KIOXIA XD6 EDSFF E1.S Form-Factor Enterprise SSDs Now Available

Delivering on the promise of SSDs that address future enterprise infrastructure requirements, KIOXIA America, Inc. today announced production-ready availability of its 9.5 mm XD6 Series Enterprise and Datacenter Standard Form Factor (EDSFF) E1.S data center class SSDs. Introduced in late 2020, KIOXIA XD6 drives were the first EDSFF E1.S SSDs to address the specific requirements of hyperscale applications, including the performance, power and thermal requirements of the Open Compute Platform (OCP) NVMe Cloud SSD Specification. XD6 series also supports popular E1.S 15 mm and 25 mm form factor options, providing the flexibility to select the right balance of cooling through different E1.S heatsink options.

Representing the latest innovation in flash storage for servers in cloud and hyperscale data centers, KIOXIA EDSFF E1.S SSDs are designed to optimize system density, efficiency and management. As defined by the EDSFF consortium and leveraging the OCP NVMe Cloud SSD Specification, the small form factor E1.S replaces the M.2 form factor and delivers greater density, performance, reliability, and thermal management. E1.S is also designed to be hot pluggable for increased serviceability, which is another benefit over M.2.

Utilizing KIOXIA BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory, the read-intensive XD6 Series features 1 DWPD endurance, is compliant to NVMe 1.3c and PCIe 4.0 specifications, and is available in capacities of 1.92 TB and 3.84 TB. An option for TCG-Opal 2.0 encryption is included as well.

EDSFF E1.S is targeted at large-scale deployments in hyperscale data centers, due to its ability to scale in terms of capacity, power, performance and thermals. Drives designed to the OCP NVMe Cloud SSD specification can be used in the new OCP Yosemite V3 platform developed by Facebook.

“Microsoft and the OCP Storage workgroup demonstrated how an open collaboration across the industry could align hyperscalers, system designers and SSD vendors around next-generation storage form factors,” said Jason Adrian, senior director of Azure Platform Architecture, Microsoft. “The EDSFF E1.S form factor is the future of flash storage in hyperscale data centers, including Azure platforms. Solid state disks designed to the OCP NVMe Cloud SSD specification, such as the KIOXIA XD6 Series, will power the next generation of EDSFF E1.S-based servers.”

“Advancements in hyperscale data centers require flash deployments to be more efficient and optimized,” said Maulik Sompura, director of product management, KIOXIA America, Inc. “New specifications and form factors, such as EDSFF, have emerged and are poised to deliver substantial advantages over current form factors in terms of required capabilities. By delivering higher IOPs per terabyte, higher IOPs per watt, higher density per square inch -especially for 1U servers- and significantly better thermals, XD6 SSDs dramatically improve the total cost of ownership for our customers.”

KIOXIA is an active and contributing member to the industry development of EDSFF E1 and E3 solutions and is collaborating with leading server and storage system developers to unlock the full power of flash memory, NVMe and PCIe technologies.