Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, announced today that it is now shipping the industry's largest solid state drive (SSD) - the "PM1633a," a 15.36 terabyte (TB) drive. First revealed at the 2015 Flash Memory Summit in August, the 15.36TB SSD is based on a 12Gb/s Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) interface, for use in enterprise storage systems. Because the PM1633a comes in a 2.5-inch form factor, enterprise storage managers can fit twice as many of the drives in a standard 19-inch, 2U rack, compared to an equivalent 3.5-inch storage drive

"To satisfy an increasing market need for ultra-high-capacity SAS SSDs from leading enterprise storage system manufacturers, we are directing our best efforts toward meeting our customers' SSD requests," said Jung-bae Lee, Senior Vice President, Memory Product Planning and Application Engineering Team, Samsung Electronics. "We will continue to lead the industry with next-generation SSDs, using our advanced 3D V-NAND memory technology, in order to accelerate the growth of the premium memory market while delivering greater performance and efficiency to our customers."

Toshiba Corporation's Semiconductor & Storage Products Company today announced the availability of a new very read-intensive, enterprise SAS solid state drive (SSD) - the PX04SL series. The PX04SL series is optimized for read-intensive application workloads such as data warehousing, web servers, media streaming and video on demand (VOD). Sample shipments start today.

The PX04SL can offer the most cost-effective solutions in Toshiba's PX04S generation of SAS interface enterprise SSDs. Available in 2TB[1] and 4TB capacities, the PX04SL enables organizations to minimize total cost of ownership (TCO) without sacrificing performance. With sustained random read performance of 270K IOPS[2], the PX04SL helps read-intensive application workloads achieve superior results. To combat bottlenecks, this SAS SSD provides high-density storage for efficient data throughput to deliver high performance, reliability and endurance for maximum application scalability.

Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in storage solutions, today launched its first 10TB enterprise capacity hard disk drive (HDD), merging high capacity with the industry's lowest power and weight available in a 10TB drive, to meet the growing storage requirements for private and public cloud-based data centers. The Seagate Enterprise 3.5 Capacity HDD has been selected by enterprise market leaders globally for its ability to address storage demands unlike any other technology in the industry.

"Cloud-based data center storage needs are expanding faster than many current infrastructures can sustain, rendering the capacity demands of users a herculean task for cloud managers," said Mark Re, senior vice president and chief technology officer, Seagate. "Built on our years of research and development of sealed-drive technology, our new helium-based enterprise drive is designed precisely to help data-centric organizations worldwide solve the needs of their growing storage business."

The Storage Products Business Unit of Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc., a committed technology leader, announces its newest enterprise performance hard disk drive (HDD) line, the AL14SE series, designed for mission critical servers and high-performance, high-availability storage systems. The AL14SE is Toshiba's latest 10,500 rotations per minute (RPM) HDD to support 12Gbit/s SAS and 512n sector length for compatibility with the latest generation host controllers and host bus adapters.

The AL14SE features a new four platter design, increasing storage capacity by 33 percent over the previous AL13SE generation models. The new AL14SE family is also updated with a 128MB data buffer for improved performance. The AL14SE family of HDDs provides 12Gbit/s dual-ported SAS support and 512n sector models in industry standard capacities of 300GB, 450GB, 600GB, 900GB and 1200GB.

QNAP, Inc. has sprung another surprise on the enterprise storage marketplace with the announcement of the new TVS-ECx80U-SAS-RP unified NAS-SAS storage solution. This new system bridges the gap between all three different types of drives: speedy all-SSD storage, large capacity SATA drives and cost-effective SAS HDD systems.

The new TVS-ECx80U-SAS-RP series marries high-performance 12 Gbps SAS drives with built-in ultra-high performance 256 GB SSD caching. Powered by QNAP's new QTS 4.2 management software along with the new Qtier automated data-tiering technology, the system keeps frequently accessed data readily accessible and infrequently accessed data close at hand in less-costly HDD storage, significantly improving the overall performance while reducing data warehousing costs.

According to a new market report published by Transparency Market Research "Solid State Drive Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2015 - 2022," the global Solid State Drive (SSD) market was valued at US$15.1 billion in 2014 and is expected to reach US$229.5 billion by 2022, expanding at a CAGR of 40.7% from 2015 to 2022.

