The PCI Express 4.0 specification was designed to double the performance of server and storage systems, pushing speeds up to 16.0 gigatransfers per second (GT/s) or 2 gigabits per second (Gb/s) throughput per lane, and driving new performance levels for cloud and enterprise applications. Today, KIOXIA America, Inc. (formerly Toshiba Memory America, Inc.) announced that its lineup of CM6 and CD6 Series PCIe 4.0 NVM Express (NVMe ) enterprise and data center solid state drives (SSDs) are now shipping to customers.

An established leader in developing PCIe and NVMe SSDs, KIOXIA delivers never-before-seen performance. KIOXIA was the first company to publicly demonstrate PCIe 4.0 SSDs and is now the first to ship these next-generation drives. The CM6 and CD6 Series SSDs are compliant to the latest NVMe specification, and include key features such as in-band NVMe-MI, persistent event log, namespace granularity, and shared stream writes. Additionally, both drives are SFF-TA-1001 conformant (also known as U.3), which allows them to be used in tri-mode enabled backplanes, which can accept SAS, SATA or NVMe SSDs.

HP issued a warning to its customers that some of its SAS SSDs come with a bug that causes them to fail at exactly 32,768 hours of use. For an always-on or high-uptime server, this translates to 3 years, 270 days and 8 hours of usage. The affected models of SSDs are shipped in many of HP's flagship server and storage products, spanning its HPE ProLiant, Synergy, Apollo, JBOD D3xxx, D6xxx, D8xxx, MSA, StoreVirtual 4335 and StoreVirtual 3200 product-lines.

HP has released an SSD firmware update that fixes this bug and cannot stress the importance of deploying the update enough. This is because once a drive hits the 32,768-hour literal deadline and breaks down, both the drive and the data on it become unrecoverable. There is no other mitigation to this bug than the firmware update. HP released easy to use online firmware update tools that let admins update firmware of their drivers from within their OS. The online firmware update tools support Linux, Windows, and VMWare. Below is a list of affected drives. Get the appropriate firmware update from this page.

Global supercomputer leader Cray, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, and leading Japanese information and communication technology company Fujitsu, today announced a partnership to offer high performance technologies for the Exascale Era. Under the alliance agreement, Cray is developing the first-ever commercial supercomputer powered by the Fujitsu A64FX Arm -based processor with high-memory bandwidth (HBM) and supported on the proven Cray CS500 supercomputer architecture and programming environment. Initial customers include Los Alamos National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, RIKEN Center for Computational Science, Stony Brook University, and University of Bristol. As part of this new partnership, Cray and Fujitsu will explore engineering collaboration, co-development, and joint go-to-market to meet customer demand in the supercomputing space.

"Our partnership with Fujitsu means customers now have a broader choice of processor technology to address their pressing computational needs," said Fred Kohout, senior vice president and CMO at Cray, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. "We are delivering the development-to-deployment experience customers have come to expect from Cray, including exploratory development to the Cray Programming Environment (CPE) for Arm processors to optimize performance and scalability with additional support for Scalable Vector Extensions and high bandwidth memory."

Kingston Digital Europe Co LLP, the flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., a world leader in memory products and technology solutions, today announced it is shipping the Data Center 450R (DC450R) Enterprise SSD, a high performance 6 Gbps SATA SSD with 3D TLC NAND, designed for read-centric application workloads. This streamlined server SSD delivers on performance while providing exceptional I/O and latency predictability, a requirement now amongst Data Center Class SSDs. Built to Kingston's strict QoS requirements, the DC450R is designed to ensure performance consistency over a wide range of read intensive and read caching workloads.

Kingston's DC450R is designed for workloads that require 24/7 uptime and reliability, such as Content Delivery Networks (CDN), edge computing applications and a wide array of software-defined storage architectures. DC450R presents a specifically focused feature set that enables data centers to select the most cost effective SSD for their workloads. Businesses require results as they deliver on products, solutions and service level agreements (SLAs) and DC450R provides system builders and Cloud providers with a high performance, economical SSD standard they can count on.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced IBM z15, a new enterprise platform delivering the ability to manage the privacy of customer data across hybrid multicloud environments. With z15, clients can manage who gets access to data via policy-based controls, with an industry-first capability to revoke access to data across the hybrid cloud.

