Overview - IBM S3700 200 GB, 400 GB, and 800 GB 2.5-inch and 200 GB and 400 GB 1.8-inch SSD

Content

Planned availability date: July 29, 2013

At a Glance

The new IBM S3700 solid-state drives provide a high-performance, reliable solution for high-capacity enterprise applications with a moderate read-write mix by employing a 6 Gbps SATA interface and cost-effective MLC NAND technology. These drives present an opportunity to simplify local storage infrastructure and help maintain overall maintenance and cooling cost, while considering remote storage solutions for end-to-end data availability.

Benefits include:

• 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch form factors that fit into conventional disk-drive bays
• 200 GB, 400 GB, and 800 GB capacities to accommodate loading applications along with OS booting
• Cost-effective MLC NAND technology with high read and write performance
• High Endurance Technology (HET) for delivering single-level cell (SLC) endurance similar to that of solid-state drivess in a multilevel cell (MLC) solid-state drives package to achieve 10 drive writes per day (DWPD) for five years
• Enterprise data protection to ensure NAND integrity
• Rigorous testing through the ServerProven program instills confidence that your storage subsystem is compatible and will function reliably
• One-year limited warranty, or system warranty

Overview

The new IBM S3700 solid-state drives (SSD) employ MLC NAND with High Endurance Technology to bring an affordable solution with industry-leading read and write performance for applications requiring enterprise workloads with a read/write mix. The new SSD drives are available as 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch options.

These SSDs deliver superior performance with 4 KB random read performance of up to 75,000 IOPS and 4 KB random write performance of up to 36,000 IOPS, with low latencies of less than 500 micro seconds for 99.9% of the time, ensuring quick and consistent command response times. This performance is delivered with low active power consumption that helps reduce overall energy costs, making these drives an excellent value for data center storage requirements.

Providing that additional peace of mind, these S3700 solid-state drives are covered under IBM warranty. These drives carry a 1-year limited warranty, or when installed in a System x server, these drives assume the system's base warranty. Solid-state devices do have finite write or P/E cycles and are listed as Total Bytes Written (TBW). Refer to the limitations and the device specifications for details.

Features and functions of the IBM S3700 200 GB and 400 GB 1.8-inch and 200 GB, 400 GB, and 800 GB 2.5-inch MLC SATA SSDs for IBM System x:

• High capacities in 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch industry-standard form factors
• Industry-leading cost-effective 25nm MLC NAND technology
• High performance to withstand applications with mixed-use read/write workloads
• High Endurance Technology (HET) for delivering single-level cell (SLC) endurance similar to that of SSDs in a multilevel cell (MLC) SSD package to achieve 10 drive writes per day (DWPD) for five years
• Power-safe write cache ensures that user data in transit is committed to flash in the event of a power failure
• Enhanced power-loss data protection reduces potential data loss by detecting and protecting data from an unexpected system power loss
• End-to-end data path protection using advanced error correction scheme ensures data integrity by protecting against possible data corruption in the NAND, SRAM, and DRAM memory
• Robust system reliability
• Temperature sensor ensures that drive does not overheat and operate out of spec
• The absence of moving parts reduces potential failure points in the server

Key Prerequisites

IBM System x or BladeCenter system with SATA capability .

Warranty

• 1 year limited warranty (1)

Packaging

S3700 200 GB and 400 GB 1.8-inch SSD and 200 GB, 400 GB and 800 GB 2.5-inch Hot-Swap and Simple-Swap SATA MLC Enterprise SSDs.

Option Unit Box is 1.

Content:

• SSD
  
• Important Notices and IBM Warranty Publication
  
• SSD Information Flyer

Physical Specifications

Dimensions :

IBM S3700 200 GB, 400 GB and 800 GB SATA 2.5-inch MLC Hot-Swap and Simple-Swap SSDs

• Approximate height: 174.0 mm (6.85 in)
• Approximate width: 63.0 mm (2.48 in)
• Approximate depth: 133.0 mm (5.24 in)
• Approximate weight: 434 g (0.96 lb)

Shipping dimensions :

IBM S3700 200 GB and 400 GB SATA 1.8-inch MLC Enterprise SSDs

• Approximate height: 32.0 mm (1.26 in)
• Approximate width: 226.0 mm (8.90 in)
• Approximate depth: 150.0 mm (5.90 in)
• Approximate weight: 399 g (0.88 lb)

Operating Environment

• Temperature: 0 to 70 degrees C (32 to 158 F)  
  
• Relative humidity: 8% to 85% (noncondensing)  
  
• Maximum altitude: 3,050 m (10,000 ft)

Hardware Requirements

These SDDs must be installed in selected System x or BladeCenter servers with SATA capability.

Software Requirements

The new IBM SATA SSDs work with most operating systems.

For further information, contact your IBM representative.

Compatibility

For latest compatibility information, visit

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/info/x86servers/serverproven/compat/us/

Note: Some configurations may not be compatible.

Limitations

Solid-state memory cells have an intrinsic, finite number of write cycles that each cell can incur. As a result, each solid-state drive has a maximum amount of writes to which it can be subjected, documented as Total Bytes Written (TBW). IBM is not responsible for replacement of hardware that has reached the maximum guaranteed number of write cycles. This limit may be revealed as the SSD drive failing to communicate to system- generated commands or becoming incapable of being written to. In general, it is important to distinguish enterprise value drives from enterprise drives.

Enterprise drives have much higher write endurance and as a result can withstand a greater number of writes over the lifetime of the device compared to enterprise value level drives. SSD write endurance is an important factor to consider because unlike spinning disk media, NAND flash has a finite number of program/erase cycles it will accept. SSD write endurance is typically measured by the number of program/erase cycles, or P/E cycles, each cell incurs over its lifetime, and per drive is listed as Total Bytes Written (TBW) in the drive specification. This statistic can be used to give an estimate of the drive's remaining life based on the workload to which the drive will be subjected. The TBW value assigned to a solid-state drive is the total bytes of written data (based on number of P/E cycles) a drive can be guaranteed to complete. Reaching this limit does not cause the drive to immediately fail; it simply denotes the maximum number of writes that can be guaranteed.

A solid-state drive will not fail upon reaching the specified TBW. At some point based on manufacturing variance margin, after surpassing the TBW value, the drive will reach the end-of-life point, at which the drive will go into a read-only mode.

As a result of the technology limitations, care must be taken to use SSDs in environments that will not exceed the TBW of the drive prior to the required life expectancy of the application.

As an example, assume an access pattern of 50% random data and 50% sequential data with block size mixes of 5% of the data is 4k block size, 5% of the data is 8k block size, 10% of the data is 16k block size 35% of the data is 64k block size, and 35% of the data is 128k block size. A drive capable of 72 TB of lifetime writes, assuming an approximation of the workload stated above as being worst case, the drive workload must be limited to no more than 40 GB of writes per day to last five years and stay inside the 72 TBW limit. For the device to last three years, the drive write workload must be limited to no more then 65 GB of writes per day.

Additional information is available at:

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/x/options/storage/solidstate/index.html