New Samsung 950 Pro PCIe SSD: Everything You Need to Know
Samsung Electronics has announced the launch of the first Samsung solid-state drive Series 950 PRO form factor M.2 with a scalable controller NVM Express (Non-Volatile Memory Express). Let us see why Samsung is moving to a new form factor and controller, as well as what is good for the user.
Briefly about the characteristics. According to the manufacturer, the PRO 950 will be available in versions 256 and 512 GB. The older version provides consistent read / write speeds of up to 2500 MB / s and 1500 MB / s, respectively. The random read rate is up to 300.000 IOPS, and the record is 110.000 IOPS. The model is equipped with a 32-layer MLC V-NAND UBX - a second-generation 128GB Samsung controller and Samsung Magician monitoring software. The drive provides AES encryption (256 bits) for data security. Dynamic Thermal Guard technology ensures device operation in the temperature range from 0 to 70 ° C. The model withstands shocks up to 1,500 G for 0.5 ms and vibrations up to 20 G.
Initially, the M.2 bus was developed as a faster and more compact replacement for the mSATA.
Formally, M.2 is a mobile version of the SATA Express protocol described in the SATA 3.2 specification. This interface can be compatible with SATA, PCI Express, and USB 3.0 devices. M.2 supports up to four PCI Express lanes, while SATA Express connectors only transmit data on two such lanes. The boards have the same width of 22 mm, but there are five lengths at once: 30, 42, 60, 80 or 110 mm.
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M.2 can have several key-cutouts at once, which makes them compatible with several types of slots simultaneously. The key type B, located instead of contacts with numbers 12-19, means that no more than two PCI Express lines are connected to the slot. The key type M, which occupies the contact positions 59-66, means that the slot has four lines of PCI Express and therefore can provide better performance.
M.2-board should not only fit in size, but also have a key-compatible arrangement of the slot. The keys limit mechanical compatibility between different connectors and M.2 form factor boards and prevent improper installation of drives in the slot.
Source: www.3dnews.ru
Today, M.2 slots are the most promising for SSD: they are able to provide the highest throughput among all existing options for connecting solid-state drives.
The most serious problem for SSD today is the bandwidth limitation of old Serial ATA and Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) buses. The bandwidth of the newest SATA-III is 600 MB / s, the data transfer rate of Serial Attached SCSI (SAS 12G) is 1.2 GB / s. Modern SSD are capable of more.
The NVMe protocol accelerates I / O operations by eliminating the SAS command stack (SCSI). NVMe SSDs connect directly to the PCIe bus. Applications get a sharp performance boost from offsetting I / O activity from SAS / SATA SSD and HDD to NVMe SSD. Storage devices of a new type of storage are non-volatile (non-volatile) and the delay in accessing them is much lower - at the level of operational memory delays (volatile).
The NVMe controller demonstrates all the advantages of SSD: very low access delays and a huge queue depth for read and write operations. Extremely low latency of storage devices significantly reduces the likelihood of locking data tables when they are updated. This is critical for multiuser databases with complex and interrelated tables.
M.2 connector on the motherboard.
Today, NVM Express (NVMe) supports all ASUS motherboards on the Intel Z97 Express and X99 Express chipsets — to do this, update the UEFI BIOS and use the ASUS Hyper Kit expansion card as an option.
The expansion card allows owners of motherboards on the X99 chipset to connect drives of size 2.5 "with NVMe interface - for example, Intel SSD 750 , using the SFF-8639 connector (mini-SAS HD). On the drive itself there will also be an SFF-8639 connector, it looks like this:
If there is no M.2 connector on the motherboard or it is not possible to use it, there are adapter cards for PCIe:
Supermicro has introduced solutions optimized for NVMe:
According to the manufacturer, SuperServer with NVMe Virtual SAN preparation demonstrates industry-leading performance and density in the 1U Ultra 10x NVMe solution (SYS-1028U-VSNF series), easily scalable to meet the needs of the corporate environment, data centers and cloud applications.
2U Ultra 24x NVMe SuperServer (SYS-2028U-TN24RT +) increases the density of hot-swappable NVMe and can be supplied in even more dense configurations - up to 24x2.5 ″ NVMe hot-swappable by 1U.
Two new 2U Virtual SAN Ready Node solutions exclusively based on SSD-based flash drives in the Ultra architecture (SYS-2028U-VSNF series) and TwinPro (SYS-2028TP-VSNF series) support up to 480 virtual machines in 4 nodes.
In general, Supermicro has a whole line of servers for NVMe-carriers, they are rarely on sale just like the media themselves.
But back to the Samsung 950 Pro.
