung is launching a new generation of datacenter SSD models that are intended for small and medium businesses and will be sold through online retailers. Most of the...
14 by Billy Tallis on 9/4/2018SSD Form Factors Proliferate At Flash Memory Summit 2018
Last year, Intel and Samsung proposed new form factors for enterprise/datacenter SSDs with the goal of overcoming the shortcomings of the existing M.2, U.2 and PCIe add-in card form...
26 by Billy Tallis on 8/17/2018IBM And Everspin Announce 19TB NVMe SSD With MRAM Write Cache
A new generation of IBM's FlashSystem storage appliances will be adopting a new architecture with magnetoresistive RAM (MRAM) write caches instead of capacitor-backed DRAM. MRAM is one of the...
15 by Billy Tallis on 8/6/2018Intel Details Upcoming SSDs For Datacenter Including QLC NAND
Intel has finally shared the naming and specifications for their first datacenter SSDs using QLC NAND flash memory, after recently announcing that the then-unnamed drive had entered mass production...
7 by Billy Tallis on 8/3/2018HGST Launches Ultrastar DC SS530 SSDs: 3D TLC NAND, 15.36 TB, SAS 12 Gbps
Western Digital has quietly added its new HGST Ultrastar DC SS530-series SSDs to its lineup of products. The new drives are aimed at mission-critical storage applications, such as financial...
9 by Anton Shilov on 8/2/2018Intel Teases Upcoming QLC SSD For Datacenters
Intel has started production of their first datacenter PCIe SSD using QLC 3D NAND flash memory, which stores four bits per memory cell. This isn't a full product announcement...
6 by Billy Tallis on 7/19/2018GIGABYTE Launches CMT4030-Series PCIe 3.0 x8 and PCIe 3.0 x16 SSD Risers
GIGABYTE B2B has launched two PCIe riser cards for M.2 SSDs designed to build ultra-fast storage sub-systems consisting of multiple M.2 drives. The CMT4030-series risers will be available through...
20 by Anton Shilov on 7/6/2018NGD Launches Catalina 2 Programmable SSDs: 16 TB - 32 TB, ARM A-53 Cores
NGD Systems has announced its second-generation SSDs that feature compute capabilities. The Catalina 2 drives come in both 2.5-inch/U.2 and add-in-card form-factors, and are aimed at high-density servers for...
10 by Anton Shilov on 7/5/2018ADATA Enters High-End Enterprise SSD Market With SR2000
Until now, ADATA's SSD portfolio has consisted of client-focused SSDs and industrial-grade models based on similar hardware but optionally rated for extreme temperatures, with only the occasional purely server-oriented...
4 by Billy Tallis on 7/3/2018AIC’s Grays Peak Server with Intel ‘EDSFF’ Ruler SSDs
In the consumer space, we get SATA drives, mSATA drives, M.2 drives, and for the high end, U.2 drives. By contrast, the enterprise space is expanding: U.2 is a...
7 by Ian Cutress on 6/25/2018Samsung Kicks Off Mass Production of 8 TB NF1 SSDs with PCIe 3.0 x4 Interface [updated]
Samsung this week announced that it had started mass production of its new 8 TB NF1 SSDs. Samsung has been demonstrating prototype NF1 SSDs for slightly less than a...
21 by Anton Shilov on 6/21/2018Intel QLC NAND Updates: Up to 20TB In 2.5-inch SSD
While today's Intel event was mostly focused on the announcement of their Optane DIMMs, they have also provided updates on their plans for using their new QLC NAND flash...
27 by Billy Tallis on 5/30/2018Intel And Micron Launch First QLC NAND: Micron 5210 ION Enterprise SATA SSD
Intel and Micron are announcing today that their jointly-developed QLC NAND flash memory is now available, and Micron is now shipping the first solid state drive based on QLC...
38 by Billy Tallis on 5/21/2018Samsung Reveals M.2 Z-SSD
Last week at the Open Compute Project (OCP) Summit in San Jose, Samsung's booth included a surprise appearance of a Z-SSD in the M.2 form factor. Samsung has been...
37 by Billy Tallis on 3/27/2018