OCZ unveils Z-Drive 6000/6300: up to 6.4TB, 2.9GB/s, NVMe 1.1b

OCZ Storage Solutions has officially announced its new Z-Drive 6000- and 6300-series solid-state drives for high-performance computing systems, such as servers, workstations and ultra-high-end desktops. The drives offer various capacity points, different performance and PCI Express x4 3.0 interface. The new SSDs fully support non-volatile memory express (NVMe) 1.1b protocol for high-end storage devices.

The new OCZ Z-Drive 6000- and 6300-series SSDs are based on Toshiba’s MLC [multi-level cell] or eMLC NAND flash made using 19nm fabrication process as well as scalable PMC Sierra controllers for enterprise-class storage. The new drives will be offered in 2.5”/15mm and PCI Express HHHL [half-length, half-height] form-factors with PCI Express 3.0 x4 physical interface (with a hot-pluggable SFF-8639 connector in case of 2.5” SSDs) and with 800GB, 1600GB, 3200GB and 6400GB usable capacities. The new SSDs from OCZ are among the first drives in the industry to support NVMe 1.1b protocol that reduces protocol latencies and dramatically boosts performance and efficiency compared to traditional storage protocols (SATA, SAS, etc.) that were not designed for ultra-fast solid-state storage devices. The drives support end-to-end DIF, ECC and CRC data protection, power loss protection and even hot-swap capability (see detailed specifications at the end of the post).

The OCZ Z-Drive 6000-series SSDs for read intensive applications come in 2.5”/10mm form-factors with dual-port SFF-8639 capabilities, which enables two host systems to concurrently access the same device or allows for redundancy inside the host. The highest-performing Z-Drive 6000 models with 800GB, 1600GB, 3200GB and 6400GB capacities offer sequential read performance up to 2900MB/s, sequential write performance up to 1900MB/s, random read performance up to 700K IOPS and random write performance up to 160K IOPS. The new SSDs will hit the market in Q2 2015.

The OCZ Z-Drive 6300-series solid-state drives designed for mixed workloads will be available in 2.5” form-factor in Q2 2015 and in HHHL card form-factor later this year. The capacity points of the Z-Drive 6300 family of SSDs include 800GB, 1600GB, 3200GB and 6400GB models. The drives feature sequential read performance up to 2900MB/s, sequential write performance up to 1400MB/s, random read performance up to 700K IOPS and random write performance up to 120K IOPS.

“Our NVMe implementation yields dramatic boosts in the number of random I/O operations per second that an enterprise system can process and provides the reductions in I/O latency responses that OEMs require,” said Daryl Lang, chief technology officer for OCZ Storage Solutions. “As the NVMe standard represents new platform and infrastructure opportunities for OEMs, our Z-Drive 6000 Series delivers leading headline performance, coupled with large capacities, dual port capabilities, hot-swappable 2.5-inch and HHHL add-in card form factors that position this series as the highest performing and most robust for this class of products.”

Since the new OCZ Z-Drive 6000 and 6300-series SSDs are designed for compute-intensive, analytical, online transactional and cloud-based enterprise applications that require high-performance and low-latency I/O responses, their prices will be too high for the mainstream PC market. Nonetheless, ultra-high-end desktops from boutique PC makers could be equipped with the Z-Drive 6300-series drives to offer unbeatable storage performance.

OCZ is currently sampling its NVMe-compliant Z-Drive 6000 and Z-Drive 6300 SFF models to key customers and partners.

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KitGuru Says: Without any doubts, the new OCZ Z-Drive 6000-series SSDs for servers and workstations are impressive. Now it remains to be seen what OCZ will offer to consumers. NVMe protocol is designed for all types of storage applications and can be a benefit for different kinds of SSDs.

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