Saturday, April 15th 2023
Sabrent Shows Off Apex X21 Destroyer Card, a Behemoth Multi-SSD Array Offering 168 TB Storage
Sabrent USA was in a boastful mood yesterday, and proceeded to gloat on Twitter about an upcoming gargantuan storage solution: "At Sabrent, we run on the cutting edge of technology. Working with Apex, we received one of these new cards and currently running it through tests. We call this the Sabrent Apex X21 Destroyer. 21X 8 TB SSDs for 168 TB of storage on single card!" The company has revealed that it is collaborating with Apex Solutions on the single PCIe card offering, but the smattering of text and two photos uploaded to Twitter are just teaser material for the moment. There have been no reports of preview units getting sent to potential testers or hardware influencers. Sabrent and Apex will continue to tweak and evaluate.
The Destroyer is formed of already existing parts, namely Apex Solution's own x21 NVMe mounting platform card, and twenty-one of Sabrent's Rocket 4 Plus SSD 8 TB NVMe 4.0 Gen 4 PCIe M.2 Internal SSD model (SB-RKT4P-8TB). A single Apex x21 card will set you back $2800, and the 8 TB Rocket 4 Plus SSD is currently discounted to $1099 (from $1499). That grand total comes to a whopping $25,879, and extra expenses are expected in the form of adequate cooling solutions and a hardware controller capable of managing that unruly gang of SSDs. Sabrent is expected to post updates about finalized fittings, features and exact pricing in the near future.
Sources:
Sabrent USA Tweet, Sabrent SB-RKT4P-8TB Product Page, Apex Storage x21 Product Page
The Destroyer is formed of already existing parts, namely Apex Solution's own x21 NVMe mounting platform card, and twenty-one of Sabrent's Rocket 4 Plus SSD 8 TB NVMe 4.0 Gen 4 PCIe M.2 Internal SSD model (SB-RKT4P-8TB). A single Apex x21 card will set you back $2800, and the 8 TB Rocket 4 Plus SSD is currently discounted to $1099 (from $1499). That grand total comes to a whopping $25,879, and extra expenses are expected in the form of adequate cooling solutions and a hardware controller capable of managing that unruly gang of SSDs. Sabrent is expected to post updates about finalized fittings, features and exact pricing in the near future.
38 Comments on Sabrent Shows Off Apex X21 Destroyer Card, a Behemoth Multi-SSD Array Offering 168 TB Storage
Why buy this over a big Optane scratch drive and a U.2 for bulk.
One of these has 10x (or more) the random performance, much lower latency, and an endurance rating of 584000000 GB, or 584,000 TB, compared to 21 Sabrent 8 TB drives, capped at less than 1/3rd their theoretical max performance due to interface limitations, with individual endurance ratings of 6,000 TB (per drive) for a theoretical array endurance of 126,000 TB, assuming a single drive doesn't fail in some other regard, the complex AIC doesn't fail etc.
Enterprise users or people who use workstations to do actual work would use NAS, cloud or enterprise level hardware.
All this for the purchase price of just under $26,000.
Get yours today!!!
www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1700966-REG/sabrent_sb_rkt4p_8tb_8tb_rocket_4_plus.html
Actually not too bad for 8TB, however should be closer to $680
www.amazon.com/Kingston-258881-Skc3000d-Kc3000-Pcie4-0/dp/B09K7DRMSC/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?crid=1Q8DOXZFVB3P1&keywords=kingston+kc3000+2tb&qid=1681611069&sprefix=2tb+kc%2Caps%2C137&sr=8-3
But actually, Apex says it's a "Double Width FHFL Card", so you're limited to four cards = 104,000 dollares. Or make a mess and use PCIe risers.
If I was trying to undercut the big storage vendors, I'd homebrew an all-flash server using enterprise-grade storage and it would be tiered for sure - There's absolutely no way a single array needs to be maxiumum performance all the time over its entire capacity (and I have serious doubts that Apex X21 controller would ever get close to managing such a feat, too).
You either want higest reasonable reliability/endurance, or you want the lowest cost/TB crap you can find and engineer in massive redundancy. Sabrent PCIe Gen4 consumer SSDs satisfy neither option!