Unlike the Samsung SM951-NVMe OEM drive, the 950 Pro is based on the progressive 3D MLC V-NAND. The SM951 uses a conventional planar flash memory, produced by the 16-nm process technology.
Very important: the UEFI BIOS of the motherboard must contain the NVMe driver to boot the OS from 950 Pro.
In some cases, the 950 Pro can warm up quite strongly - at maximum load, this SSD can allocate up to 6-7 watts. At the same time, notes anandtech.com, this is not a serious problem. The manufacturer ’s official position on this is as follows: “ The temperature of the 950 Pro rises to the upper limit only in the case of continuous, long-lasting and complex load, which is not characteristic of client SSDs. The performance degradation of sequential write-once on a drive of about 100 GB of data is unlikely to somehow affect ordinary users. That is, in the case of using a drive as part of an ordinary PC, the overheating problem is unlikely . ”
In most tests anandtech.com 950 Pro showed very good results:
Source: www.anandtech.com
On tests in Anandtech, he lost only in the random recording test. In respected 3Dnews, the results are more beautiful:
Source: 3dnews.ru
Most M.2 servers can be supplied only through a PCIe transitional card, which is installed via a riser card. We did not manage to find such boards available in Russia, but the situation is likely to correct soon, since they are sold in abundance on Ebay, aliexpress, and many other places.
For server applications, using such a drive will radically speed up the database (especially large directories), add IOPS to the virtualization system and use them as data caches up to 512GB, for example, images / JSON objects and other things that cannot fit into RAM server. The price of the issue is only 13,000 rubles for the 256GB version and 24,990 rubles for the 512GB SSD when it becomes available. It is more profitable than the Amazon.
Alternatively, there are such cards:
This Kingston HyperX Predator 480 GB model SHPM2280P2H / 480G. As we can see, the connector is the same, the Samsung 950 Pro will also fit into it if necessary. This is just a set of + SSD M.2 PCIe card. The price on the market is 33,000 rubles.
For the same money, you can purchase the Intel 750 Series 400 GB SSDPEDMW400G4R5. He has all NAND chips soldered on the board, so if something breaks, only to the service center:
Since 2008, we have been renting dedicated and virtual servers for rent, providing server hosting services in 4 Moscow data centers, including two Tier-III certified data centers. We specialize in large dedicated servers and the creation of private clouds and clusters for our clients based on them.
We have a hot offer for our readers: Servers available on the basis of T-Platform supercomputers and Intel Xeon E5-2630v2 processors at a 15% discount until the end of December (or until they run out) when using the TMW5U0S8SE promo code
For example, for comparison:
- 2xE5-2630v2 (12x2,6 GHz) / 64Gb RAM / 1x1Tb SSD + 1x1Tb 7.2K HDD = 17000r per month, with a discount of 14450.
- 2xE5-2630v2 (12x2,6 GHz) / 128Gb RAM / 1x2Tb SSD + 1x2Tb 7.2K HDD = 25700r per month, with a discount of 21800
- 2xE5-2630v2 (12x2,6 GHz) / 256Gb RAM / 2x2Tb Samsung SSD = 36500r per month, with a discount of 31000
- 2xE5-2630v2 (12x2,6 GHz) / 32Gb RAM / 2x600Gb SAS 10K = 13650r per month, with a discount of 11600r
All prices include VAT, almost any configuration is possible.
All servers are connected on a gigabit channel, the traffic limit is 10TB without restrictions. Each dedicated server is provided with remote access via IPMI, it is possible to organize a VLAN at a speed of up to 10Gbps.
Briefly about the characteristics. According to the manufacturer, the PRO 950 will be available in versions 256 and 512 GB. The older version provides consistent read / write speeds of up to 2500 MB / s and 1500 MB / s, respectively. The random read rate is up to 300.000 IOPS, and the record is 110.000 IOPS. The model is equipped with a 32-layer MLC V-NAND UBX - a second-generation 128GB Samsung controller and Samsung Magician monitoring software. The drive provides AES encryption (256 bits) for data security. Dynamic Thermal Guard technology ensures device operation in the temperature range from 0 to 70 ° C. The model withstands shocks up to 1,500 G for 0.5 ms and vibrations up to 20 G.
