Back in June, NVM Express, Inc announced the NVMe 2.0 specification, which included support for mechanical drives, also known as hard disk drives. Seagate has now demoed the first implementation of NVMe 2.0 on a HDD and is targeting market availability sometime in 2024. You might wonder why anyone would want an NVMe equipped hard drive and the short answer is that it's intended for the server space.

One of the key reasons that Seagate is even considering this, is because of its multi-actuator drives, which the company is expecting to surpass the interface speed of 12 Gbps SAS in the future. In addition to this, it makes sense having a single storage interface on servers, which allows for a mixed storage drive environment, where some drive bays can be fitted with SSDs and others with NVMe based hard drives. Seagate is planning to sample key customers with early drives in September 2022 and final drives will be backwards compatible with SATA and SAS.

ATP Electronics, a global leader in specialized storage and memory solutions, has announced that its A600Sc Series serial ATA solid state drives (SATA SSDs) have been successfully qualified for compatibility and interoperability with Adaptec Smart Storage PCIe Gen 4 Tri-Mode SmartRAID 3200, SmartHBA 2200, and HBA 1200 Smart Storage adapters.

Designed for storage platforms in next-generation data centers, the Adaptec PCIe Gen 4 SAS/SATA/NVMe HBA and RAID tri-mode adapters deliver significantly higher performance through PCIe Gen 4 x16 CPU interfaces as well as SAS and SATA storage. The new offerings simplify integration and provide flexibility to aggregate diverse storage devices with Microchip's proven security and manageability features for the most demanding server storage applications.

The ToughArmor MB924IP-B supports 24 x 2.5" SAS/SATA SSD/HDD up to 7 mm in height and only uses 3x 5.25" device bays. It has 6x MiniSAS HD (SFF-8643) connectors in the rear to support 24 x drives with up to 12 Gbps transfer speed per drive, significantly reducing the cable clutter to improve system airflow and offer easy cable management. The large 80 mm fan with 3-Mode fan speed control working along with intelligently placed ventilation holes keeps your drives in optimal temperature. To further improve reliability and security, the housing and trays are made with ruggedized full metal construction to ensure long-lasting durability. Moreover, with the removable EZ-Slide Nano trays, you can interchange drives within seconds without open the PC case.

MB924IP-B connects 24 x 2.5" SAS/SATA SSD/HDD with only 6x MiniSAS HD (SFF-8643) & 6x SATA 15 pin power connector for easy cable management and better system airflow. These are essential for high-performance PC builds. The MB924IP-B supports data transfer speed up to 12 Gbps per SAS drive and 6 Gbps per SATA drive.

Seagate today unveiled the Exos 2x14, one of its first hard drives to implement the company's Mach.2 dual-actuator technology. As its name suggests, the drive offers an unformatted capacity of 14 TB. The drive features two independent sets of actuator arms that seek different regions of the platters simultaneously, resulting in a near doubling in random access performance, compared to drives with single actuator setups. The two actuator arms are suspended along the same corner of the drive casing, but move independently of each other, with their own RW heads seeking the platters. The Exos 2x14 is being marketed as an enterprise product, with SAS 12 Gbps interface, with sequential speeds of up to 524 MB/s, and random access speeds of 304 IOPS reads with 448 IOPS writes (these are hard drives). It has a spindle speed of 7,200 RPM, and is backed by a 256 MB write cache.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced its launch of the industry's highest performing 24G SAS (SAS-4) SSD - the PM1653. Based on the latest SAS interface, the new drive can support twice the speed of the previous 12G SAS-3 generation. The PM1653 is also the industry's first 24G SAS SSD made with sixth-generation (1xx-layer) V-NAND chips, enabling storage capacities from 800 GB to 30.72 TB for advanced enterprise server systems.

"As the leading provider of SAS storage for a decade, Samsung has been offering the most advanced and reliable enterprise solutions in full support of the critical workloads of global server OEMs, governments and financial institutions. Samsung enterprise solutions are also accredited by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology for the most powerful data security," said Kwangil Park, senior vice president of the Memory Product Planning Team at Samsung Electronics. "Like we have done with the PM1653, Samsung will continue to collaborate with our customers to accommodate the ever-growing demand of the enterprise server market for the most uncompromising offerings available."

QNAP Systems, Inc.today announced the TL SAS storage enclosures, including the 12-bay TL-R1220Sep-RP and 16-bay TL-R1620Sep-RP models, which support storage expansion for Windows servers. The TL SAS JBOD supports SAS 12 Gbps transmission, delivering up to 96 Gbps transfer speed and supporting Broadcom SAS DataBolt bandwidth optimization and multipath routing (Multipath I/O, MPIO). Users can daisy-chain multiple JBODs to expand capacity or divide one JBOD into multiple zones, providing a key solution for massive storage with high-performance, high-capacity, and high storage utilization.

