Dallas, Texas-based SoftLayer Technologies—the world’s largest privately owned hosting company—needed a scalable, reliable storage solution that they could count on across applications, whether they were running data sets or speeding up OS response times. So they ran a lot of tough stress tests with SSDs from multiple vendors, and at the end, our P300 stood out as the steady performer.

Watch our interview with SoftLayer’s VP of Information Systems Jacob Linscott to learn more about how our enterprise-class Real SSD™ P300 nailed their performance curve, and where he thinks SSDs are headed for the future. Or read the Case Study.

Today we announced a new SSD aimed squarely at the entry level of enterprise solid-state storage. Our new RealSSD™ P400e was built for key server and blade applications, including read caching, DAS, and as a boot drive for virtual desktop infrastructures. It’s a slot that many storage architects previously attempted to fill with client SSDs, which really aren’t meant to handle 24/7, always-on workloads. Our P400e, however, was designed specifically for this space, and its excellent IOPs-per-dollar performance and low TCO makes it an easy choice to replace enterprise hard drives.

In the video below, I provide a quick explanation of enterprise SSD tiers and explain some of the key product features of the P400e SSD. As always, you can learn more about the specs of the P400e drive on micron.com.

Like any firmware release, we built in the usual stability and reliability improvements that our testing team identified over the past months. But the real news is that the new code provides a significant boost in read performance across all capacities. Sequential reads are up by 20% for all drives (85 MB/s increase), putting the C400/m4 over the 500 MB/s mark. Random 4k reads are up, too. And PCMark scores—which we believe are one of the better measures of real-world usage—are up by 15%.

The table below summarizes the basic spec changes.

Of course, to appreciate these changes, you’ll need to be running the SSD on a system that provides a SATA 6 Gb/s connection (since SATA 3 Gb/s systems cap out at less than 300 MB/s).

Micron customers will be notified of the code change (and how to upgrade) through our usual PCN process. If you’re a retail customer, you can find instructions to download the latest code on Crucial’s website.

Our client SSDs are already a favorite among users who value stability, reliability, and good performance at a great price. This upgrade makes the C400/m4 SSDs an even more compelling choice, and is a great way to thank all of our customers for choosing Micron. Enjoy!

It all hinges on the tight integration we’ve been able to make between our custom controller and high-performance SLC NAND. I’m looking forward to keeping you posted on what our customers are be able to achieve with it. Enjoy the video.

Of course PCIe drives aren’t anything new to the market, but I think you’ll agree that our solution offers some new breakthroughs in performance and efficiency. In the video below, I walk through some of the features of the P320h (you’ll quickly see why I’m so excited about this device).

And stay tuned; we’ll have more performance numbers and a demo posted soon.

Doug will talk about the importance of establishing “specsmanship”—or industry-standard terms and tests—for SSDs. Listen in as he debunks SSD myths, defines important SSD terms, and highlights standardized testing methodologies that work.

Register today to attend the Webinar on Wednesday, March 30 at 11:00 a.m. EST.

But we know most of you are interested in seeing a wide variety of tests. Our Crucial team runs many of the tests popular with reviewers, and I’ve included screen shots from AS SSD, ATTO, and CrystalDiskMark for the Crucial m4 SSD (the consumer version of the C400 OEM drive). Enjoy. You can see why we believe the C400 and m4 will be one of the most compelling client SSD designs of the year; great performance, leading 25nm NAND, and Micron’s thorough quality and reliability testing. More in-depth performance tests will be available from all your favorite reviewers in a couple weeks.

AS SSD

ATTO

CrystalDiskMark

Label Capacity Must Equal User Capacity
There’s nothing wrong with over-provisioning (reserving some of the NAND capacity for better performance and durability), but the drive label must state the capacity the user has access to. This is basic marketing honesty. The entire hard-drive industry got sued for this years ago and established standards for user capacity as a result. Micron follows these standards—we always market our drives at the true user capacity. In the case of the C300 and C400, the user capacities are identical—64, 128, and 256 GB (the C400 also offers a 512 GB).

Performance Must Not Degrade
We’ve taken a long-term view of the market; each new generation of drives must haveequal or better performance than the last. New NAND designs do present challenges, but because Micron leads NAND development, our SSD team has early insight into new products, and we start work early to make sure our SSDs make the best use of that NAND. The C400 is proof of that. As shown in the chart, it’s noticeably faster than the C300.

Keep Endurance High
SSD Enthusiasts are aware that new NAND designs start out at lower endurance cycle counts than the previous generation, and are sometimes wary of next-generation SSDs as a result. But cycle counts don’t necessarily translate 1:1 to drive endurance specs—good NAND management (via the firmware and controller) is the key.

We specify SSD endurance in total bytes written (TBW). The 25nm C400 offers the same endurance as the C300 for the 128, 256 and 512 GB models—72 TB TBW. This is equivalent to 40GB per day every day for 5 years, and far exceeds the patterns of any PC user. The 64 GB drive endurance is rated at 36 TB TBW—that’s 20 GB per day over the same time period, which still exceeds typical consumer use patterns.

We take the reliability of the C400 very seriously and have gone to great lengths to develop advanced firmware algorithms that manage the NAND. Again, being NAND developers gives us the unique ability to design end-to-end SSD quality as a complete system, alongside our NAND design team.

I hope you don’t let these early attempts at 25nm SSDs dampen your enthusiasm about this new technology. The SSD market is going to change dramatically in the next few years, and leading-edge NAND (and SSDs from the companies that make that NAND) is what will make it possible. Crucial’s M4 SSD will hit the shelves in mid-March. There’s a lot to be excited about; you’ll see proof in the C400/M4 reviews in a just a few weeks.

Of course the demo itself isn’t a novel concept by any means, but we think you’ll agree that results are staggering.