Micron Puts 64-Layer 3D in Enterprise SSDs

　　Micron Technology's first enterprise SATA SSD using its 64-layer 3D NAND isn't a whole lot different than its predecessor, and that's the point.

　　The company just introduced its 5200 series SSDs designed for virtualized workloads that rotating media can't handle, such as online transaction processing, virtual desktop infrastructure and media streaming. In a telephone interview with EE Times, Matt Shaine, a Micron product manager, said the new SATA SSDs draw great deal from the 5100-series launched in 2016. “It's been a tremendous success,” Shaine said.

　　However, the company believes it's the first 64-layer 3D NAND SSD for the enterprise market, he said.

　　The 5200 SSD has the same architecture as its predecessor, including the same controller. The main changes are the use of Micron's TLC 64-layer NAND, said Shaine, while using the same design. "It's a taller sky scraper," he said.

　　Micron expects customers to see a lot of value because of their familiarity with the 5100. They're getting increased speed and the latest lithography, while also reducing qualification times.

　　The new SSD comes in two flavors, the 5200 ECO and Pro. The Eco is best suited for scaling storage data center capabilities easily and efficiently with capacities up to 7.68TB in a 2.5-inch form factor. The Pro, also in the same form factor, is an all-purpose drive to power read-intensive workload demands, such as burst-driven transaction waves or sudden high-volume web traffic.

　　Aside from using the latest 3D NAND, the 5200 series improves the mean time to failure (MTTF) from 2 million device hours to 3 million. But for the most part, the goal was to enable customers to easily migrate to the 5200 with little reconfiguration, said Shaine. Micron continues to support the 5100 line.

　　Moving to the latest process technology and lithography quickly reflects the vision of Micron's relatively new leadership. “We had to take a different look at SSD development,” he said.

　　The idea of reuse is important, said Shaine. About 95 percent of the firmware in the 5200 is leveraged from its predecessor. He said customers like continuity and dislike surprises. "It makes their quals go faster," he said.

　　What's notably missing is NVMe support, but Shaine said it's in the roadmap going forward. “We see a very stable SATA market that we think is not going anywhere,” he said, adding that Micron thinks the enterprise SSD market is growing, including SAS, SATA and NVMe. Micron has been able to increase its share in the enterprise segment.

　　“A good chunk of that has been driven by the 5100,” Shaine said.

　　Steve Hanna, Micron's senior product marketing manager for enterprise SSDs, said consistency is key when it comes to this market and enterprise applications. Micron is focused on differentiating itself with quality of service (QoS) and MTTF, he said, and other features such as flex capacity, which enables customers to tune the SSD for specific workloads that are prone to rapid change.

　　Hanna said there's lots of room for Micron to build on its recent growth in the enterprise SSD space. In 2016, only 10 percent of servers shipped with SSDs, he said, and in 2017, 18 percent. “The boots-on-the-ground reality is there hasn't been as much penetration as the chatter,” Hanna said.

　　Gregory Wong, founder and principal analyst with Forward Insights, said Micron is one of the early entrants to bring 64-layer NAND to the data center. “For them, it's a milestone,” Wong said.

　　For the most part, however, the specs are the same for the 5200 SSD as the prior generation. But the MTTF improvement to 3 million compared with 2 million is notable, Wong said. “They were able to move to a new technology, maintain the performance, and have an improved MTTF spec,” he said, something data center customers will look at positively.

　　Wong said Micron has been a relatively small player in enterprise SSD market. In 2016, its share was less than 2 percent. “The 5100 got them a lot of traction,” Wong said. He said the company's share is now more than 5 percent.

　　“In the bigger scheme of things, it's still relatively small," Wong said. "But doubling their share is quite an achievement. The 5200 is supposed to continue that momentum.”

　　There two aspects to the enterprise SSD market — the traditional OEMs and the data center. “If you look at the enterprise OEMs, a lot of flash going in is replacing high performance drives,” said Wong. “On the data center cloud side, it's not a replacement, they're using flash for specific reasons.”

　　Enterprise data center deployments are based on budgets, and storage is part of IT costing, Wong said, but for cloud companies such as Google and Facebook, it's about end user experience. “The cloud guys can monetize it,” he said.

　　Despite a lot of discussion that this year will see a tipping point in NVMe adoption, there's still a strong demand for SATA SSDs, said Wong, with prices even going up, thanks in part to NAND flash shortages. “Even with the price increases, on the enterprise side the total cost of ownership still makes sense,” he said.

　　And although 8TB is now the highest capacity available for SATA SSDs, the mainstream is still using one or two terabyte drives, he said. “When you get to four and eight, companies are thinking of moving to NVMe,” Wong said.