Samsung 2.5-Inch PM1731a 2TB and 4TB Enterprise SSD Featuring Zoned Namespace and 6th-Gen V-NAND

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. unveiled its PM1731a enterprise SSD featuring Zoned Namespace (ZNS) technology.

Leveraging ZNS, the SSD will maximize available user capacity and offer an extended lifespan in storage server, data center and cloud environments.

“Samsung’s ZNS SSD reflects our commitment to introducing differentiated storage solutions that can substantially enhance the reliability and lifetime of server SSDs,” said Sangyeun Cho, SVP, memory software development team. “We plan to leverage QLC NAND technology in our next-gen ZNS drives to enable higher thresholds for storage performance and capacity in the enterprise systems of tomorrow.“

ZNS allows data to be grouped based on their usage and access frequency, and stored sequentially in independent zones within an SSD. Without the need to move and rearrange data, ZNS SSDs can reduce the number of write operations, lowering the drive’s write amplification factor (WAF) – the amount of actual writes performed by the drive compared to writes initially instructed by the host system. The closer the WAF is to one, the more efficient the SSD and the longer it will last.

Based on ZNS, the company’s SSD can achieve a WAF close to 1, a major improvement over typical server SSD values between 3 and 4. This will make the drive last up to 4x longer than conventional NVMe SSDs, making it a greener, more sustainable solution for server infrastructures. ZNS also allows users to take advantage of the SSD’s full capacity by eliminating the need for overprovisioning, which would have required reserving some storage space for background tasks. These improvements will enable enterprise customers to handle big data and AI applications with greater efficiency.

Built upon the firm’s sixth-gen V-NAND, the 2.5-inch PM1731a will come in 2TB and 4TB models. The SSD will feature dual ports, ensuring the drive is fully accessible for continuous operations and minimizing downtime. This is essential for enterprises and public cloud companies who run mission-critical, data-intensive applications, and cannot afford any pause in the continuity of their businesses.

The company has been actively engaging in several open-source projects to help expand the ZNS ecosystem. The firm will make its ZNS technology available to xNVMe, which provides software libraries and tools to improve the performance of NVMe devices. The company is also participating in the Storage Performance Development Kit (SPDK) community created by Intel Corp., enabling SPDK users to implement ZNS more easily.

The company plans to mass-produce ZNS SSDs in 2H21 and continue working with global enterprise storage companies to optimize its ZNS drives across various customer environments.