The movement of data between partners and third parties is often the root cause of data breaches. In fact, 60 percent of businesses reported they suffered a data breach caused by a vendor or third party in 2018. With the growing adoption of hybrid multicloud environments, the importance of maintaining data security and privacy only grows more acute and challenging.

Dell Technologies (NYSE: DELL) is announcing new capabilities and services to Unified Workspace, its visionary approach to end-user computing, including a partnership with Google to unveil the world's first Chromebook Enterprise.

Businesses of all sizes now have the choice to deploy Chrome devices to their global workforce. And IT can deploy with the same level of security and manageability they expect in a corporate environment.

SK Hynix Inc. announced today that its DRAM and Enterprise SSD (eSSD) solutions, including the up-to-date 1Y nm 8 Gb DDR4 DRAM, have been fully tested and validated with the new AMD EPYC 7002 Generation Processors, which were unveiled during AMD's launch event on August 7. The Company has worked closely with AMD to provide memory solutions fully compatible with the 2nd Gen AMD EPYC Processors, targeting high performance data centers.

The SK Hynix DDR4 DRAM supports the maximum speed of 3200 Mbps of the 2nd Gen EPYC Processors, which will increase memory performance more than 20% compared to the 1st Gen AMD EPYC Processors. The Company's various DDR4 DRAM solutions, based on the 1Xnm and 1Y nm technology with density of 8 Gb and 16 Gb, have been fully tested and validated with the 2nd Gen EPYC Processors. SK Hynix provides high-density DIMMs with density over 64 GB to support up to 64 cores per socket in the 2nd Gen EPYC.

SK Hynix also provides a full line-up of SATA and PCIe from 480 GB to 8 TB, which have also been validated and tested with the 2nd Gen EPYC. SK Hynix's eSSD solutions are optimized for the latest data center's read-intensive and mixed workload environment.

AMD invited TechPowerUp to their launch event and editor's day coverage of Zen 2 EPYC processors based on the 7 nm process. The event was a day-long affair which included product demos and tours, and capped off with an official launch presentation which we are able to share with you live as the event goes on. Zen 2 with the Ryzen 3000-series processors ushered in a lot of excitement, and for good reason too as our own reviews show, but questions remained on how the platform would scale to the other end of the market. We already knew, for example, that AMD secured many contracts based on their first-generation EPYC processors, and no doubt the IPC increase and expected increased core count would cause similar, if not higher, interest here. We also expect to know shortly about the various SKUs and pricing involved, and also if AMD wants to shed more light on the future of the Threadripper processor family. Read below, and continue past the break, for our live coverage.21:00 UTC: Lisa Su is on the stage at the Palace of Fine Arts events venue in San Francisco to present AMD's latest developments on EPYC for datacenters, using the Zen 2 microarchitecture.21:10 UTC: AMD focuses not just on delivering a single chip, but it's goal is to deliver a complete solution for the enterprise.

Western Digital today announced two new 96-layer 3D flash NVMe SSD families, the Ultrastar DC SN640 and Ultrastar DC SN340. Both are purpose-built for either mixed-use-case workloads or very read-intensive applications, respectively. The new Ultrastar drives help meet the evolving, and increasingly specific workload demands placed on data centers today, while building a strong, flexible foundation for the zettabyte-scale era of the future. Leveraging Western Digital's in-house SSD controller designs, firmware development and vertical integration, these new solutions underscore the company's strengths in developing innovations that allow customers' data to thrive, from edge to core to cloud.

NVMe is having a great impact on enterprises and what they can do with data, particularly for real-time analytics, M2M and IoT, and emerging technologies like composable infrastructure. Data center customers understand the nature of their data streams and application workloads and are realizing that today's general-purpose architectures are inefficient and can carry resource and cost overhead.

AMD today announced revenue for the first quarter of 2019 of $1.27 billion, operating income of $38 million, net income of $16 million and diluted
earnings per share of $0.01. On a non-GAAP(*) basis, operating income was $84 million, net income was $62 million and diluted earnings per share was $0.06.

