QNAP Systems, Inc. today launched the ES1686dc R2, a high-performance 16-bay SAS 12 Gb/s enterprise NAS engineered for mission-critical applications. Featuring dual active-active controllers, it ensures High Availability (HA) and delivers uncompromising performance for demanding workloads. Designed for enterprise file and virtualization storage, the ES1686dc R2 minimizes downtime with redundant controllers and power supplies, enabling seamless component replacement. This ensures continuous operations, reliability, and stability for business-critical environments.

"The ES1686dc R2 delivers outstanding performance and a reliable high-availability storage solution," said Waterball Liu, Product Manager of QNAP, adding: "The QES operating system features an intuitive user-friendly interface with enhanced functionality, enabling customers to effortlessly adopt professional-grade dual-controller enterprise storage when high availability is required. Whether deployed as a mission-critical file server, virtualization server, VDI, or for efficient file backup and recovery, the ES1686dc R2 meets service-level agreements for both performance and uptime."

Infortrend Technology, Inc., the industry-leading enterprise storage provider, today announced the launch of the groundbreaking EonStor GSx parallel file storage family. Designed to provide high-performance parallel file access and exceptional scalability, EonStor GSx is ideal for demanding AI and HPC applications where rapid access to data is crucial.

EonStor GSx is a high-performance storage solution facilitating parallel file access in IT environments that require processing sheer volumes of data. A single GSx appliance delivers up to 43 GB/s, while a cluster of 10 GSx units achieves nearly 10 times that performance, effectively eliminating the bottlenecks encountered with a single storage appliance. In a conventional parallel file system architecture, which usually includes dedicated metadata servers and multiple I/O nodes, rack space demand in the data center can be substantial. EonStor GSx provides a solution that eliminates the need for this additional hardware, effectively addressing space limitations for enterprises.

Other World Computing (OWC), !a trusted leader in high-performance storage, docks, and memory card solutions that empower professionals in video and audio production, photography, and business with the tools to seamlessly maximize the performance and reliability of their workflows, today announced the general availability (GA) launch of the OWC Jellyfish B24 and OWC Jellyfish S24, two powerful new additions to its award-winning shared storage lineup. Designed to meet the evolving needs of media teams, the OWC Jellyfish B24 delivers a cost-effective, high-capacity solution for seamless collaboration and nearline backup, while the OWC Jellyfish S24 offers a full SSD production server with lightning-fast performance for demanding video workflows. With scalable expansion options and rock-solid reliability, these new OWC Jellyfish solutions give video editors, post-production teams, and content creators the tools they need to work faster, collaborate more easily, and keep their projects moving - without storage ever slowing them down.

Video editors, post-production teams, and content creators are constantly juggling massive file sizes, complex collaborations, and the need for seamless access to their media - all while making sure their work is safely backed up. But as video resolutions continue to climb to 4K, 8K, and beyond, many storage solutions just can't keep up, creating frustrating bottlenecks that slow down the creative process. The OWC Jellyfish B24 and S24 are built to solve these problems, delivering high-performance, scalable shared storage that keeps workflows smooth, file transfers fast, and backups reliable. Whether a team needs affordable nearline storage - with plenty of capacity, or lightning-fast SSDs - for real-time editing, these solutions ensure creatives can focus on what they do best - telling great stories - without storage getting in the way.

Accordance Systems Inc., a leading global provider of RAID box, unveiled its latest innovation, the ARAID M6 series RAID Box for PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2, at Embedded World 2025 in Nuremberg, Germany, from March 11-13. Accordance has been delivering easy, user-friendly RAID solutions worldwide for over a quarter of a century, providing businesses worldwide with instantaneous backup for their OS and data. The new M6 series aims to provide reliable, high-speed backup for edge computing and edge AI applications across industries.

