Available in capacities up to 2TB in a compact M.2 2280 form factor, the KC2500 features a Gen 3.0 x4 controller and 96-layer 3D TLC NAND. It claims speeds reaching up to 3500MB/s read and up to 2900MB/s write, and includes self-encrypting capabilities with a full security suite for end-to-end data protection. Kingston says it allows the usage of independent software vendors with TCL Opal 2.0 security management solutions such as Symantec, McAfee and WinMagic, among others. Also built-in is support for Microsoft eDrive, the security storage specification for use with BitLocker.

As the name suggests, HAMR is a recording method involving the heating of a magnetic film in order to record data. To do so, the SDK technology uses small grains of magnetic crystals with thermal stability and information writability. Also involved are aluminium platters and a thin films of Fe-Pt alloy, a magnetic material both powerful and with high corrosion resistance.

Key updates to the standard include Write Booster (a SLC non-volatile cache to amplify write speeds), DeepSleep (a low-power state for lower-cost systems) and Performance Throttling Notification (allows the UFS device to notify the host when high temperatures throttle storage performance). A JESD220-3 Host Performance Booster (HPB) extension provides an option to cache the UFS device logical-to-physical address map to system DRAM, providing larger and faster caching and thus improving the read performance of the device.

The unit holds five 3.5/2.5-inch HDDs or SSDs, and supports a total of 80TB of storage. As a modern NAS, it handles various RAID modes, including RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 6 and RAID 10. Performance tops out at 670MB/s read and 650MB/s write with all drives running in RAID 5 mode. Meanwhile the TOS 4.1 OS supports SSD caching to accelerate I/O performance as well as multiple security layers, including clustered Btrfs file system, snapshots, AES hardware folder encryption, network transport encryption and scheduled backups (including cloud backups).

The F-series appliances are designed for customers wanting to accelerate the capture, editing and finishing of high-definition content, such as HD video used in movie, TV and sports production, as well as marketing and advertising content. Other critical uses include image-based workloads demanding high-speed processing, such as data from satellite feeds, drones or vehicles used in automated driver assistance system (ADAS) development.

As per the bulletin, the bug causes "drive failure and data loss at 32768 hours of operation and require restoration of data from backup in non-fault tolerance, such as RAID 0 and in fault tolerance RAID mode if more drives fail than what is supported by the fault tolerance RAID mode logical drive." HPE adds should the storage device fail, "neither the SSD nor the data can be recovered," and SSDs put in service in a batch can likely fail simultaneously.

First revealed back in June 2019, the 128-layer 1Tb TLC NAND promises both ultra-low power and ultra-thin solutions with greater capacities compared to the previous generation. Speed also gets a boost, from the 1.2GT/s of the previous generation 96-layer 3D NAND to 1.4GT/s. To stack 128 layers, SK Hynix uses a multi-stacked design and technologies such as ultra-homogeneous vertical etching and multi-layer thin-film cell formation, all with a low-power circuit design to ensure no increases to power consumption.

Designed for mixed and write intensive workloads, the SSDs are based on the 6th generation dual-port SAS 12Gbps platform co-developed with Intel, and carry 96-layer 3D TLC NAND memory in the 2.5-inch form factor. As such, the drives are drop-in compatible with existing servers with support for 9, 11 and 14W per drive power options, and support extended error correction code (ECC with a 1x10^-17 bit error rate) to ensure high performance and data integrity, exclusive-OR (XOR) parity in case a whole NAND die fails and parity-checked internal data paths.

Based on the Intel JHL6540 controller, the Mercury Elite Pro Dock can be daisy chained with other Thunderbolt 3 devices. The two drive bays support RAID0, RAID 1, JBOD, and Span modes to maximise reliability (by mirroring), double sequential read/write speeds to 530MB/s in case of 14TB HDDs or the drives either separately or as a single drive. An ASMedia controller enables RAID through a special switch on the back. In total the dock supports up to 28TB of storage capacity.

The sale follows an expansion of a partnership between the two companies, one seeing DDN increase the purchase of WD HDD and SSD devices. It is also the first step of the WD "strategic intention" to exit Storage Systems, which consists of the IntelliFlash and ActiveScale businesses. The company is currently looking for a willing buyer for ActiveScale, an action allowing to focus its Datacentre Systems portfolio around the core Storage Platforms business, which includes the OpenFlex platform and fabric-attached storage technologies.