SSD Options for IBM Power Systems

New SSD options for IBM Power Systems provide enhanced performance at a lower cost.

IBM Corp.‘s POWER8 and POWER7 servers now feature the fourth generation of 2.5-inch small form factor (SFF) eMLC4 (SAS) SSD technology.

These eMLC4 SSDs provide performance, enterprise storage at higher performance levels than available on disk drives.

The new SAS SSDs offer three key advantages
over the existing popular SFF SAS SSDs:

Improved price/performance in terms of lower price per drive and lower price per gigabyte, especially for the 4k drives.
With a new 1.55TB SSD, twice the maximum capacity per drive compared to the previous-generation SSD for POWER8 servers. The larger capacity can save space, require fewer SAS adapters, and provide better price/performance for larger SSD configurations. Up to 37.2TB of flash memory technology storage fits in 2U of rack space in an EXP24S drawer.
Improved drive performance compared to previous eMLC SSD generations.

This is a refresh of the 387GB and 775GB capacity point SAS SSDs, and a new 1.55TB higher capacity point to the Power SAS SSD portfolio. The new SAS SSDs are supported in all POWER8 system units with SAS bays and run by integrated SAS controllers. The SAS SSDs are also supported in the EXP24S storage drawer when attached to a POWER8 or POWER7 system and run by PCIe3 or PCIe2 SAS RAID controllers. The new SSDs can be intermixed with existing SSD configurations, providing flexible growth to existing servers. Both 4224 (4k) and 528 (5xx) byte sector features are offered to provide configuration flexibility for POWER8 servers. 5xx SSDs are provided to POWER7 servers.

1.9TB read intensive 2.5-inch SAS SSDs are introduced for POWER8 servers using SAS bays. These drives are supported in POWER8 system units (SFF-3) and in EXP24S I/O drawers attached to POWER8 servers (SFF-2). With their large capacity and lower cost per gigabyte, they can provide a cost-effective and footprint-effective solution for many read intensive configurations. Note these drives are designed for workloads with modest write requirements.

1.8-inch eMLC4 SAS SSDs refresh and expand the configuration options associated with this space-efficient drive. The Power S822L, S824, S824L, and E850 system units have 1.8-inch bays that can take advantage of this eMLC4 drive. The 1.8-inch 387GB drive refreshes the existing 387GB offering with the newer eMLC4 technology, which provides performance and price/performance advantages. The new 1.8-inch 775GB drive doubles the capacity per drive, allowing greater footprint density, and matches the previously available 775GB capacity point already available in 2.5-inch SAS bays.

Key prerequisites

POWER8 server with available SAS bays in the system unit or EXP24S I/O drawer
Supported SAS controllers and adapters running these SAS bays
Appropriate software levels

Planned availability date

April 22, 2016 for features EL78, EL7E, EL7K, EL7P, EL85, EL8C, EL8F, EL8N, EL8Q, EL8V, ELQ5, ELQ8, ELQC, ELQE, ELQF, ELT6, ELT9, ELTD, ELTF, ELTG, ELTL, ELTP, ELTQ, ELTR, ELTW, EQ78, EQ79, EQ73, EQ7F, EQ85, EQ86, EQ8C, EQ8D, EQ8F, EQ8G, ES78, ES79, ES7E, ES7F, ES7K, ES7L, ES7P, ES7Q, ES85, ES86, ES8C, ES8D, ES8F, ES8G, ES8N, ES8P, ES8Q, ES8R, ES8V, and ES8W
May 27, 2016 for features EL1C, EL2W, EL2X, EL4K, EL78, EL7E, EL7V, EL80, EL8J, ELQ8, ELQE, ELR0, ELSD, ELSL, ELSW, ELSY, ELT1, ELT9, ELTF, ELTK, EQ78, EQ79, EQ7E, EQ7F, EQ80, EQ81, ES1C, ES1D, ES2V, ES2W, ES2X, ES2Y, ES4K, ES4L, ES78, ES79, ES7E, ES7F, ES80, ES81, ES8J, and ES8K