OWC Mercury Enterprise Pro 6G 6Gbps SSD Review – OWC and LSI Combine For a Great Enterprise Entry

OWC has jumped feet first into the Enterprise space with the new OWC Mercury Enterprise Pro 6G SSD.

Leveraging one of the fastest controllers on the planet, the LSI SF-2582 in tandem with Toshibas Enterprise Toggle Synchronous eMLC NAND, this SSD promises the absolute best in long term performance and endurance.

OWC is also throwing in an outstanding industry-leading 7 Year Warranty with this product.

PRODUCT SPECIFICATIONS

The OWC Mercury Enterprise Pro 6G has all of the ingredients for ultimate performance and high endurance, which explains the high performance specifications of 550MB/s read and 525MB/s write speeds. With 60,000 IOPS in both read and write 4k randoms, this SSD promises excellent IOPS performance in long term scenarios.

With Toshibas Enterprise Toggle Synchronous eMLC 10K P/E, the Mercury Enterprise guarantees to deliver on endurance and durability. 28% over-provisioning also helps to deliver rock-solid long term performance under the harshest loadings. Employing LSI SandForces’ RAISE allows for a high level of data protection. AES-128/256 along with TCG encryption ensures users data security as well.

Utilizing proprietary OWC Paratus Power Technology affords protection from power loss, and the implementation utilizes special capacitors with a much higher heat tolerance than standard super-capacitors. This provides high levels of reliability over the long term in the typical hot enterprise environments that this SSD will reside in.

INTERNAL CHARACTERISTICS

This SSD comes in the standard OWC metal case with a reflective beveled edge that is very handsome. The case is solid and has a bit of heft to it, and four Allen screws hold the package together.

  Once disassembled, the 16 modules of Toshiba Enterprise Toggle Synchronous eMLC 24nm NAND become visible. These are some of the highest-binned MLC available on today’s market, and definitely show that OWC is dedicated to providing a premium product. Rated for 10K P/E cycles, this NAND has a very good mixture of both price and longevity. SLC can have higher endurance, but at a much higher price point that can actually become prohibitive in some deployments.

The LSI SF-2582 enterprise class processor is industry leading and has many important attributes built into its feature-set that provide both reliability and performance. Here we can see the LSI SandForce processor flanked by a multitude of KO-CAP capacitors (KEMET Organic Tantalum Capacitors). The key here with this choice for Tantalum capacitors is the higher longevity and endurance in high heat scenarios. For enterprise applications they are a natural fit, and will not suffer the problems that super-capacitors tend to experience during deployment.