"We delivered solid first quarter results with significant gross margin expansion as Ryzen and EPYC processor and datacenter GPU revenue more than doubled year-over-year," said Dr. Lisa Su, AMD president and CEO. "We look forward to the upcoming launches of our next-generation 7nm PC, gaming
and datacenter products which we expect to drive further market share gains and financial growth."

SUSE today announced support for Intel Optane DC persistent memory with SAP HANA . Running on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications, SAP HANA users can now take advantage of high-capacity Intel Optane DC persistent memory in the data center. Users can optimize their workloads by moving and maintaining larger amounts of data closer to the processor and minimizing the higher latency of fetching data from system storage during maintenance. Support for Intel Optane DC persistent memory, currently available in beta from multiple cloud service providers and hardware vendors, is another way SUSE is helping customers transform their IT infrastructures to reduce costs, deliver higher performance and compete more efficiently.

"Persistent memory technology will spark new applications for data access and storage," said Thomas Di Giacomo, SUSE CTO. "By offering a fully supported solution built on Intel Optane DC persistent memory, businesses can take greater advantage of the performance of SAP HANA. SUSE continues to partner with companies like SAP and Intel to serve customers worldwide who are looking to fuel growth by transforming their IT infrastructure. It is their needs that drive the direction of our innovation."

During our visit with Toshiba at CES 2019, we were shown not only new technologies that they will be rapidly deploying but a large number of SSDs for various market segments. The biggest draw was their 96-layer BiCS Flash with 4-bit-per-cell quadruple-level cell (QLC) technology. Toshiba is now pushing the boundary for capacity as a single chip device can reach 1.33 Tb (Terabits) while a single package device with 16-dies stacked architecture can reach 2.66 TB. That said, they are already sampling their 1 TB NVMe single package BG4 series SSDs to PC OEM customers in limited quantities.

These latest drives with their new BiCS FLASH technology incorporate everything into a tiny SSD that offers class-leading storage with sequential read performance reaching up to 2250 MB/s. Random read performance can also hit exceptional levels reaching up to 380,000 IOPS. For now, these BG4 based drives are targeted at ultra-thin PC notebooks, IoT embedded systems and will be made available in four capacities including; 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB and finally 1 TB. To meet expected demand, Toshiba will also be opening a facility in Japan dedicated to this latest technology in order to bring even higher capacities per NAND module.

In an always-online world having the ability to test unknown programs or .exe files on PC has required the use of extra software which has always come with issues of its own or the more in-depth use of a virtual machine. In order to eliminate the fear of running unknown programs along with the desire to make testing them easier, Microsoft has announced the development of their Windows Sandbox. This new feature will be coming to Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise next year and as you may have guessed it allows for the creation of a temporary desktop environment. This work environment is made to be secure and disposable meaning you can run an app in the sandbox check for compatibility, possible issues, malware, etc and once done just delete the entire sandbox. Thus keeping your real operating system free and clear of any potentially hidden nasty surprises.

The entire system works by using Microsoft's Hypervisor to create an entirely separate kernel isolated from the host PC. Each time its run it creates a pristine installation of Windows as nothing persists between uses. More importantly, the prerequisites for its use are quite low, with systems currently at the minimum needing Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise Insider build 18305 or later, virtualization capabilities enabled in the BIOS, 4 GB of memory, 1 GB free disk space and 2 CPU cores. Recommended specifications include a CPU with four threads, 8 GB memory, and an SSD, which in this day and age is quite minimal all things considered. While this feature is not likely to be a game changer for the average consumer it should make the lives of IT personnel a bit easier.

AMD today released their last driver update for 2018 in the enterprise segment, the Radeon Pro Software Enterprise Edition 18.Q4 driver. A new feature is the Day Zero Certification Program, which serves for would-be deployers of AMD's updated drivers (or any business looking to leverage the red team's products in a new installation) to know which programs have already been certified to work flawlessly with the latest driver revision. Exactly which scenarios and configurations (name of the ISV, software, OS and graphics card used during the certification process) are also part of this certification. This list is up to 290 entries as of November 13th.

AMD is quoting performance improvements that can go up to 89% in YoY performance gains compared to their last 2017 driver. There's also a mountain of fixed bugs in the latest release, and AMD is keeping up with its commitment to stable, predictable driver releases that it started with their new vision for the enterprise and business environments.

