Nimbus Data 100TB ExaDrive DC100 Smashes Enterprise SSD Storage Boundaries

The ExaDrive DC100 has been designed for data center duty, but it still offers a traditional SATA interface (along with SAS), and is available in a 3.5-inch form-factor. That means that you could technically fit this SSD in your gaming rig, but we have the feeling that it will cost you a kidney (or two) to purchase.

To put its 100TB capacity in perspective, Nimbus says that it can hold 20 million songs, 20,000 HD movies, or 2,000 iPhones worth of data. With a single rack of ExaDrive DC100 SSDs configured, a data center could have access to 100 petabytes of storage capacity.

On the performance front, the ExaDrive DC100 is rated for up to 100,000 random read (and write) IOPs, while sequential reads and writes a dialed in at 500MB/sec. This puts it near the top of the class in the enterprise sector for SATA SSDs. And while its competitors like Samsung, Micron and Toshiba offer around 3 DWPD (Drive Writes Per Day) endurance, the ExaDrive DC100 is rated for unlimited DWPD over the course of its 5-year warranty.

Nimbus is also touting superior power efficiency, which is a key metric for hyper-scale customers that the company is trying to court (think Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc.). In this case, the ExaDrive DC100 is said to draw on average 0.1W of power per terabyte compared to 0.5W for the Samsung PM1643. That would put Nimbus' offering at around 10W of idle power consumption, or up to 85 percent lower than its competitors.

Other features of note include quad ECC controllers, embedded capacitors to aid in protecting data in case of power loss and a mean time between failures (MTBF) of 2.5 million hours.

“As flash memory prices decline, capacity, energy efficiency, and density will become the critical drivers of cost reduction and competitive advantage,” stated Thomas Isakovich, CEO and founder of Nimbus Data. “The ExaDrive DC100 meets these challenges for both data center and edge applications, offering unmatched capacity in an ultra-low power design.”

Pricing is not yet available, but the ExaDrive DC100 is scheduled to be widely available for customers by Summer 2018.