The TL SAS JBOD is powered by a SAS35x28R / SAS35x36R SAS Expander with four SAS wide ports each combining four 12 Gbps SAS lanes. By configuring two wide ports with link aggregation, transfer speeds can reach 96 Gb/s. Featuring Broadcom SAS DataBolt bandwidth optimization technology, the TL SAS JBOD features an intelligent data buffer for transferring data to drives at speeds that match the performance of the host server, allowing users to benefit from high-speed 12 Gb/s SAS transmission with existing 6 Gb/s infrastructure. If the host Windows server supports multipath routing (Multipath I/O, MPIO), high availability can be achieved. If one route fails, another transmission route can be used to access the data and ensure continuous system operations. The TL SAS JBOD also supports SAS zoning technology, allowing one JBOD to serve as storage expansion for up to four Windows servers.

QNAP Systems, Inc., a leading computing, networking and storage solution innovator, today launched the QXP-1620S and QXP-820S SAS storage expansion card. By installing the cards into a QNAP NAS, users can connect it to TL SAS JBOD storage enclosures and REXP expansion units to expand their total storage capacity. Multiple expansion units can be daisy-chained via high-speed mini SAS HD cables to expand the total storage capacity up to 4.6PB.

"SAS-based storage solutions provide low-latency, power-efficiency, and IOPS-optimized storage capabilities and are ideal for creating highly-reliable IT environments for virtualization, surveillance, Big Data, video editing, and TV broadcast storage. By installing a QXP-1620S or QXP-820S in your NAS, you can upgrade your IT environment to take advantage of the high-performance, high-availability and high-reliability of SAS." said Stanley Huang, Product Manager of QNAP.

QNAP Systems, Inc., a leading computing, networking and storage solution innovator today launched new TL SAS storage enclosures, including the 12-bay TL-R1220Sep-RP and 16-bay TL-R1620Sep-RP models, both providing flexible storage expansions for QTS/ QuTS hero NAS. The TL SAS JBOD supports SAS 12 Gbps transmission, delivering up to 96 Gbps transfer speed and supporting Broadcom SAS DataBolt bandwidth optimization and multipath routing. Up to 16 JBODs can also be daisy-chained to reach 4.6PB raw capacity, providing high-performance and high-capacity storage expansion solutions for corporations looking for massive storage.

The TL SAS JBOD is powered by a SAS35x28R / SAS35x36R SAS Expander with four SAS wide ports each combining four 12 Gbps SAS lanes. By configuring two wide ports with link aggregation, transfer speeds can reach 96 Gb/s. Featuring Broadcom SAS DataBolt bandwidth optimization technology, the TL SAS JBOD features an intelligent data buffer for transferring data to drives at speeds that match the performance of the host NAS, allowing user to benefit from high-speed 12 Gb/s SAS transmission with existing 6 Gb/s infrastructure. With the host NAS supports multipath routing, high availability can be achieved. If one route fails, another transmission route can be used to access the data and ensure continuous system operations.

QNAP Systems, Inc., a leading computing, networking and storage solution innovator, today launched three high-capacity rackmount QuTS hero NAS: the 18-bay TS-h1886XU-RP with a quad-core Intel Xeon D-1622 processor, and the 16-bay TS-h1683XU-RP and 24-bay TS-h2483XU-RP with six-core Intel Xeon E-2236 processors. Featuring server-grade DDR4 ECC memory, multiple 10GbE ports, and abundant PCIe slots for greater I/O potential and performance, these ZFS-based NAS support inline data deduplication and compression, near-limitless snapshots, and real-time SnapSync - delivering the performance and features to excel in the Big Data era.

QuTS hero focuses on data integrity and features self-healing capabilities. It supports read/write cache technology to boost performance and provides multiple RAID configurations with RAID Triple Parity and Triple Mirror to enhance data protection. Individual shared folders allow for up to 1 PB capacity, enabling enterprises to tackle storage-demanding applications including Big Data analysis, edge computing, and AI.

Toshiba announces the Toshiba MG08-D Series HDDs, designed for a wide variety of business-critical applications, such as email and CRM (Customer Resource Management), data analysis for business intelligence, small-medium business servers, and data-retention and compliance archiving.

