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Intel is announcing its newest addition to their Solid-State Drive Professional Series, designated as the Pro2500 Series. Intel is touting this new Pro2500 series of SSDs as being “Built for business. Engineered for I.T..” Intel’s Solid-State Drive Professional family strives to achieve “value pillars” that include security and manageability, quality, reliability, stability and power-efficient performance in multiple form factors; along with an industry-leading suite of SSD management tools.
The Pro2500 series features advanced security and manageability. The Pro2500 is a self-encrypting drive with broad security ISV (independent software vendor) validation that includes McAfee, Wave Systems, WinMagic Inc., Credant Technologies, Sophos, Absolute Software and Microsoft eDrive. The Pro2500 series of SSDs are also TCG Opal level 2.0 compliant.
Intel’s Pro2500 series of self-encrypting drives utilize an industry standard framework for provisioning and encryption key management. These drives require pre-boot authentication to prevent malicious attacks, and host ownership of the drives to prevent SSD thefts. Crypto erase is also supported to enable quick re-purposing of drives.
The Intel Pro2500 series is more power efficient than previous SSDs, featuring new advanced low power modes that result in a more optimized user experience, as well as significant improvements in battery life when used in mobile/portable computing devices. Power consumption is stated as 195mW (active), 55mW (idle), and a mere 5mW in DevSleep (device sleep) mode.
The Pro2500 series will be offered in both 2.5″ x 7mm and M.2 form factors. The 2..5″ x 7mm version will be offered in capacities of 120GB, 180GB, 240GB, 360GB and 480GB. The M.2 x 80mm version will offer capacities of 180GB, 240GB and 360GB; as well as M.2 x 60mm drives in 180GB and 240GB capacities.
All form factors of the Pro2500 series will offer sequential read speeds of (up to) 540MB/s, and sequential write speeds of (up to) 490MB/s. Random 4K read speeds are stated as (up to) 48,000 IOPS, with random 4K write speeds of (up to) 80,000 IOPS.
Intel also includes with the Pro2500 series an industry-leading suite of SSD tools to enhance manageability and end-user experience, along with a total cost of ownership (TCO) software tool to justify return on investment (ROI). The drive administration tools include the SSD Pro Administrator Tool, the SSD Pro Plug-in for SCS 9.X remote drive health monitoring, and Intel’s Solid-State Drive Toolbox to handle tasks such as overprovisioning, firmware updates, and a secure erase function.
Historically, Intel’s SSDs have been some of the most reliable available, and this trend continues with the Pro2500 series of Intel SSDs. Intel SSDs are subjected to 5000 unique tests, utilizing 120 different client systems to achieve validation. Reliability is ensured via rigorous component and module qualification, system-level reliability demonstration testing, burn-in testing, and outgoing quality and reliability monitoring. This stringent validation and qualification regimen results in an average failure rate (AFR) (Pro1500 model) of less than 0.3%. Intel has no qualms in backing the Pro2500 series with a five-year warranty.
Intel has also recently expanded its NAND sourcing with both current and new suppliers to support production of current and future SSD models. With rumors circulating of potential problems with NAND supply keeping up with ever-growing demand, this is a strategic move. Availability and pricing of the Pro2500 series has not yet been announced. Stay tuned for upcoming review(s) of the Intel Pro2500 series of SSDs.
” Intel has also recently expanded its NAND sourcing ” I thought Intel made their own nand
crucial / micron. Why would they need or use nand from SK
Hynix ?
When demand exceeds capacity, a Plan B is in order.
Is There really so much of a demand?
I’m guessing Neweg is one of the biggest ssd sellers and the Intel drives don’t have many reviews compared to 1.Samsung 2. muskin 3. crucial 4. corsair 5. Kingston. On & On down the line. I can’t understand there pricing it doesn’t seem competitive.
The 335 got better reviews than the newer 530 the 730 seems
way overpriced. Does Intel want to sell to consumers or just business.
The 520 was at the top of the charts and the newer ssds seem
there not as good as there competition or their way overpriced. SSD prices should be around 240gb = $100.00 480gb = $200.
The demand has nothing to do whatsoever with consumer sales as they are such a small part of the entire flash picture. This is an interesting announcement by Intel, however, and does bring forward a few thoughts, these including validating the reality of a shortage in flash, or simply, flash can be obtained from outside sources cheaper than they themselves are making. WE have seen tyhis in Samsung with SSD controllers where they have used outside sources, rather than there own, simply because their contract commitments had better dividends than using the controllers in their own products…. Series 9 Ultra.
1) Intel’s “real” enterprise SSD (DC P3700 …) pricing is highly competitive (you really get value for the money), in contrast to their Xeon CPU pricing – caused by higher competition in SSD market
2) These Professional/SmallBusiness 730 SSDs are not aimed, but suitable for 24/7 server workloads – they have a very high performance consistency compared to the Samsung/SanDisk Prosumer Drives (840 Pro, Extreme)
View last graph on this Anandtech review
– https://www.anandtech.com/show/7803/intel-ssd-730-480gb-review/2
They have about 1.7 higher performance consistency so they are better.
I doubt, if this is really usefull for a prosumer. As long as you aren’t running “half serious” big data applications 24/7 – there is no use case i can image. (For serious big data, you will buy solutions from your vendor, or at least use pcie)
Maybe there is some use case for high-performace RAID Storage, but you would need 10Gb LAN. The latency and endurance
are on par with the Samsung 840 (RAPID enabled).
So you are right, they aren’t price competitive in the consumer/small business market, because you pay for this consisitency/lwo latency feature, that nobody realy needs.
Anybody knows other use cases?