High-Speed Data Backup and Storage for PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 Drives
Making its debut at Embedded World was Accordance's M6 series RAID box. This latest addition to the company's long-running ARAID product line supports multiple drive interfaces, including 2.5" SATA, SAS, U.2, U.3 and NVMe M.2 (PCIe Gen 4x4). The ARAID RAID box automatically backs up a PC's system and data into a second drive, ensuring critical systems keep running in the event of boot drive failure, OS corruption or ransomware attacks. The new M6 series is designed to support the high data speeds needed in AI applications growing more common across industries, such as finance, agriculture, transportation, and manufacturing. Keeping with the original vision for ARAID—a RAID box as easy to use as a point-and-shoot camera—the M6 series requires no IT knowledge to use, enabling all users to quickly upgrade their systems with RAID 1.

Seagate is advancing in NVMe technology for large-capacity hard drives as the growing storage needs in AI systems and apps continue to rise. Old and current storage setups struggle to handle the huge datasets needed for machine learning, which now reach petabyte and even exabyte sizes. Today's storage options have many drawbacks for AI tasks. SSD-based systems offer the needed speed however it is not cost-effective for storing large AI training data. SAS/SATA hard drives are cheaper however, the interfaces rely on proprietary silicon, host bus adapters (HBAs), and controller architectures that struggle with the high-throughput, low-latency needs of AI's high data flow.

Seagate's "new idea" is to use NVMe technology in large-capacity hard drives. This creates a solution that keeps hard drives cost-effective and dense while boosting performance for AI apps. NVMe hard drives will not need HBAs, protocol bridges, and additional SAS infrastructure, allowing seamless scalability by integrating high-density hard drive storage with high-speed SSD caching in a unified NVMe architecture.

The ICY DOCK CP146 is a revolutionary mobile rack that transforms unused PCIe panel space into high-speed removable M.2 NVMe SSD bay (2230/2242/2260/2280). Unlike traditional PCIe adapters, the CP146 allows users to install M.2 NVMe SSDs without occupying any PCIe slots. Many modern system chassis include PCIe panel areas with no corresponding PCIe slots underneath—perfect for upgrading with the CP146.

With its SlimSAS 4i interface, the CP146 supports PCIe 4.0 x4 bandwidth, delivering up to 64 Gbps transfer speeds. The tool-free removable SSD tray streamlines SSD installation and replacement, making it ideal for users who prioritize both functionality and convenience.

TrendForce's latest reports reveal that the second quarter of 2024 saw a significant increase in demand for enterprise SSDs due to the increased deployment of NVIDIA GPU platforms and rising storage needs driven by AI applications, along with a surge in demand from server brands. The surge in demand for high-capacity SSDs for AI applications—coupled with suppliers' inability to adjust capacity in the first half of the year—resulted in a supply shortage that drove average enterprise SSD prices up by more than 25% QoQ. This price increase led to a revenue growth of over 50% for suppliers.

Looking ahead to the third quarter, demand from North American CSP customers continues to rise, and server brands show no signs of slowing down their orders, further boosting procurement volumes of enterprise SSD. With supply shortages persisting into the third quarter, TrendForce forecasts a 15% increase in contract prices compared to the previous quarter, with supplier revenues expected to grow by nearly 20%.

Toshiba Electronics Europe GmbH (Toshiba) announces the release of its MG10-D Series, a family of air-filled conventional magnetic recording (CMR) HDDs supporting SAS and SATA interfaces and capacities of up to 10 TB. Crafted with precision engineering and over 50 years of Toshiba experience, the MG10-D Series delivers improved performance and power efficiency over prior generations. With sanitize instant erase (SIE) and self-encrypting drive (SED) options, valuable data is safeguarded by a storage solution known for its robust performance and unwavering dependability.

Built for the increasing application demands of enterprise server and storage solutions, the MG10-D Series delivers a new level of performance. For example, compared with the previous model, the new 10 TB MG10ADA10TE provides an approximately 13% better maximum sustained transfer speed of 268MiB/s and doubles the cache buffer size to 512MiB. It also reduces power consumption in active idle mode by approximately 21%, to 5.74 W. Architected to deliver improved total cost of ownership (TCO), the new MG10-D Series fits seamlessly into a wide variety of business-critical applications, such as email, data analytics, data retention, and surveillance.

