Samsung Launches Broad Range Of Datacenter SSDs
by Billy Tallis on September 4, 2018 10:00 AM EST
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 new models are related to existing enterprise SSDs like the PM883 that have only been available to OEMs and the largest customers. The new models will be easier to acquire than the OEM models, and will not include any of the OEM-specific firmware customizations. Overall, this amounts to a major shift in Samsung's enterprise SSD strategy—away from being a pure OEM supplier and toward the OEM+channel model they use for client/consumer SSDs.
| Samsung 860 DCT Specifications | ||||
| Capacity | 960 GB | 1.92 TB | 3.84 TB | |
| Controller | Samsung MJX | |||
| Form Factor | 2.5" 7mm SATA | |||
| NAND Flash | Samsung 64-layer 3D TLC | |||
| DRAM | 1 GB LPDDR4 | 2 GB LPDDR4 | 4 GB LPDDR4 | |
| Sequential Read | 550 MB/s | |||
| Sequential Write | 520 MB/s | |||
| Random Read | 98k IOPS | |||
| Random Write | 19k IOPS | |||
| Power Consumption | Read | 1.9 W | ||
| Write | 2.9 W | |||
| Idle | 1.05 W | |||
| Write Endurance | 349 TB 0.2 DWPD |
698 TB 0.2 DWPD |
1396 TB 0.2 DWPD |
|
| Warranty | 5 years | |||
| Retail Price | $269.99 (28¢/GB) | $569.99 (30¢/GB) | $899.99 (23¢/GB) | |
Starting at the bottom of the new product stack is the 860 DCT SATA SSD. This drive falls between a typical client/consumer drive and what is usually expected from an enterprise SSD. The 860 DCT 's hardware platform is based on the 860 EVO consumer SSD and thus lacks power loss protection, but the firmware is tuned for consistent sustained performance with no SLC write caching. The 860 DCT is intended for cost-sensitive use cases like content distribution networks (CDNs) that have very read-heavy workloads and do not require the extra data integrity guarantees provided by power loss protection. The 860 DCT uses 3D TLC NAND, but this product segment should be taken over by QLC NAND over the next year or two. The 860 DCT's write endurance rating is 0.2 drive writes per day (DWPD), comparable to entry-level client/consumer SSDs.
| Samsung 883 DCT Specifications | ||||||
| Capacity | 240 GB | 480 GB | 960 GB | 1.92 TB | 3.84 TB | |
| Controller | Samsung MJX | |||||
| Form Factor | 2.5" 7mm SATA | |||||
| NAND Flash | Samsung 64-layer 3D TLC | |||||
| DRAM | 512 MB LPDDR4 | 1 GB LPDDR4 | 2 GB LPDDR4 | 4 GB LPDDR4 | ||
| Sequential Read | 550 MB/s | |||||
| Sequential Write | 520 MB/s | |||||
| Random Read | 98k IOPS | |||||
| Random Write | 14k IOPS | 24k IOPS | 25k IOPS | 25k IOPS | 28k IOPS | |
| Power Consumption | Read | 3.6 W | ||||
| Write | 2.3 W | |||||
| Idle | 1.3 W | |||||
| Write Endurance | 341 TB 0.8 DWPD |
683 TB 0.8 DWPD |
1366 TB 0.8 DWPD |
2733 TB 0.8 DWPD |
5466 TB 0.8 DWPD |
|
| Warranty | 5 years | |||||
The higher-end SATA drive Samsung is introducing is the new 883 DCT, based on the PM883 introduced at the beginning of the year. This drive features power loss protection and a more typical write endurance rating of 0.8 DWPD. There's no MLC-based SATA SSD in the new product family, reflecting the shift to NVMe/PCIe interfaces for drives intended for write-heavy workloads.