Form Factor M.2
Initially, the M.2 bus was developed as a faster and more compact replacement for the mSATA.
| SSD interface | Maximum theoretical throughput | Maximum real throughput (estimated) |
| SATA III | 6 Gbit / s (750 MB / s) | 600 MB / s |
| PCIe 2.0 x2 | 8 Gbit / s (1 GB / s) | 800 MB / s |
| PCIe 2.0 x4 | 16 Gbit / s (2 GB / s) | 1.6 GB / s |
| PCIe 3.0 x4 | 32 Gbit / s (4 GB / s) | 3.2 GB / s |
Formally, M.2 is a mobile version of the SATA Express protocol described in the SATA 3.2 specification. This interface can be compatible with SATA, PCI Express, and USB 3.0 devices. M.2 supports up to four PCI Express lanes, while SATA Express connectors only transmit data on two such lanes. The boards have the same width of 22 mm, but there are five lengths at once: 30, 42, 60, 80 or 110 mm.
')
M.2 can have several key-cutouts at once, which makes them compatible with several types of slots simultaneously. The key type B, located instead of contacts with numbers 12-19, means that no more than two PCI Express lines are connected to the slot. The key type M, which occupies the contact positions 59-66, means that the slot has four lines of PCI Express and therefore can provide better performance.
M.2-board should not only fit in size, but also have a key-compatible arrangement of the slot. The keys limit mechanical compatibility between different connectors and M.2 form factor boards and prevent improper installation of drives in the slot.
| Slot M.2 with Type B Key (Socket 2) | Slot M.2 with M Type Key (Socket 3) | |
| Scheme |  |  |
| Key location | Contacts 12-19 | Contacts 59-66 |
| Supported Interfaces | PCIe x2 and SATA (optional) | PCIe x4 and SATA (optional) |
Today, M.2 slots are the most promising for SSD: they are able to provide the highest throughput among all existing options for connecting solid-state drives.
What is NVMe?
The most serious problem for SSD today is the bandwidth limitation of old Serial ATA and Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) buses. The bandwidth of the newest SATA-III is 600 MB / s, the data transfer rate of Serial Attached SCSI (SAS 12G) is 1.2 GB / s. Modern SSD are capable of more.
The NVMe protocol accelerates I / O operations by eliminating the SAS command stack (SCSI). NVMe SSDs connect directly to the PCIe bus. Applications get a sharp performance boost from offsetting I / O activity from SAS / SATA SSD and HDD to NVMe SSD. Storage devices of a new type of storage are non-volatile (non-volatile) and the delay in accessing them is much lower - at the level of operational memory delays (volatile).
The NVMe controller demonstrates all the advantages of SSD: very low access delays and a huge queue depth for read and write operations. Extremely low latency of storage devices significantly reduces the likelihood of locking data tables when they are updated. This is critical for multiuser databases with complex and interrelated tables.
M.2 connector on the motherboard.
Today, NVM Express (NVMe) supports all ASUS motherboards on the Intel Z97 Express and X99 Express chipsets — to do this, update the UEFI BIOS and use the ASUS Hyper Kit expansion card as an option.
The expansion card allows owners of motherboards on the X99 chipset to connect drives of size 2.5 "with NVMe interface - for example, Intel SSD 750 , using the SFF-8639 connector (mini-SAS HD). On the drive itself there will also be an SFF-8639 connector, it looks like this:
If there is no M.2 connector on the motherboard or it is not possible to use it, there are adapter cards for PCIe:
Supermicro has introduced solutions optimized for NVMe:
According to the manufacturer, SuperServer with NVMe Virtual SAN preparation demonstrates industry-leading performance and density in the 1U Ultra 10x NVMe solution (SYS-1028U-VSNF series), easily scalable to meet the needs of the corporate environment, data centers and cloud applications.
2U Ultra 24x NVMe SuperServer (SYS-2028U-TN24RT +) increases the density of hot-swappable NVMe and can be supplied in even more dense configurations - up to 24x2.5 ″ NVMe hot-swappable by 1U.
Two new 2U Virtual SAN Ready Node solutions exclusively based on SSD-based flash drives in the Ultra architecture (SYS-2028U-VSNF series) and TwinPro (SYS-2028TP-VSNF series) support up to 480 virtual machines in 4 nodes.
In general, Supermicro has a whole line of servers for NVMe-carriers, they are rarely on sale just like the media themselves.
But back to the Samsung 950 Pro.