Toshiba's 7th generation air mechanical design provides better power efficiency and a lower component count to deliver better total cost of ownership than its earlier generation models. The new series features 4 TB, 6 TB and 8 TB models, in both SATA and SAS interfaces. The new 4 TB1 models are available in 512e, 4Kn and 512n sector models, and the 6 TB and 8 TB models are available in 512e and 4Kn sector models, assuring plug-and-play interoperability for applications using prior 4 TB models.

Marvell (NASDAQ: MRVL) today introduced the industry's first native NVMe RAID 1 accelerator, a state-of-the-art technology for virtualized, multi-tenant cloud and enterprise data center environments which demand optimized reliability, efficiency, and performance. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is the first of Marvell's partners to support the new accelerator in the HPE NS204i-p NVMe OS Boot Device offered on select HPE ProLiant servers and HPE Apollo systems.

As the industry transitions from legacy SAS and SATA to NVMe SSDs, Marvell's offering helps data centers fast-track the move to higher performance flash storage. The innovative accelerator lowers data center total cost of ownership (TCO) by offloading RAID 1 processing from costly and precious server CPU resources, maximizing application processing performance. IT organizations can now deploy a "plug-and-play," NVMe-based OS boot solution, like the HPE NS204i-p NVMe OS Boot Device, that protects the integrity of flash data storage while delivering an optimized, application-level user experience.

Seagate Technology plc (NASDAQ: STX), a world leader in data storage and management solutions, today announced it is shipping 18 TB helium-based enterprise drives in volume as part of the Exos X18 family. The new drive delivers high performance and mass capacity for hyperscale data centers to efficiently and cost-effectively manage ever-increasing amounts of data. Additionally, Seagate's Enterprise Data Solutions launched the new Exos Application Platform (AP) 2U12 as well as a new controller for the company's AP 4U100 systems.

The need for hyperscale and cloud storage solutions continues to rise to unprecedented levels with the ever-increasing growth in data generation. According to a recent Seagate report, Rethink Data, enterprise data is expected to grow at an average rate of 42.2% over the next two years. The survey was conducted by IDC, which also forecast the global datasphere will reach a staggering 175ZB by 2025 in a previous IDC whitepaper sponsored by Seagate. The high-capacity Exos X18 supports this expanding need for data storage.

Nimbus Data, a leading innovator in flash memory storage, today unveiled ExaDrive NL, the world's highest capacity QLC flash SSD and the industry's first QLC flash SAS SSD for enterprise workloads. With industry-leading capacity up to 64 TB in a single SSD, ExaDrive NL helps organizations eliminate server sprawl, reduce software licensing costs, improve efficiency, and reduce data center operating costs by up to 75%.

"Customers are always looking for more capacity and more efficient ways to access their data," said Jeff Janukowicz, Research Vice President, IDC. "High capacity QLC flash SSDs, like Nimbus Data's ExaDrive NL, help organizations migrate to enterprise-grade flash storage as cost-effectively as possible, while simplifying hybrid storage that blends HDDs and SSDs seamlessly to optimize cost and performance for their workloads."

IBM today revealed the next generation of its IBM POWER central processing unit (CPU) family: IBM POWER10. Designed to offer a platform to meet the unique needs of enterprise hybrid cloud computing, the IBM POWER10 processor uses a design focused on energy efficiency and performance in a 7 nm form factor with an expected improvement of up to 3x greater processor energy efficiency, workload capacity, and container density than the IBM POWER9 processor.

Designed over five years with hundreds of new and pending patents, the IBM POWER10 processor is an important evolution in IBM's roadmap for POWER. Systems taking advantage of IBM POWER10 are expected to be available in the second half of 2021. Some of the new processor innovations include:

ASUSTOR Inc. has announced the release of the rack-mounted Lockerstor 12R Pro and Lockerstor 16R Pro equipped Intel's 9th Gen Xeon E-2224 3.40 GHz Quad-Core processor. The Lockerstor 12R Pro and 16R Pro come with 8 GB DDR4-2666 ECC UDIMM and supports a maximum of 128 GB, greatly improving computing power and system stability of virtual machines and Docker applications. In addition to the four Gigabit Ethernet ports, the Lockerstor 12R Pro and 16R Pro also provide three PCIe slots that support 10/25/40/50GbE network cards and SAS cards increasing speeds to unprecedented levels. The rich variety of I/O include six USB 3.2 Gen2 ports, of which four are Type-A and two are Type-C, and dual M.2 slots for SSD caching to enable the Lockerstor 12R Pro and 16R Pro take advantage of some of our fastest speeds ever.