Asia Pacific was the largest revenue contributor in 2014 and accounted for 57.0% of the global solid state drive market. The higher performance requirement in enterprise applications and consumer mobile devices is fueling the demand for solid state drives. Features such as lower power consumption, cooler computing, low form factor, and reduced latency are cementing the demand for solid state drives. The solid state drive market has witnessed rising demand for client SSDs, owing to their use in devices such as notebooks, tablets, and mobiles. Asia Pacific is expected to be the fastest-growing market for solid state drive in terms of revenue during the forecast period. Growth in this region is mainly attributed to an expanding customer base and high IT infrastructure spending in countries such as Japan, China, and Taiwan. Competition in the market is paving way for the development of novel technologies in the solid state drive market. Furthermore, benefits offered by SSDs over HDDs, and the resulting replacement demand, are expected to drive the growth of solid state drive market during the forecast period.

At the 2015 Flash Memory Summit, Samsung announced the fruition of its swanky new 48-layer 3D V-NAND chips, the PM1633a. Built in the 2.5-inch form-factor, and featuring a SAS 12 Gb/s interface, this drive offers an unformatted capacity nearing 16 TB (15,360 GB to be precise). The drive relies on ten 48-layer stacks of 256 Gb 3-bit NAND flash dies, making up 15,360 GB of unformatted capacity. Samsung showed off a system with 48 of these drives, making up 720 TB of total storage.

Besides the largest SSD, Samsung also showed off the fastest. The PM1725 SSD, designed for servers with high-traffic databases, where throughput is the king, is built in the 2.5-inch form factor (up to 3.2 TB) and HHHL form-factor (up to 6.4 TB). It features a PCI-Express 3.0 host bus, and talks to the OS over the modern NVMe protocol. The two offer random access throughput of up to 1,000,000 IOPS.

Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in storage solutions, today announced the availability of the 1200.2 Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) Solid State Drive (SSD). The Seagate 1200.2 SAS SSD is the first product to result from a strategic alliance between Seagate and Micron Technology, Inc., announced in February 2015.

"Enterprise and cloud users face record growing storage demands challenging the performance of their IT systems to churn through mass amounts of data, while being restricted by opex/capex expenditure limits," said Brett Pemble, vice president of flash products, Seagate cloud systems and electronics solutions. "As our partners and customers depend on Seagate flash technologies to meet these challenges, we are leveraging our collaboration and innovation with Micron to exceed their expectations."

The framework established between Seagate and Micron has led to the development and production of this next-generation, high-capacity SAS SSD platform. It is the first 12 gigabits-per-second (Gb/s) SAS device to optimize dual channel throughput with up to 1800 megabytes-per-second (MB/s) sequential reads and offer multiple endurance choices within a single hardware and firmware design. These advantages engineered for the 1200.2 SAS SSD ensure it will deliver ultra-fast performance to match the needs of specific enterprise applications and workloads.

Toshiba Corporation's Semiconductor & Storage Products Company today announced its next generation of enterprise solid state drives (eSSDs) for the PX Series. The new PX04S line features four serial-attached small computer system interface (SCSI) SAS eSSD models well-suited for enterprise applications including: mail servers; database servers; virtualized enterprise file servers; and primary storage in read, write or mixed workload environments. Continuing Toshiba's legacy of quality and reliability, the dual-ported 12 Gbit/s SAS PX04S line offers random 4K performance with read IOPS up to 270K and write IOPS up to 145K. This is Toshiba's first 12Gbit/s SAS SSD to deliver 3.84 TB of operating capacity. Sample shipment starts from today.

The PX04S line features four eSSD models - PX04SHB, PX04SMB, PX04SVB and PX04SRB - each offering a range of capacities and optimized for different applications and workloads; High-Endurance: Targeted at applications requiring the highest levels of eSSD performance, reliability and endurance, the PX04SHB supports 25 complete drive writes per day (DWPD) with a one hundred percent random workload and is available in a range of capacities from 200 GB to 1.6 TB. Write-intensive virtualized data centers, big data analytics and high performance computing (HPC) workloads will benefit from the impressive performance and data integrity afforded by the PX04SHB.

ASUS today announced that it is the world's first motherboard brand to support all NVM Express (NVMe) storage devices via a simple UEFI BIOS update and optional ASUS Hyper Kit expansion card.