We've seen a lot of motherboards with the power, SATA and USB connectors on the rear at Computex this year, but Chinese Maxsun decided to put the PCIe x16 slot on the back of its Mini-ITX MS-Terminator B760BKB D5 motherboard. This might seem like a crazy move, but with the right chassis, this means that the graphics card won't need a PCIe extension cable, while fitting in a compact chassis. It's also become increasingly hard to retain signal integrity over ribbon cables and with PCIe 5.0, it might be impossible. Another added benefit of this design is that the board also has a PCIe 3.0 x4 slot available for something like a 10 Gbps network card or just about anything else you'd want to plug into a compact PC.

The overall board specs don't really stick out from the crowd, as the Intel B760 chips is a somewhat limiting factor as well. In addition to the PCIe 5.0 x16 slot and the PCIe 3.0 x4 slot, the board also has a pair of PCIe 4.0 M.2 NVMe slots—one on each side of the PCB—and a slim SAS connector using an SFF-8654 connector. In addition to this, the board also has two DDR5 DIMM slots, four SATA ports, a 2.5 Gbps Ethernet port, a DP 1.2, an HDMI 2.0 port, a USB Type-C port of unknown speed and WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2. The power design consists of a fairly basic 8+1+1 phase setup. We'd like to see this board design to become a standard, as it makes a lot of sense for the SFF market to allow for a better placement of the PCI x16 slot to allow for a more compact chassis without having to compromise on the choice of graphics card.

Kioxia Corporation, a world leader in memory solutions, today announced that its lineup of KIOXIA RM7 Series Value SAS SSDs are now available in HPE ProLiant Gen11 servers from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). KIOXIA RM7 Series SSDs are the latest generation of the company's 12 Gb/s Value SAS SSDs, which provide server applications with higher performance, reliability and lower latency than SATA SSDs, delivering higher IOPS/W and IOPS/$.

In addition to being available in ProLiant servers, KIOXIA RM Series Value SAS SSDs are being used in the HPE Spaceborne Computer-2 (SBC-2). As part of the program, KIOXIA SSDs provide robust flash storage in HPE Edgeline and HPE ProLiant servers in a test environment to conduct scientific experiments aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

As new applications, use cases and connected devices multiply, Western Digital's enterprise-class hard disk drives (HDDs) remain critical for helping data center customers design more cost-efficient, scalable and sustainable infrastructure. When combined with the emergence of generative AI and the multitude of innovative applications it is enabling, the demand for high-capacity, low-power and reliable storage is poised to surge.

Western Digital leverages numerous technology innovations - ePMR, OptiNAND, UltraSMR and more - to deliver predictable capacity growth in scalable, highly reliable products. Western Digital is now shipping its new 10-disk 24 TB CMR HDD family for hyperscale, cloud and enterprise data center customers. Sampling since August, the new 28 TB SMR HDD is also ramping, adding to the company's SMR leadership position and momentum as its 26 TB SMR HDD exabyte shipments reached nearly half of its data center exabytes shipped in the first quarter fiscal year 2024.

TrendForce research reveals that, due to the impacts of high inflation and economic downturn, CSPs are adopting more conservative strategies when it comes to capital expenditure and consistently reducing their annual server demand forecasts. Currently, CSPs in China have reported a decline in cloud orders compared to last year, leading to a subsequent decrease in annual procurement volumes for enterprise SSDs. In North America, some clients have postponed mass production timelines for new server platforms while ramping up investments in AI servers. These factors have resulted in enterprise SSD orders falling below expectations. Consequently, global enterprise SSD revenue hit an all-time low in the second quarter, totaling just $1,500 million—a QoQ decrease of 24.9%.

Demand for AI servers remains strong in the third quarter, while orders and shipment momentum for general-purpose servers have yet to show signs of recovery. This continues to put pressure on the purchasing volume of enterprise SSDs, and annual bit volume is expected to be lower than last year. Meanwhile, vendors have once again reduced capacity utilization to slow down inventory growth. Server customers still maintain high inventory levels, and their purchasing momentum remains insufficient. This is expected to lead to an approximate 15% QoQ decline in the average price of enterprise SSDs in the third quarter, which may further result in a lackluster revenue performance for the peak season.