| Samsung 983 DCT Specifications | |||||
| Capacity | 960 GB | 1.92 TB | 960 GB | 1.92 TB | |
| Controller | Samsung Phoenix | ||||
| Form Factor | 2.5" 7mm U.2 | M.2 22110 | |||
| Interface, Protocol | PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe 1.2b | ||||
| NAND Flash | Samsung 64-layer 3D TLC | ||||
| DRAM | 1.5 GB LPDDR4 | 3 GB LPDDR4 | 1.5 GB LPDDR4 | 3 GB LPDDR4 | |
| Sequential Read | 3000 MB/s | ||||
| Sequential Write | 1050 MB/s | 1900 MB/s | 1100 MB/s | 1400 MB/s | |
| Random Read | 400k IOPS | 540k IOPS | 400k IOPS | 480k IOPS | |
| Random Write | 40k IOPS | 50k IOPS | 38k IOPS | 42k IOPS | |
| Power Consumption | Read | 8.7 W | 7.6 W | ||
| Write | 10.6 W | 8.0 W | |||
| Idle | 4.0 W | 2,6 W | |||
| Write Endurance | 1366 TB 0.8 DWPD |
2733 TB 0.8 DWPD |
1366 TB 0.8 DWPD |
2733 TB 0.8 DWPD |
|
| Warranty | 5 years | ||||
The mainstream NVMe product in the new family is the 983 DCT, based on the PM983's combination of TLC NAND and the Phoenix controller that also powers the 970 PRO and 970 EVO consumer SSDs. The 983 DCT features substantially higher performance than the 883 DCT SATA drive but comes with the same 0.8 DWPD write endurance rating. The 983 DCT will be available in the M.2 22110 form factor or as a 7mm-thick 2.5" U.2 with slightly higher performance thanks to the higher power and thermal limits of the larger form factor. The PM983 is also manufactured in Samsung's new NF1 form factor, but there are too few systems with NF1 slots to justify releasing a retail 983 DCT in that form factor at this time.
| Samsung 983 ZET Specifications | |||||
| Capacity | 480 GB | 960 GB | |||
| Controller | Samsung Phoenix | ||||
| Form Factor | PCIe HHHL add-in card | ||||
| Interface, Protocol | PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe 1.2b | ||||
| NAND Flash | Samsung 3D SLC Z-NAND | ||||
| DRAM | 1.5 GB LPDDR4 | ||||
| Sequential Read | 3400 MB/s | ||||
| Sequential Write | 3000 MB/s | ||||
| Random Read | TBD | ||||
| Random Write | TBD | ||||
| Write Endurance | 7440 TB 8.5 DWPD |
17520 TB 10 DWPD |
|||
| Warranty | 5 years | ||||
Lastly, the new 983 ZET finally brings Samsung's Z-SSD technology to a broader audience. The 983 ZET is features much higher write performance than the 983 DCT and is rated for up to 10 DWPD. This is still well shy of the 30 DWPD that the Z-SSD SZ985 offers or the 60 DWPD that Intel is now offering on the Optane SSD DC P4800X. Low latency is still a key selling point of Z-NAND, but Samsung has not yet provided final random I/O or latency specs for the 983 ZET. The 983 ZET will be available as a PCIe add-in card, though a future M.2 version based on the SZ983 would not be surprising.
The two SATA drives and the 983 DCT are already shipping and are starting to show up for sale through distributors like Amazon and CDW. The 983 ZET will be available on September 24th. We already have a review sample of the 860 DCT undergoing testing, and are expecting to review the 883 and 983 later this year.
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JoeyJoJo123 - Tuesday, September 4, 2018 - link
Bb-b-b-but the SSD write endurance!!! We need more information on SSD endurance because this is the only spec that 99% of users will be able to see and be affected by on an average day!!Please buy (can't have those cherrypicked samples) 1000 (sample size of 1 isn't good enough to illustrate a statistical average, even 1000 is small) of these pricey datacenter SSDs so you can do in-depth SSD endurance testing over the course of 4+ years before publishing results, after which I would've already bought something newer and better!!