Advantech, a global leading provider of the industrial flash storage solution SQFlash, today releases a flagship NVMe SSD product-SQFlash 920 series. This new series product line brings high performance, density, and full function storage security support, which allows complete design-in service for industrial applications. Advantech's SQFlash 920 series NVMe SSD includes the very popular M.2 2280 form factor (SQF-CM8) as well as a 2.5" U.2 form factor (SQF-C25) using the latest Toshiba BiCS3 3D NAND Flash technology to achieve up to 8TB per drive capacity.

Heading towards AIoT applications such as auto-piloting and industrial machine vision, the SQFlash 920 series is an industry first wide-temperature 3D NAND SSD that comes with built-in smart thermal management and comprehensive security features. Using the latest controller technology that includes LDPC and a RAID-ECC error correction engine, SQFlash 920 series provides best-in-class reliability and the same endurance level as planer MLC NAND Flash. What's more, a cloud ready online predictive maintenance feature (PMQ) is also available to help users remotely monitor their SSD.

Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage Corporation, a committed technology leader, today announced its new Enterprise Capacity 14 TB and 12 TB helium-sealed SAS HDD models. The MG07SCA Series features 7,200 rpm performance, a SAS 12Gbit Interface, and Advanced Format Sector Technology. The hard disk drive boasts an industry-leading, 9-disk helium-sealed design and 14 TB of Conventional Magnetic Recording (CMR) capacity for optimum compatibility. Toshiba's helium-sealed design fits into industry standard 3.5-inch drive bays. A 12 TB model is also included in the Series offering.

The innovative 9-disk helium-sealed design utilizes Toshiba's precision laser welding process, and a special top-cover design seals helium inside the drive offering high capacity and low power profile to the product. The SAS interface provides 12 Gbits transfer rate performance and dual port capability for the data-path redundancy preferred by many storage solutions designers. The 14 TB SAS model offers approximately a 40% increase in maximum capacity over Toshiba's prior MG06 10 TB SAS models.

At the OCP summit this week Seagate and its partners revealed new proof points showing continued progress, solid results, and customer and industry adoption of the company's advanced HAMR and Multi Actuator technologies, which will be implemented in the near future in Seagate Exos enterprise hard drives.

Today Seagate said its new MACH.2 Multi Actuator technology has enabled them to set a new hard drive speed record, demonstrating up to 480MB/s sustained throughput - the fastest ever. Seagate formally introduced its MACH.2 Multi Actuator technology yesterday, which has now been deployed in development units for customer testing prior to productization. Read below to learn more.

Western Digital Corporation, a data technology leader, today introduced the new Ultrastar DC SS530 SAS SSD, the company's highest-density drive and the fastest dual-port SAS SSD in the market¹, enabling server and storage array manufacturers to offer customers substantially lower data center TCO for Fast Data applications. By doubling maximum capacity of the previous generation to 15.36TB within the same 2.5-inch 15-mm form factor, drive storage density also doubles, giving IT managers the potential to reduce the number of drives deployed, consolidate servers and open up valuable rack space for improved CapEx and OpEx costs.

Developed in partnership with Intel , the Ultrastar DC SS530 is based on a trusted third-generation platform that has been previously qualified at most major OEMs worldwide. It offers consistent performance and reliability to meet the rigorous demands of today's toughest data center workloads. Designed with a 12Gb/s SAS interface, and available in capacities from 400GB to 15.36TB, the Ultrastar DC SS530 delivers up to 440,000 random read and 320,000 random write IOPS - providing rapid access to "hot" enterprise data for higher productivity and operational efficiency.

As of June 30, 2018 we had 100,254 spinning hard drives in Backblaze's data centers. Of that number, there were 1,989 boot drives and 98,265 data drives. This review looks at the quarterly and lifetime statistics for the data drive models in operation in our data centers. We'll also take another look at comparing enterprise and consumer drives, get a first look at our 14 TB Toshiba drives, and introduce you to two new SMART stats. Along the way, we'll share observations and insights on the data presented and we look forward to you doing the same in the comments.
Hard Drive Reliability Statistics for Q2 2018

Of the 98,265 hard drives we were monitoring at the end of Q2 2018, we removed from consideration those drives used for testing purposes and those drive models for which we did not have at least 45 drives. This leaves us with 98,184 hard drives. The table below covers just Q2 2018.

