Solid State Drives (SSD): Low-power use, highly-reliable and high performance

New Solid State Drives (SSD) are starting to replace conventional disk drives. They use semi-conductor memory to store data. Importantly they contain no motors or moving parts and are characterised by much higher speed read/write access and reduced power consumption.

Because of the use of semi-conductor memory, SSD provide astonishingly high levels of random access performance compared with even top-end 15,000rpm disk drives. They benefit applications with high random access requirements such as databases.
In addition, with no motors or moving parts they have higher reliability than disk drives.
This means that SSD is ideal for Tier0 storage use. This improves storage layer optimization in systems that use Information Lifecycle Management (ILM). (Tier 1: Online disk drives, Tier 2: Nearline disk drives, Tier3: LTO Ultrium drives, archive)

The SSD used in ETERNUS

The SSD used in ETERNUS has enterprise class performance and reliability.
While maintaining compatibility with traditional disk drives, it allows low power operation at very high-speeds.
For concerns about flash memory rewrites, SSD in ETERNUS extends using Error Correcting Code (ECC (*Note 1)) and a wear leveling function (*Note 2).
In addition, data high-reliability is also protected by ECC inside the SSD.
If a power failure occurs SSD in ETERNUS can move any data in the volatile memory of the SSD (high-speed DRAM cache) to the flash memory and ensure a safe system halt.

*Note 1: ECC (Error Correcting Code )
Redundant data added when requesting data in order to detect and correct errors in the original data.
*Note 2: Wear leveling function
This function levels (or evenly distributes) the number of writes to flash memory. Typically continuous data write/delete deteriorates cells and ends up with no data written to the cells. The wear leveling function by eliminating wirte/delete concentration to a specific block avoids failures caused by SSD rewrites.

*Note: Remote copy connection matrix when fibre channel interface is connected

Product Requirements

Supported Storage	Disk Storage Systems	ETERNUS DX100 S3/DX200 S3 ETERNUS DX500 S3/DX600 S3 ETERNUS DX8700 S3/DX8900 S3 ETERNUS DX80/DX80 S2 ETERNUS DX90/DX90 S2 ETERNUS DX400/DX400 S2 series ETERNUS DX8000 series/DX8700 S2 ETERNUS4000, ETERNUS8000
	All-Flash Arrays	ETERNUS DX200F

*Note: Products/features/support content introduced on this page may be modified without notice.