The 80 Plus Platinum 550-watt dual redundant power supplies and four Gigabit Ethernet ports can be configured with failover to ensure the reliability of power supply and transmission, and also through high power conversion efficiency (up to 94%) Provide high-efficiency power supply and virtualized storage stability, allowing enterprises to control costs and protect the environment. The four Gigabit Ethernet ports combined provide up to 451 MB/s and 451 MB/s read and write speeds. The Lockerstor 12R Pro and 16R Pro support up to 192 TB and 256 TB respectively and the support for large amounts of storage space fully accommodates rapidly increasing storage needs, meeting the needs of the present and the future simultaneously.

Seagate, a world leader in data solutions, today announced two new additions to its solid state Nytro portfolio which delivers optimal endurance and quality of service. Nytro 3032 SAS SSD and Nytro 1360 SATA SSD are designed to meet the needs of a wide range of enterprise applications.

The next generation of high-capacity SAS SSD from Seagate, Nytro 3032 SAS SSD delivers ultra-fast, reliable, and secure performance. The drive has an SAS 12 Gb/s interface and it also offers dual ports for speeds of up to 2200 MB/s and up to 10 DWPD bringing consistent and easily scalable performance to write-intensive, mixed, and read-intensive enterprise workloads. The Seagate Nytro 3032 SAS SSD delivers up to 15 TB in a 2.5-inch x 15 mm form factor and boosting enterprise storage density to keep up with data growth.

Western Digital today announced new solutions that provide the foundation for next-generation data infrastructures designed around Ultrastar NVMe SSDs and supercharged by NVMe-oF. Building upon the company's innovative design and integration capabilities - from NAND Flash to storage platforms - the new dual-port, performance Ultrastar DC SN840 NVMe SSDs and in-house RapidFlex NVMe-oF controllers are standalone solutions that combine to create the new OpenFlex Data24 NVMe-oF Storage Platform, a new shared storage JBOF (Just a Bunch of Flash) enclosure that extends the value of NVMe to multiple hosts over a low-latency Ethernet fabric network. These new solutions further expand Western Digital's data center portfolio to help customers transition to higher efficiency NVMe SSDs and more advanced shared storage architectures to meet the evolving demands of performance-driven applications and workloads.

In today's global digital economy, microseconds count. As hyperscale cloud and enterprise data centers constantly work to remove bottlenecks to ensure uncompromised performance and availability of essential applications, while also keeping pace with unprecedented data growth, customer adoption of NVMe and NVMe-oF solutions continues to accelerate. Industry analyst firm IDC expects hyperscalers, OEMs and end-user IT organizations to continue to transition away from legacy SATA and SAS interfaces, with NVMe on track to reach more than 55 percent of total enterprise SSD units shipped in 2020 and grow at a 2018-2023 CAGR of 38 percent.

This week at the HPE Discover Virtual Experience, KIOXIA America, Inc. (formerly Toshiba Memory America, Inc.), will showcase the critical role its flash-based solid state drives (SSDs) are playing in addressing the challenges of today - while accelerating the digital transformation of tomorrow. KIOXIA offers the industry's broadest SSD product portfolio and has been collaborating with HPE to create best-in-class storage solutions for years. KIOXIA SSDs can be found in HPE's server and storage solutions, including HPE ProLiant Servers.

At the virtual event, KIOXIA America will highlight its broad range of products that are optimizing HPE solutions. These products include a new series of PCIe 4.0 SSDs, the first-ever 24G enterprise SAS SSDs built on SAS-4 technology, and a new class of SSDs that are faster and cost-effective replacements for SATA SSDs. In addition, KIOXIA America will conduct a speaking session focused on SSD trends and technology for high-performance storage solutions built for HPE ProLiant servers.

SilverStone today announced the CS330, a Micro-ATX mini-tower that looks geared toward video editors or home/small-business server builds, thanks to its eight 3.5-inch drive bays that let you cram dozens of terabytes of storage. The case offers three 3.5-inch hot-swap caddies with SATA and SAS 12 Gbps backplanes; four internal 3.5-inch bays, and an additional single 3.5-inch/2.5-inch bay, totaling up to eight storage devices, not counting the M.2 drives you may have installed on your motherboard.

A 180 mm air-penetrator fan conveys heat between the storage area and the motherboard tray. The Micro-ATX motherboard tray is oriented BTX-style (upside down), offering room for graphics cards up to 36 cm in length (even with all drive cages in place), and CPU coolers up to 16.5 cm in height. Front panel connectivity includes a pair of USB 3.x type-A ports, and HDA jacks. The case measures 210 mm (W) x 374 mm (H) x 385 mm (D), weighing a little over 6 kg.