For those looking to build something more professional than your average run of the mill PC, ASUS new Pro WS W680M-ACE SE motherboard might be the thing you've been looking for. The Intel W680 chipset based board sports a mATX form factor and packs in a range of rather unusual features that you more often would find on a board from Supermicro or Tyan than ASUS. One such feature is onboard BMC remote management via an ASpeed AST2600 SoC which features a pair of Arm Cortex A7 cores and a Cortex M3, as well as a dedicated 2D graphics chip. The board also sports a SlimSAS port which supports either four SATA drives or a single PCIe 4.0 x4 storage device, although ASUS doesn't support any cables in the box for the port.

As this is a workstation motherboard, it obviously supports ECC memory and in this case we're talking DDR5 with full transactional ECC support, rather than the on-die ECC that all DDR5 features. Other more common motherboard features include a pair of PCIe 4.0 x4 NMVe M.2 slots, a single PCIe 5.0 x16 slot, a PCIe 4.0 x4 slot and a PCIe 3.0 x1 slot. The board also has a pair of 2.5 Gbps Ethernet port and a third 1 Gbps Ethernet port which is connected the AST2600, a 10 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port, as well as a DisplayPort and HDMI port, plus a VGA port which again is connected to the AST2600. ASUS promises 24/7 reliability at ambient temperatures of up to 45 degrees C and a relative humidity of up to 80 percent. The board also comes with ASUS' Control Center Express, which is ASUS' IT management software. No word on pricing, but the ATX sized version retails for around US$330, suggesting that the mATX version should be somewhat cheaper.

AIC has launched the new high-availability storage server HA401-TU, which is optimized for mission-critical, enterprise-level storage applications. This cluster-in-a-box solution with active-active failover design and eliminates single points of failure. HA401-TU is a 4U high-availability (HA) server with 2 controller nodes and supports 24 3.5" SAS 12 Gb/s drives. Each controller node is equipped with an AIC Tucana server board that is powered by dual 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors and Intel C621A chipset, which supports UPI speed up to 11.2 GT/s. HA401-TU provides enterprise users with a number of crucial benefits. The redundant hardware components ensure that there is no single point of failure.

With the hot-swappable functionality, the controller canisters protect enterprises from the loss of revenue that can occur when access to mission-critical data or applications is disrupted. Both controller nodes process data input/output (I/O) operations and users can experience simultaneous and balanced access to logical devices. In the event of failover, the secondary node will automatically take over the devices, client connections and all the processes and services running in the system. This high-availability design significantly enhances the overall performance of clusters, enabling seamless handling of demanding workloads.

Looking back at 2H22, as server OEMs slowed down the momentum of their product shipments, Chinese server buyers also held a conservative outlook on future demand and focused on inventory reduction. Thus, the flow of orders for enterprise SSDs remained sluggish. However, NAND Flash suppliers had to step up shipments of enterprise SSDs during 2H22 because the demand for storage components equipped in notebook (laptop) computers and smartphones had undergone very large downward corrections. Compared with other categories of NAND Flash products, enterprise SSDs represented the only significant source of bit consumption. Ultimately, due to the imbalance between supply and demand, the QoQ decline in prices of enterprise SSDs widened to 25% for 4Q22. This price plunge, in turn, caused the quarterly total revenue from enterprise SSDs to drop by 27.4% QoQ to around US$3.79 billion. TrendForce projects that the NAND Flash industry will again post a QoQ decline in the revenue from this product category for 1Q23.

Leading global motherboard manufacturer, ASRock, proudly announces its new ASRock W790 WS motherboard for workstations for Intel Xeon W-3400/W-2400 series processors (LGA4677). The ASRock W790 WS features up to 2 TB DDR5 ECC RDIMM support, PCI-Express 5.0 expansion slots, USB4/Thunderbolt 4 and Dual 10 Gbps Ethernet. A flagship-class 14-layer PCB and 20+2 phase CPU VRM ensures ultimate performance and superb reliability, even when subjected to the most demanding sustained workloads.