The free UEFI BIOS update enable all ASUS X99 and Z97 motherboards to be compatible with the latest NVMe storage devices, including those with PCI Express (PCIe) and M.2 (PCIe) interfaces. All ASUS X99 motherboards are also compatible with the latest 2.5-inch NVMe SFF-8639 solid-state drives (SSDs), via the exclusive ASUS Hyper Kit expansion card - for ultimate data-transfer bandwidth up to 32 Gbit/s.

Micron Technology, Inc., and Seagate Technology plc today announced a strategic agreement that establishes a framework for combining the innovation and expertise of both companies. The framework of the agreement will enable customers of the two companies to benefit from a focused approach to deliver industry-leading storage solutions, helping them innovate faster and more effectively

While initially focusing on next-generation SAS SSDs and strategic NAND supply, Micron and Seagate anticipate that this multi-year agreement will extend into future collaboration on enterprise storage solutions featuring Micron NAND flash memory. "As two of our key partners, we look forward to the benefits of this Micron and Seagate collaboration in future NAND flash-based storage technologies," said Mike Kerouac, President of Global Product Operations for EMC Corporation.

"The strategic agreement between Micron and Seagate promises to deliver new and innovative flash-based storage solutions," said Trevor Schick, Senior Vice President, EG Global Supply Chain, HP.

Toshiba Corporation's Semiconductor & Storage Products Company today announced the addition of 6TB SATA and SAS models to its MG04 series of 3.5-inch form factor enterprise capacity class of hard disk drives (HDD). New SAS interface models provide the benefits of 12Gbit/s transfer rate for 6TB, 5TB, 4TB and 2TB HDDs. Sample shipment will begin in CQ1 of 2015.

The new MG04 series 6TB models offer a 50 percent increase in max capacity from prior MG03 generation 4TB models and approximately 30 percent increase in sustained data rate (MG03xxx400x:165MiB/s, MG04xxx60Ex:205MiB/s). These new HDDs support both industry-standard 4K native and 512e Advanced Format sector technologies for optimum performance in the latest generation servers and storage systems as well as being suitable in legacy applications requiring 512 sector lengths using aligned-write environments.

In what is a repeat of the design issues Intel faced with its previous X79 Express chipset, over its integrated storage controller, leading to motherboard vendors redesigning their products with fewer SATA/SAS ports than the platform is capable of, the company is facing design troubles with its already-launched X99 Express chipset, which drives its latest Core i7-5xxx "Haswell-E" HEDT platform. Intel X99 Express is based on a common silicon, on which the company's enterprise C610 chipset is also based. On paper, it features as many as ten SATA 6 Gb/s ports. The storage controller has its own exclusive Rapid Storage Technology driver, marked "RSTe" on Intel's Download website.

Intel withdrew version 4.1.0.1046 of its RSTe drivers (even from the list of older drivers), and made its motherboard partners do the same. Replying to German publication Heise.de, ASUS explained that the driver was withdrawn because it doesn't support ATA TRIM command for SSDs striped in a RAID 0 array. The latest driver makes only six out of ten SATA 6 Gb/s ports visible to the operating system, and you can create RAID arrays using on these six ports. The other four ports become visible as part of a separate controller, only when a device is plugged into them. This controller is recognized by Windows' internal Standard AHCI controller driver. This also means that the four ports don't benefit from the SATA power management features the first six ports do, nor can they be part of a RAID array with drives plugged to the first six ports. Intel did not respond to the Heise article.

ASUS today announced X99-E WS, a new Compact Electronics Bay (CEB) workstation motherboard based on the Intel X99 chipset and with support for four-way multi-GPU setups at full PCI Express 3.0 x16 speed for extreme graphics power. X99-E WS is engineered with premium components for premium efficiency, including an integrated Driver-MOSFET (Dr. MOS), exclusive Beat Thermal Chokes II, ultra-durable 12K capacitors and ProCool power connector. X99-E WS offers industry-leading storage opportunities with onboard M.2 x4 and support for the exclusive ASUS PIKE II (Proprietary I/O Kit Expansion) and ThunderboltEX II expansion cards. It also has many simple, efficient and ASUS-exclusive easy-maintenance tools, including Q-Code Logger and Dr. Power.

Enterprise storage leader HGST, a Western Digital company today announced it will extend the use of Intel NAND Flash technology as part of a cooperative agreement with Intel Corporation on Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) solid state drives (SSDs). Since 2008, HGST has successfully worked with Intel to develop industry-leading enterprise-class SAS SSDs for servers, workstations and storage systems. The resulting products have combined HGST's enterprise storage experience with Intel's NAND Flash expertise, and are the foundation for HGST's leading position in SAS SSDs.