Introducing the ToughArmor MB720M2K-B, the world's first quad drive ruggedized M.2 NVMe SSD removable enclosure. M.2 NVMe SSDs no longer requires to be installed on to a motherboard or a riser card with a tiny screw and can now be installed and accessed from the front of your computer without any tools. The ToughArmor MB720M2K-B comes with patent-pending tool-less M.2 drive installation design which will alleviate the pain that many user experiences when installing M.2 drives and offer easy drive maintenance and system upgrading.

KIOXIA America, Inc. (formerly Toshiba Memory America, Inc.), the U.S.-based subsidiary of KIOXIA Corporation, today announced that its lineup of PCIe 4.0 NVMeTM enterprise solid state drives (SSDs) has achieved PCI-SIG compliance for PCIe 4.0 and University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) certification. KIOXIA's CM6 Series successfully passed interoperability tests at the August 2019 PCI-SIG Compliance Workshop - the first workshop to include official PCIe 4.0 specification tests. KIOXIA America will be on hand at Supercomputing 2019 later this month to showcase new levels of flash performance enabled by its CM6 Series SSDs.

The first company to publicly demonstrate PCIe 4.0 SSDs, KIOXIA has established itself as a leader in developing PCIe 4.0 NVM Express SSDs and continues to push the limits of flash storage performance. The CM6 Series brings planned performance improvements of 3x over its PCIe 3.0 predecessors and is 12x faster than SATA drives. KIOXIA's lineup of Gen4 PCIe SSDs also includes the CD6 Series, which is targeted to cloud and scale-out environments.

Western Digital Monday unveiled the Ultrastar DC SS540, an enterprise SSD with the SAS 12 Gbps interface and the endurance of a tank. Built in the 2.5-inch form-factor with 15 mm thickness, the drive comes in capacities ranging from 800 GB all the way up to 15.36 TB. The 800 GB, 1.6 TB, 3.2 TB, and 6.4 TB variants offer endurance of 3 drive-writes per day (DWPD), while the 960 GB, 1.92 TB, 3.84 TB, 7.68 TB, and 15.36 TB models offer 1 DWPD endurance.

Under the hood, the drive uses 3D TLC NAND flash, and depending on the model, sequential read speeds range between 1,985 MB/s to 2,130 MB/s, sequential writes between 1,024 MB/s to 2,109 MB/s. Random access performance, which is more relevant to enterprise environments, ranges between 237,000 to 470,000 IOPS reads, and 88,133 to 240,000 IOPS writes, depending on the model. MTBF on all models is rated at 2.5 million hours.

Today's NAS servers are getting increasingly powerful, and rising beyond their mandate of providing storage over the network, with media and production/creation capabilities being added to them via fast x86 processors and GPUs. SilverStone is targeting this market with its new CS381 pedestal chassis. Measuring 400mm (W) x 225mm (H) x 232mm (D), with a volume of 30 liters, the case offers eight 3.5-inch hot-swap caddies behind a lockable front bezel. These 8 caddies are split into two columns of 4 caddies, each, which have SATA 6 Gbps and miniSAS 12G HD backplanes. There are also two concealed 2.5-inch mounts for your SSDs.

The CS381 has room for a micro-ATX motherboard with room for a full-height graphics card, but a CPU cooler only as tall as 6 cm, which is plenty of room for the pump-block of an AIO CLC. You can use a CLC with a 240 mm x 120 mm radiator thanks to the two 120 mm rear exhausts. An SFX/SFX-L power-supply bay allows you to deploy a reasonably powerful PSU. Two additional 120 mm fans can be mounted along the sides. Front-panel connectivity includes two USB 3.0 ports, and HDA jacks. The company didn't reveal pricing.

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.

Toshiba announces MG08 Series, the industry's largest capacity 16 TB Conventional Magnetic Recording (CMR) HDD. With 33% more capacity than today's widely adopted 12 TB drives, and 14% more capacity than prior 14 TB models, MG08 16 TB drives are compatible with the widest range of applications and operating systems, and adapted to mixed random and sequential read and write workloads in both cloud and traditional datacenter environments.

The MG08 Series is Toshiba's second-generation helium-sealed HDD family, and eighth-generation Enterprise Capacity HDD family. Toshiba has delivered its industry-leading 16 TB capacity and improved power efficiency by utilizing the 9-disk helium design, introduced last year in 14 TB models, and its own advanced precision laser welding process to ensure the helium remains sealed inside the drive case. The MG08 features 7,200 rpm performance, a 550 TB per year workload rating, a 2.5 million-hour MTTF, a 512 MB cache buffer, and a choice of SATA and SAS interfaces-all in an industry-standard, 3.5-inch form factor.