Supports New 4th Generation Xeon Processor
The W790 WS chipset is optimized for new Intel Xeon W-2400 series (LGA4677) processors and is compatible with W-3400 series processors with up to 56 cores also. The ASRock W790 WS provides a quad-channel DDR5 design with 2DPC over 8 DIMM slots, maximizing memory performance, potential memory pool capacity and supports ECC RDIMMs to ensure data reliability.

Western Digital has launched its first dual actuator hard drive, in the shape of the Ultrastar DC HS760 Hard Drive, which is currently only available in a single 20 TB SKU. This places WD's new drive head to head with Seagates Exos X20 drives, although Seagate offers an 18 and a 20 TB SKU. WD offers the Ultrastar DC HS760 with a SAS interface, whereas Seagate offers its Exos drives with either SATA or SAS connectivity. Both companies are using traditional CMR platters that spin at 7,200 RPM.

WD didn't provide too many details when it comes to the performance of the Ultrastar DC HS760, as the company only claims it offers twice the sequential throughput and 1.7 times higher random performance compared with the Ultrastar DC HC560. WD appears to have a potential performance advantage over Seagate, as WD has integrated its OptiNAND technology based on WD's iNAND, which means that the Ultrastar DC HS760 should have at least twice as much cache as Seagates Exos X20 drives which top out at 256 MB. This is based on WD's DC HC560 drives which ship with 512 MB of cache. Just like Seagates Exos drives, the Ultrastar DC HS760 is a helium filled drive and WD claims 2.5 million MTBF time and offers a five year warranty. No pricing was revealed.

Giga Computing is an industry leader in high-performance servers and workstations, today announced the next-generation of GIGABYTE servers and server motherboards for the new 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor to achieve efficient performance gains with built-in accelerators. The new processors have the most built-in accelerators of any processor on the market to help maximize performance efficiency for emerging workloads; and do so while boosting virtualization and AI performance. Generational improvements make this platform ideal for AI, cloud computing, advanced analytics, HPC, networking, and storage applications. For these markets, Giga Computing has announced fourteen new series that constitute seventy-eight configurations for customers to choose from. And all these new GIGABYTE products support the full portfolio of 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, including those with high bandwidth memory (HBM) in the Intel Xeon Max Series.

Here's one of the first pictures of a mechanical HDD with NVMe interface. Seagate is apparently in production of an Exos-series Enterprise HDD featuring U.2 NVMe interface where one would expect SAS 12 Gbps. We seriously doubt if the HDD is fast enough to take advantage of U.2 NVMe (at least 32 Gbps per direction), but the move to NVMe probably has to do with the decline of older interface standards such as SAS 12 Gbps and SATA 6 Gbps in the enterprise space for cold-storage, and that future generations of rackmount DAS and NAS enclosures could increasingly feature U.2 backplanes, phasing out SAS and SATA. This is like when optical drives switched over to SATA despite not needing the bandwidth SATA had to offer (optical discs barely move a few dozen MB/s, for which even ATA33 IDE was sufficient). We don't know how the Seagate Exos drive handles NVMe internally—whether there is a new native NVMe controller, or whether this is really just a SAS 12 Gbps drive with a PCIe-to-SAS bridge chip.

TrendForce reports that the recent easing of tight supply for components has led to rising shipments for enterprise servers. Furthermore, ODMs for the most part have been able to sustain the momentum of data center build-out with the demand from ByteDance and the tenders issued by Chinese telecom companies. Nevertheless, the performance of the enterprise SSD market on the whole has been impacted by falling NAND Flash prices. For 3Q22, the NAND Flash industry's enterprise SSD revenue dropped by 28.7% QoQ to US$5.22 billion. Furthermore, all enterprise SSD suppliers recorded a negative performance for the period as well.

Regarding individual enterprise SSD suppliers' revenue figures for 3Q22, Samsung posted around US$2.12 billion. Its market share also shrank to 40.6% from 44.5% in 2Q22. Samsung's performance was mainly dragged down by the decline in its NAND Flash ASP. In the aspect of product development, SSDs featuring 128L NAND Flash and PCIe 4.0 will remain Samsung's main offerings for enterprise storage during 2023.

