Large storage size isn't here yet, but speed is excellent

Aug 4, 2015 14:37 GMT  ·  By

Today, Toshiba Electronics Europe has announced its third generation of enterprise solid states drives (eSSDs) built for data centers, email servers, and virtualized enterprise file servers to primary storage in read/write workload environments.

The new PX04S line features read-intensive models optimized for different applications and workloads. Equipped with dual-port 12.0 Gbit/s SAS interface, the PX04S Series achieves random read 4K sustained IOPS performance of up to 270,000, with a solid write IOPS of up to 125,000. It seems this is Toshiba’s first 12.0 Gbit/s SAS SSD series to deliver 3.84TB of operating capacity.

The first of the new eSSDs are the high-endurance PX04SHB models, which are targeted at write-intensive virtualized data centers, big data analytics, and high performance computing. They support 25 complete drive writes per day with 100% workload and come in capacities ranging from 200GB to 1.6TB.

Some models offer excellent speed and reliability, others sheer storage space

The next of the new eSSDs is the PX04SMB mid-endurance drive, that has been optimized for mixed-use, hyperscale and virtualized environments such as online transactions and e-commerce. It supports 10 DWPD with memory capacities of up to 3.2TB.

The third in the PX04S line is the PX04SVB, or the so-called "value-endurance" model, which comes optimized for read-intensive server and storage applications, best built for balance of reliability, capacity and endurance. Having the overall DWPD lowered to three, it has capacities of up to 3.84TB. The last of the PX04S series is best suitable for media streaming and web servers.

The new SSDs from Toshiba is the company's latest offer for industrial-grade, high-performance SSDs built for servers and data centers, based on NAND flash drives and with 12Gbit/s transfer speed.

Although it's still debatable how much SSDs can replace the old HDDs for server and cloud service operations, it's clear that the closer they get to the 10TB threshold, the more able they will be to overtake HDDs in a very short amount of time and take the lead in mass storage solutions.

Albeit Toshiba's latest HDDs will not convince anyone with their storage capacity, it’s the speed of 12Gb/s that is indeed convincing. Having these packed together in large numbers in server storage arrays, the size will be less of an issue, while the speed will offer a worthy compromise.

Show Press Release