sTec Announces Availability Of Industry’s First Micro SAS 1.8″ Form Factor Solid-State Drive

sTec, a world leader in enterprise solid-state storage products (and in the process of being acquired by Western Digital),  is announcing general availability of the industry’s first Micro SAS solid-state drive (SSD).  The new Micro SAS SSD is an expansion of sTec’s s800 series of Serial Attached Storage (SAS) SSDs.  The new 1.8″ small form factor Micro SAS SSD will support 256-bit AES-XTS encryption, which enables hardware-level security for web-based applications, data centers and cloud computing; as well as security-sensitive government and defense usage scenarios.

Targeted to blade servers, high-density computing and caching applications, sTec’s Micro SAS SSDs offer storage system designers the smallest enterprise-class SAS SSD to date.  The small footprint and low power consumption meet the needs of today’s enterprise-level storage systems.

According to Zack Mihalis, vice president of product marketing and managament at sTec, “Our new Micro SAS SSDs are ideal for applications that demand a smaller footprint and power usage.  And through the 256-bit encryption option, our SAS drives can provide the performance, endurance and reliability of sTec solid-state storage with significant data protection, helping counter the vulnerability of data in cloud, data center and web-based applications.”

Another key target market for sTec’s new Micro SAS SSD is the government sector.  Defense-related computing places extreme priority on high levels of encryption in the field, preventing data access if the equipment ends up in the wrong hands.  Stricter government requirements for size and energy consumption are met by the Micro SAS SSD, with 20% less power usage as compared to 2.5″ SAS SSDs.

sTec’s Micro SAS SSDs come in capacities of either 200GB or 400GB.  sTec also offers AES-XTS 256-bit encryption on its 2.5″ SAS SSDs, which come in capacities up to 2TB.  Availability will be either directly through sTec or its authorized distributors.

The product page for the Stec Micro SAS SSD can be viewed here.  The press release can be viewed in its entirety here.