Swedish company EQT, which invests heavily in tech stocks, and even owns tech IP, closed a deal with Micro Focus to acquire SuSE, lock stock and barrel. Over the past 15 years, SuSE changed many owners. In 2004, the Nuremberg-based Linux distributor was acquired by Novell. In 2010, Novell was swallowed by Attachmate, with funding from Microsoft. In 2014, ten years since its original foreign acquisition, Micro Focus acquired Attachmate and spun off SuSE as a separate division within the company. EQT purchased this division from Micro Focus in a deal valued at USD $2.5 billion.

Recognizable by its quirky chameleon mascot, SuSE's biggest product is SuSE Linux, a commercial distribution of Linux for enterprises, which integrates certain proprietary software and drivers, with a business-model similar to that of RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux). There's also a GNU-friendly, community-maintained free distribution of SuSE called OpenSuSE, which is made entirely of free and open-source software. The acquisition of SuSE is big, not just because of its valuation, but also because certain EU-based businesses and governments use it in their vital IT infrastructure. The EQT acquisition keeps SuSE within the EU.

QSAN Technology Inc. launched XCubeFAS XF2026D, QSAN's and Taiwan's very first All-Flash SAN. This pioneer of QSAN's new AFA SAN product series is designed for SME and Large Enterprises, and is perfect for virtualization environments, big data analysis, and managing onerous applications that demand high IOPS and low latency levels. "Imagine being able to concentrate strictly on your business without the stress about complicated storage deployment and configurations," said Alex Shih, product manager of QSAN technology Inc. "With the experience of our latest smart O.S., XEVO, you can fulfill fast deployment and configurations in just a few clicks."

NVIDIA HGX-2 , the first unified computing platform for both artificial intelligence and high performance computing. The HGX-2 cloud server platform, with multi-precision computing capabilities, provides unique flexibility to support the future of computing. It allows high-precision calculations using FP64 and FP32 for scientific computing and simulations, while also enabling FP16 and Int8 for AI training and inference. This unprecedented versatility meets the requirements of the growing number of applications that combine HPC with AI.

A number of leading computer makers today shared plans to bring to market systems based on the NVIDIA HGX-2 platform. "The world of computing has changed," said Jensen Huang, founder and chief executive officer of NVIDIA, speaking at the GPU Technology Conference Taiwan, which kicked off today. "CPU scaling has slowed at a time when computing demand is skyrocketing. NVIDIA's HGX-2 with Tensor Core GPUs gives the industry a powerful, versatile computing platform that fuses HPC and AI to solve the world's grand challenges."

Today, AMD released the new Radeon Pro Software Enterprise Driver 18.Q2, continuing to protect the investment of IT professionals and buyers by providing significant performance improvements in leading professional applications, such as CATIA, Creo and Siemens NX, alongside enhanced security features and stability.

Our most dense storage enclosure yet, the ToughArmor MB516SP-B. With space available for 16 x 2.5" SATA / SAS drives up to 7mm in height, it fits in only two 5.25" bays, making it perfect for high density storage applications. It features our unique EZ-Slide Nano trays that make installing drives a snap, and are compatible with several other ToughArmor models such as MB998 series. Its large 80mm user-controllable fan runs quietly, utilizing its many ventilation holes for maximum airflow at minimal RPM ranges. The fan has 3 modes the user can set; high, low, and off. The MB516SP-B features a rugged heavy duty full-metal housing designed to meet high IOPS requirement which are generally found in Enterprise environments, Military systems, Medical systems, high performance computing and industrial settings.

Fujitsu Limited and Fujitsu Client Computing Limited announce the release of three new enterprise thin client models from three product series in the Fujitsu Thin Client FUTRO lineup. The new models will be steadily rolled out from the end of April in Japan. For its series of desktop-based systems, Fujitsu has added the FUTRO S740, an ultra-small model with an updated chassis design. In its notebook lineup, Fujitsu will offer the new FUTRO MU937 and the FUTRO MA576, which feature Windows 10 IoT Enterprise 2016 LTSB, the latest OS. The Fujitsu Group remains committed to creating a secure working environment for customers with its security solutions and full lineup of devices, so users can select devices to suit various tasks and needs.