According to TrendForce research, material supply improvement and spiking demand for enterprise SSDs from North American hyperscale data center and enterprise clients in 2Q22 coupled with the Kioxia contamination incident in 1Q22 prompted customers to ramp up procurement to avoid future supply shortages. Manufacturers also give priority to meeting the needs of server customers due to the high pricing of enterprise SSD. In the second quarter, overall revenue of the enterprise SSD market increased by 31.3% to US$7.32 billion.

As the market leader, Samsung has grown its enterprise SSD revenue to US$3.26 billion with the recovery of enterprise SSD procurement. Especially in the second quarter, when orders for other consumer products continued to decline, enterprise SSD became the company's outlet for reducing production capacity. At present, Samsung has been continuously investing in the development of next-generation transmission specification products such as the CXL 2.0 product released at the Flash Summit in early August, in order to maintain a leading position in the market.

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today unveiled an array of next-generation memory and storage technologies during Flash Memory Summit 2022, held at the Santa Clara (California) Convention Center, Aug. 2-4. In a keynote titled "Memory Innovations Navigating the Big Data Era," Samsung spotlighted four areas of technological advancement driving the big data market—data movement, data storage, data processing and data management—and revealed its leading-edge memory solutions addressing each field.

To maximize data center efficiency in an increasingly data-driven world, Samsung introduced a next-generation storage technology, "Petabyte Storage." The new solution will allow a single server unit to pack more than one petabyte of storage, enabling server manufacturers to sharply increase their storage capacity within the same floor space with a minimal number of servers. High server utilization will also help to lower power consumption.

Today, Seagate Technology Holdings plc (NASDAQ: STX), a world leader in mass-data storage infrastructure solutions, announced two additions to its Nytro portfolio, the Nytro 5550 SSD and Nytro 5350 SSD. Engineered with Phison technology for high performance, efficiency, and increased storage density in data centers, the new products comprise the Seagate Nytro 5050 NVMe SSD series. Designed to offer more computing with less energy consumption, they provide a cost-effective solution that eliminates bottlenecks, improves quality of service (QoS), and delivers the highest levels of data integrity and security for business applications.

The Nytro 5350 PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD doubles the read throughput of the latest SAS SSDs, achieving over ten times the bandwidth of SATA to significantly improve QoS. Designed to give data centers more computing power while reducing total cost of ownership (TCO), the drive removes data bottlenecks with blistering up to 7.4 GB/s bandwidth and up to 195K IOPS random write speeds and up to 1.7M IOPS random read speeds to provide consistent response times. Perfectly tuned to increase density and boost capacity in ultra-dense environments, Nytro 5350 brings up to 15.36 TB in a 15 mm form factor and up to 7.68 TB in a 7 mm form factor with dual ports, supporting both U.2 and U.3 interfaces for active-active high availability. Designed to take on enterprise workloads, Nytro 5350 delivers 1 DWPD at 2.5M MTBF for enhanced endurance.

Server manufacturer Inventec unveils Mategress, the highest density storage JBOD with 42 SATA drives in a 2U enclosure to meet industry needs while improving efficiency with reduced costs. As demands for storage skyrockets, data centers are facing space and performance concerns in delivering higher quality of service and reliability. Mategress addresses both these issues with its unique high density in a small frame, dramatically reducing the cost for storage centers.

The Inventec Mategress storage server is a standard 2U high rack mount system, supporting 42 3.5" hot-swappable Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) drives with easy serviceability. It offers a higher maximum storage capacity than other similar products with full redundancy and flexible input/output (I/O) expansibility or expandability.

Next week at Dell Technologies World, KIOXIA America, Inc. will be on hand to demonstrate how its innovative solid state drives (SSDs) are accelerating customer application performance and enabling product breakthroughs. From SSDs designed with PCIe 5.0 technology that boost power and performance to the industry's first lineup of Enterprise and Datacenter Standard Form Factor (EDSFF) E3.S SSDs, best in class drives from KIOXIA are used in a number of Dell product lines.

KIOXIA, the inventor of NAND flash, sits at the forefront of flash storage and SSD innovation. Achievements such as the introduction of 3D flash memory, XL-FLASH storage class memory, and new form factors and interfaces underscore the contributions the company has made toward enabling next-gen applications - and transforming the digital world.