They are made for enterprise systems ans use Intel 20nm NAND Flash memory

Jul 28, 2014 15:14 GMT  ·  By

Unless they come in PCI Express card form factor, consumer SSDs may have trouble reaching 1 TB, not to mention going beyond it. It's partially an issue of price, partially an issue of available interface.

So, naturally, when it comes to the business, server, and data center segment, storage device makers have a little more leeway.

Case in point, HGST, formerly known as Hitachi but now a part of Western Digital, has introduced a 12 Gbps SAS SSD with up to 1.6 TB capacity.

Made from Intel's 20nm NAND Flash chips (enterprise-grade MLC), they are called Ultrastar SSD800MH.B, Ultrastar SSD1600MM, and Ultrastar SSD1600MR. They are meant to be used in bulk, to build large storage capacities in storage systems running “performance-sensitive enterprise applications.”

The Ultrastar SSD800MH should be able to handle up to 25 full random drive writes per day for five years. Ultrastar SSD1600MM is rated at 10 DW/d, while the Ultrastar SSD1600MR should be used mostly for reading.

Either way, all SSDs have 2 million hours MTBF and capacities of 250 to (as we said before) 1.6 TB.

As for performance, it should reach 1,100 MB/s, while random performance is of 130,000 / 11,000 IOPS read/write.

Finally, the new SSDs have one or more of the following encryption technologies (subject to user option): Instant Secure Erase (ISE), Self-Encrypting Drives (SED), and TCG enterprise SED with FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standard) 140-2 certification. Pricing is subject to contract negotiations and order size.

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