SanDisk Seizes the Initiative with New Capacity-Busting SSD
Flash memory giant SanDisk recently unveiled a potentially disruptive new product with the announcement of the Optimus MAX Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) solid-state drive. The SSD is the first of its kind to reach the 4-terabyte milestone.
Manuel Martull, SanDisk's product & solutions marketing director, said to Computerworld, "We see reaching the 4TB mark as really just the beginning and expect to continue doubling the capacity every year or two, far outpacing the growth for traditional HDDs."
The company intends to release a 6TB edition later this year, with an 8TB model to follow by the close of 2014.
A pioneer in portable flash storage for mobile devices, SanDisk, has turned its attention to the data center and enterprise over the past few years — a smart move, considering businesses are increasingly looking to solid-state solutions to speed up processes and applications in mixed (disk and flash) environments.
Because the Optimus MAX is a SAS drive, IT staff can use it in the data center to replace legacy hard-disk drives without having to update drivers — a convenience that cannot be overstated. And, while generally more expensive up front, SSDs, unlike HDDs, have no moving parts. They therefore read and write data faster, require less power to run and are less likely to break.
Even better: The Optimus MAX is hot-swappable — meaning it can be installed as a replacement drive without shutting down the system into which it’s being deployed.
Carpe Diem, Data Center
According to SanDisk, the plug-and-play Optimus MAX was developed as a replacement for 10,000- and 15,000-rpm SAS HDDs in the data center. While businesses have relied on HDDs for mission-critical applications for years, as data volumes increase and real-time access becomes ever more critical, they’re starting to find the performance and reliability of traditional HDDs lacking.
“Currently, SSDs are used to accentuate high-capacity HDDs in traditional enterprise, cloud and hyperscale data centers,” says Laura DuBois, program vice president for IDC's storage practice. “As SSDs, such as SanDisk's new Optimus MAX, continue to increase in capacity while achieving greater cost-effectiveness, more enterprises will look to SSDs to replace their legacy HDD infrastructures in order to meet today's high I/O applications and enterprise workload requirements.”
SanDisk hopes that the Optimus MAX will be the SSD that organizations choose when they make the switch from HDD.
“The Optimus MAX eliminates the need for compromises,” says John Scaramuzzo, senior vice president and general manager of SanDisk Enterprise Storage Solutions.