Samsung 950 Pro Specification
| Samsung 950 Pro | ||
| Manufacturer | Samsung | |
| Series | 950 Pro | |
| Model number | MZVKV256 | MZVKV512 |
| Form factor | M.2 2280 | |
| Interface | PCI Express 3.0 x4 - NVMe | |
| Capacity | 256 GB | 512 GB |
| Configuration | ||
| Memory chips: type, interface, process technology, manufacturer | Samsung 128-Gbit 32-layer MLC V-NAND | |
| Memory chips: number / number of NAND devices in a chip | 2/8 | 2/16 |
| Controller | Samsung UBX | |
| DRAM buffer: type, volume | LPDDR3-1600, 512 MB | |
| Performance | ||
| Max. steady sequential read speed | 2200 MB / s | 2500 MB / s |
| Max. stable sequential write speed | 900 MB / s | 1500 MB / s |
| Max. random read speed (4 KB blocks) | 270000 IOPS | 300000 IOPS |
| Max. random write speed (4 KB blocks) | 85000 IOPS | 110000 IOPS |
| physical characteristics | ||
| Power consumption: inactivity / read-write | 1.7 / 6.4 W | 1.7 / 7.0 W |
| MTBF (mean time between failure) | 1.5 million hours | |
| Record resource | 200 TB | 400 TB |
| Overall dimensions: L × H × D | 80.15 × 22.15 × 2.38 mm | |
| Weight | 10 g | |
| Warranty period | 5 years | |
| recommended price | $ 200 | $ 350 |
Unlike the Samsung SM951-NVMe OEM drive, the 950 Pro is based on the progressive 3D MLC V-NAND. The SM951 uses a conventional planar flash memory, produced by the 16-nm process technology.
Very important: the UEFI BIOS of the motherboard must contain the NVMe driver to boot the OS from 950 Pro.
In some cases, the 950 Pro can warm up quite strongly - at maximum load, this SSD can allocate up to 6-7 watts. At the same time, notes anandtech.com, this is not a serious problem. The manufacturer ’s official position on this is as follows: “ The temperature of the 950 Pro rises to the upper limit only in the case of continuous, long-lasting and complex load, which is not characteristic of client SSDs. The performance degradation of sequential write-once on a drive of about 100 GB of data is unlikely to somehow affect ordinary users. That is, in the case of using a drive as part of an ordinary PC, the overheating problem is unlikely . ”
In most tests anandtech.com 950 Pro showed very good results:
Source: www.anandtech.com
On tests in Anandtech, he lost only in the random recording test. In respected 3Dnews, the results are more beautiful:
Source: 3dnews.ru
Servers and M.2
Most M.2 servers can be supplied only through a PCIe transitional card, which is installed via a riser card. We did not manage to find such boards available in Russia, but the situation is likely to correct soon, since they are sold in abundance on Ebay, aliexpress, and many other places.
For server applications, using such a drive will radically speed up the database (especially large directories), add IOPS to the virtualization system and use them as data caches up to 512GB, for example, images / JSON objects and other things that cannot fit into RAM server. The price of the issue is only 13,000 rubles for the 256GB version and 24,990 rubles for the 512GB SSD when it becomes available. It is more profitable than the Amazon.
Alternatively, there are such cards:
This Kingston HyperX Predator 480 GB model SHPM2280P2H / 480G. As we can see, the connector is the same, the Samsung 950 Pro will also fit into it if necessary. This is just a set of + SSD M.2 PCIe card. The price on the market is 33,000 rubles.
For the same money, you can purchase the Intel 750 Series 400 GB SSDPEDMW400G4R5. He has all NAND chips soldered on the board, so if something breaks, only to the service center:
A little bit about HOSTKEY
Since 2008, we have been renting dedicated and virtual servers for rent, providing server hosting services in 4 Moscow data centers, including two Tier-III certified data centers. We specialize in large dedicated servers and the creation of private clouds and clusters for our clients based on them.We have a hot offer for our readers: Servers available on the basis of T-Platform supercomputers and Intel Xeon E5-2630v2 processors at a 15% discount until the end of December (or until they run out) when using the TMW5U0S8SE promo code
For example, for comparison:
- 2xE5-2630v2 (12x2,6 GHz) / 64Gb RAM / 1x1Tb SSD + 1x1Tb 7.2K HDD = 17000r per month, with a discount of 14450.- 2xE5-2630v2 (12x2,6 GHz) / 128Gb RAM / 1x2Tb SSD + 1x2Tb 7.2K HDD = 25700r per month, with a discount of 21800
- 2xE5-2630v2 (12x2,6 GHz) / 256Gb RAM / 2x2Tb Samsung SSD = 36500r per month, with a discount of 31000
- 2xE5-2630v2 (12x2,6 GHz) / 32Gb RAM / 2x600Gb SAS 10K = 13650r per month, with a discount of 11600r
All prices include VAT, almost any configuration is possible.
All servers are connected on a gigabit channel, the traffic limit is 10TB without restrictions. Each dedicated server is provided with remote access via IPMI, it is possible to organize a VLAN at a speed of up to 10Gbps.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/271661/
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