Intel's focus and investment in NAND flash memory research and SSD development provides industry-leading advancements in next-generation NAND lithography and offers high-endurance SSD technology. HGST brings proven enterprise storage expertise in SAS design, firmware, reliability, customer qualification and system integration. This combination enables HGST to deliver world-class solutions with the performance, endurance and reliability that enterprise storage customers demand.

GIGABYTE Technology, a leading creator of high performance server hardware, is happy to introduce today its new lineup of motherboards based on the new Intel C612 chipset. Supporting the brand new Intel Xeon processor E5-2600/1600 V3 product families (former codename Haswell-EP) and the also brand new DDR4 server memory, this new lineup initially consists of one workstation motherboard and six server motherboards.

On Intel's previous server platforms, by design the maximum supported memory frequency has always been automatically downgraded the more DIMMs were being added on a server motherboard. As this trade-off between performance and capacity represents a dilemma to many memory-hungry server applications, GIGABYTE offers a unique solution. All our motherboards based on the LGA 2011-3 socket support by default a maximum frequency of 2133 MHz in any memory configuration.

SanDisk Corporation, a global leader in flash memory storage solutions, today announced that SanDisk DAS Cache software will be offered by Dell for use in its next generation Dell PowerEdge servers with direct-attached storage (DAS). This all-software solution will allow customers to benefit from the high performance of solid state drives (SSDs), while maintaining data on direct-attached, disk-based storage. SanDisk DAS Cache software works with SSDs from any manufacturer, empowering customers to select the SSD capacity and performance that is appropriate to their data center needs.

"We have been working very closely with Dell to provide a complete solution for their customers that provides the performance and cost benefits of solid-state storage technology," said John Scaramuzzo, senior vice president and general manager, Enterprise Storage Solutions, SanDisk. "Combining innovations in both hardware and software enables customers to realize the full potential of enterprise storage solutions. We are excited that Dell is able to offer the benefits of our SanDisk DAS Cache software to customers with its new PowerEdge servers."

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. announced today that it has begun mass producing a new, high-performance SAS-interface solid state drive (SSD) using 10-nanometer (nm) class MLC NAND flash memory.

"With our new SAS SSD, our competitiveness in the enterprise storage SSD market has been strengthened," said Jeeho Baek, vice president, memory marketing, Samsung Electronics. "We are committed to providing storage customers with an exceptionally wide variety of next-generation, high-capacity SSDs in driving the fast-growing enterprise storage SSD market."

HGST, a Western Digital company (NASDAQ: WDC), today announced its next-generation of Ultrastar 12Gb/s SAS solid-state drives (SSDs) with capacities up to 1.6TB. Building upon its award-winning first generation 12Gb/s SAS SSDs, the new Ultrastar SSD800MH.B, Ultrastar SSD1600MM and Ultrastar SSD1600MR are the ideal building blocks for server and storage systems running today's performance-sensitive enterprise applications.

The Ultrastar SAS SSDs create new price/performance points by combining HGST's deep enterprise storage expertise developed over the last 50 years, HGST's customer-proven 12Gb/s SAS technology and Intel's 20 nanometer (nm) high endurance enterprise-grade MLC NAND memory. As a result, HGST's Ultrastar SAS SSDs excel in key total cost of ownership (TCO) metrics for enterprise applications, including transactions/$ and transactions/watt.

HGST, a Western Digital company, today announced that it is now shipping the world's highest capacity and highest performing 10K RPM hard disk drive (HDD) - the Ultrastar C10K1800. Based on HGST's field proven high-quality design, the 2.5-inch small form factor (SFF), enterprise-class Ultrastar C10K1800 combines high capacity with a significant improvement in both random write and sequential performance for mission-critical storage applications requiring 24/7 availability.

As the demand for enterprise-class storage grows, customers are increasingly seeking tiered storage infrastructures built along a range of raw IOPS performance, capacity and $/GB price efficiencies. While solid state drives (SSDs) and 15K HDDs fill a clear need in high performance solutions, the demand for 10K HDDs continues to be strong as customers seek better $/GB metrics.