Aaaghhrrrhrrr... Why is it so hard to get real world SSD endurance numbers!?!! My SSD could die 3 seconds from now, or it might just be obsoleted by new hardware less than 6 months from now. Knowing SSD endurance numbers beforehand allows me to circumvent proper data backup processes by backing up my data the hour right before my SSD dies according the real world(tm) endurance testing.
Oh whoops is my sarcasm showing? Did I beat all the SSD endurance nerds to the comment section?
thesavvymage - Tuesday, September 4, 2018 - link
why did you waste so much time typing this out?Also why did I waste time logging in just to ask you that >:(
Dragonstongue - Tuesday, September 4, 2018 - link
LOLJoeyJoJo123 - Tuesday, September 4, 2018 - link
For the same reason why misinformed people spend needless amounts of time worrying about "real world(tm)" endurance numbers and waste their breath in comment sections trying to get worthless numbers for their potential purchase of 1 (read: ONE) storage drive purchase.The fact of the matter is, if your data's important, then regardless of the point of failure (such as the endurance of NAND flash wearing out, or even a drive head scratching the surface of a disk) of the storage device (HDD, tape, SSD, a flash drive, SD card, whatever) proper data retention procedures should have mitigated not only any loss of data, but any downtime incurred by a failed device. The endurance rating of an SSD is absolutely irrelevant to anyone except for the tier 1 data storage services (cloud platforms like AWS, DropBox, CloudFlare, etc.) and to these people, they have the money and internal resources to document the relative reliability of any drives they're interested in purchasing according to their real world use cases. The only reason why these tier 1 data storage services care is that the endurance of these datacenter tier devices directly correlates to uptime and availability of their system and the time spent changing drives out and rebuilding storage arrays. They can do the cost-benefit analysis of buying some drives, documenting whatever value they have, and proceed with ordering more if they're a good fit. They're literally making a living making sure that data's available. Chances are, any SSD you're interested in purchasing isn't making you $$$.
The impetus of DWPD or other endurance metrics were never a frequent point of discussion for mechanical hard drives. And they still aren't. For personal use, the only thing that really matters is price, storage capacity, and warranty. Reliability is mitigated by proper data backups. If a drive dies, just contact warranty and grab the latest backup you have.
NAND flash endurance means nothing because all storage devices have a MTBF where your data is lost either way (even if the controller, rather than the NAND flash, dies), so it's impractical to care about just one facet (NAND endurance) that could lead to loss of data when you should be mitigating against ANY data loss by proper backup procedures.
Hul8 - Tuesday, September 4, 2018 - link
Congratulations - you beat the SSD endurance nerds in their game: being annoying.MrSpadge - Tuesday, September 4, 2018 - link
I actually think he was funny.WorldWithoutMadness - Tuesday, September 4, 2018 - link
I wonder what happened to those people in reality. They probaby can't go out before checking the pollution level outside. Someone did something wrong and created fragile human beings that need higher percentage of certainty in their live.PeachNCream - Tuesday, September 4, 2018 - link
0.2 DWPD is pretty awful so you'd better have done your homework on your storage needs before buying. On the other hand the V-NAND looks like it has some serious potential as a replacement that has good endurance. I hope it finds its way down to the consumer market to give Optane some competition. I've already hit endurance limits on crappy TLC so I'm not looking forward to CE QLC SSDs that are now entering the retail space.Alistair - Tuesday, September 4, 2018 - link
The Intel 660p is only 100 bucks for 500GB. Don't buy it if it doesn't work for you, but that price is insanely low vs the $168 for the Samsung 970 EVO.mdrejhon - Monday, September 10, 2018 - link
I think the 0.2 DWPD is mainly for things like Netflix Streaming Appliances, which often hold the same popular episodes day after day, and a good cheap fast 4TB SSD can still serve more concurrent customers-per-dollar than spinning HDD -- and end up being cheaper than HDD-per-stream due to the ability to stream to many more customers concurrently. The Appliances have excellent failover capabilities, so a failed disk gets streams from another adjacent Netflix Appliance, and they auto-clone stream copies to faster disks if the streams are popular.