The SSD Review The Worlds Dedicated SSD Education and Review Resource | 
Seagate Technology plc, a world-leading producer of storage devices, is announcing the 1200.2 Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) solid-state drive (SSD). The 1200.2 SAS 12Gb/s series of enterprise SSDs is the first product resulting from the strategic alliance formed between Seagate and Micron, that we previously reported on in February of this year.
The agreement worked out between Seagate and Micron has enabled the development and production of the 1200.2 series, which is a next-generation, high-capacity (up to nearly 4TB) SAS SSD platform in the 2.5″ form factor. The 1200.2 series is the first 12Gb/s SAS device that optimizes dual-channel throughput, attaining up to 1800MB/s sequential read speeds. It also offers multiple endurance levels within a single hardware and firmware design, providing ultra-fast performance to match up to various enterprise workloads and applications.
According to Brett Pemble, vice president of flash products, cloud systems and electronic solutions at Seagate, “Enterprise and cloud users face record growing storage demands challenging the performance of their IT systems to churn through mass amounts of data, while being restricted by opex/capex expenditure limits. As our partners and customers depend on Seagate flash technologies to meet these challenges, we are leveraging our collaboration and innovation with Micron to exceed their expectations.”
The critical production systems of enterprise and cloud customers require high data availability. The 1200.2 series of SAS SSDs provide superior data protection via next-generation Power Loss Protection (PLP) in the event of an unanticipated power interruption. The 1200.2 series achieves superior data protection and reliability by combining full internal and external data path protection and several layers of error recovery technology, utilizing advanced error detection and correction encoding (ECC) that is optimized for NAND flash storage media. Three levels of security are offered, including secure diagnostics and download (SD&D), Seagate Secure Self-Encrypting Drive (SED) and FIPS (federal information processing standards) drive.
Darren Thomas, Micron’s Vice President of Storage, observes that “The Seagate-Micron collaboration brings together some of the best minds in the dynamic world of storage — Seagate’s SAS expertise combined with Micron’s flash leadership is enabling us to truly redefine the future of enterprise storage development. The first example of this relationship is the introduction of a data-intensive SAS solution, expanding our SSD portfolio to meet the needs of our enterprise customers.”
Seagate is offering the 1200.2 series of SAS SSDs in capacities ranging from 200GB up to 3.8TB, and in four different endurance levels — up to 25 drive writes per day (DWPD), up to 10 DPDW, up to 3 DWPD and up to 1 DWPD. All of the 1200.2 series of SAS SSDs utilize Micron eMLC NAND paired with a Seagate controller. Performance varies by both capacity and endurance level. Dual-channel sequential read speeds of both the 25 DWPD and 10 DWPD versions are stated as (up to) 1800 MB/s, with sequential writes speeds of either (up to) 800MB/s or (up to) 600MB/s. Random 4K read speeds are stated as either (up to) 205,000 or (up to) 210,000 IOPS. Random 4K write speeds are stated as (up to) 70,000 IOPS.
For the 3 DWPD versions, sequential read speeds are stated as (up to) 1750MB/s. Sequential write speeds vary from (up to) 390MB/s to (up to) 750MB/s. Random 4K read speeds vary from (up to) 170,000 to (up to) 190,000 IOPS. Random 4K write speeds are stated as (up to) 35,000 IOPS for this endurance level. The 1 DWPD version attains sequential read and write speeds of (up to) 1700MB/s and (up to) 500MB/s, respectively. Random 4K read speeds are at (up to) 140,000 IOPS, with random 4K write speeds at (up to) 15,000 IOPS.
Seagate’s 1200.2 SAS SSD is engineered for both OEM and system building partners who need scalable and modular storage solutions for enterprise usage scenarios. It is also available as a direct upgrade or expansion of existing SAS storage infrastructures. Channel partner shipments of Seagate’s 1200.2 series of SAS SSDs will begin in August of 2015. A live, public demonstration of the 1200.2 12Gb/s SAS SSD can be seen next week at the Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, California. Visit Seagate at booth #505.