SAS interface has been widely used for server applications and is considered an enterprise solution in the storage industry. The enterprise 2.5" SSD/HDD represents one of the fastest growing segments because of its faster IOPS, low power consumption and better shockproof rating. The EZConvert Air MB382IP-3B provides a quick and cost-effective method for server upgrades; it converts any 2.5" SAS HDD/SSDs into 3.5" SAS hard drives, while maintaining the exact 3.5" SAS HDD specifications and it fully support SAS dual channel function. The EZConvert Air features an extremely robust stainless-steel exterior with a cleverly designed locking mechanism to keep your drives immobile. The open air design, ventilated slots, and metal construction all work simultaneously to maintain your drives as cool as possible.

The MB382IP-B puts an emphasis on industrial level SAS storage applications --designed using the dimensions, connection locations, and mounting positions making it an exact replica of a 3.5" SAS drive. This particular converter is intended specifically to be used for 2.5" SAS drives that are required in 3.5" SAS internal hard drive bays of tower and rack mount chassis, as well as with SAS backplanes or hot swap modules. The MB382IP-3B is backwards compatible with SATA HDD/SSDs and fully supports SAS dual channel daisy-chain function which is perfect for iSCSI SAN server and data center applications.

HighPoint Technologies, a pioneering force in the storage industry for the past 19 years, is now shipping the industry's most affordable Thunderbolt 2 SATA Adapters - the RocketStor 6324L and RocketStor 6328L, to their global distribution and retail partners.

RocketStor 632xLseries Thunderbolt 2 SATA Adapter design is based on our proven SATA 6Gb/s technology, support industry standard AHCI devices, and utilize Thunderbolt 2 connectivity to maximize transfer performance. The RocketStor 6324L delivers Thunderbolt 2 speeds for up to 4 SATA devices via a single external Mini-SAS port. The RocketStor 6328L dual external Mini-SAS ports allows up to 8 SATA devices to share Thunderbolt 2 transfer bandwidth. Each external Mini-SAS ports can support any industry standard Mini-SAS and eSATA storage enclosure, including those with integrated RAID capability, or those hosting arrays created with Mac OS X's Disk Utility, via industry standard Mini-SAS and eSATA data cables, such as HighPoint's EXT-MS-1MEJ (external Mini-SAS to 4x eSATA) and EXT-MS-1MMS (External Mini-SAS to External-Mini-SAS).

SanDisk Corporation, a global leader in flash storage solutions, today announced the Optimus MAX Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) solid state drive (SSD), the industry's first 4 TB SAS SSD. The Optimus MAX SSD achieves a capacity point that far outpaces today's highest-capacity 2.5" 10K and 15K rpm SAS hard-disk drives (HDDs), making it the first true replacement for legacy mission-critical data center SAS HDDs. Most notably, the Optimus MAX SSD delivers SAS performance and functionality at a breakthrough price point that was previously only available in SATA-based SSDs.

The Optimus MAX SSD tops the newly refreshed Optimus SAS SSD family and also joins the company's newly announced Lightning Gen. II 12 Gb/s SAS SSDs, extending SanDisk's entire SAS portfolio to cover the performance, capacity and endurance needs of a wide array of enterprise applications.

Samsung Electronics, Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, said today that it has begun mass producing the industry's first high-performance, three-bit-NAND-based SSD for servers and data centers. The new SSD will allow data centers to better manage workloads related to social networking, web browsing and email, and enhance operation efficiency. Installations of the 3-bit MLC (multi-level-cell) NAND SSDs, initially in large-scale data centers, are expected to begin later this quarter.

"Following the last year's introduction of 3-bit NAND-based SSDs for PC markets, our new 3-bit SSD for data centers will help considerably in expanding the market base for SSDs," said Young-Hyun Jun, executive vice president, memory sales and marketing, Samsung Electronics. "We expect SSD market growth will gain momentum as this new SSD delivers significant improvements in data center investment efficiency, leading to full-fledged commercialization of SSDs in IT systems later this year."

Addonics Technologies today announced the 6G RAID Tower family of external storage solutions, which connect multiple drives to any system at 6Gbps speed. Prices start at $189. The new Addonics solutions are ideal for video storage or large data applications. They are a simple way to expand the storage capacity of servers or any computing equipment with terabytes of storage space without sacrificing the full speed capability of the high performance hard drive or SSD.

Depending on the model, as much as 60 terabytes can be installed into one 6G RAID Tower. With the exception of the RAID Tower Mini, which uses a simple screw mount, drives are added or removed like tape cartridges from each drive bay without any special tools.