Welcome to Myce’s review of the Smart Storage Systems Cloudspeed
1000E SATA Enterprise SSD.
Sandisk recently completed the acquisition of Smart Storage
Systems.
The last Smart Storage Systems drive that we reviewed was
the truly outstanding Optimus,
our current Editor’s choice from amongst SAS based Enterprise SSDs. However, the
Cloudspeed is a relatively inexpensive solution that targets mixed workloads
and Smart tells us that the Cloudspeed will be sold at a sub 1.30 USD per
gigabyte price point – this will put it head to head with Intel’s DC
S3500, which we reviewed recently. With the DC S3500 we saw how Intel had
managed with the packaging of its new smaller size 20nm MLC NAND (as compared
to its sister drive the Intel DCS3700,
which uses the same set of components but with 25nm eMLC NAND) – it is fair to
say that write performance and endurance suffered. So it will be interesting
to see how Smart Storage Systems has managed with the packaging of its new 19nm
MLC NAND solution and how it compares with its closest competitor.
Market Positioning and Specification
Market Positioning
This is how Smart Storage Systems positions the Cloudspeed
product series -
Specification
Here is Smart Storage Systems’ specification for the Cloudspeed
1000 and 1000E -
You can see that the sole difference between the 1000 and
the 1000E is the amount of NAND set aside for use by the controller. The
greater amount set aside in the 1000E results in improved endurance and a
slight increase in random Read/Write IOPS.
Product Image
Here is a picture of the Cloudspeed 1000E that I tested –
I understand the Cloudspeed uses 19nm Toshiba MLC NAND and a
Marvell 9187 Controller.
Now let's head to the next page, to look at Myce’s
Enterprise Testing Methodology.....
