At Flash Memory Summit 2019 here today, LITE-ON Storage, an established leader in the rapidly expanding solid-state drive (SSD) industry, announced the upcoming release of a new, more cost-effective NVMe boot solution for enterprise customers.
Called BEST (Boot Enhanced Storage Technology), the breakthrough is an add-in card (AIC) that utilizes existing PCIe slots on the motherboards, so it doesn’t have to be plugged into a SATA (Serial ATA) slot. It’s built in the cost-effective and widely used PCIe NVMe M.2 form factor. It is also compact yet scalable. And it can accommodate two PCIe NVME M.2 based SSDs, enabling backup and redundancy of critical systems.
BEST technology is expected to be available on select LITE-ON SSDs toward the end of the year.
“LITE-ON is constantly pushing the envelope with SSD technology that helps customers operate more efficiently and cost effectively, and this BEST innovation is right in-line with that,” said Darlo Perez, Managing Director, Americas region at LITE-ON Storage. “While other emerging boot drive vendors claim they can do this, BEST is the first solution built upon the most popular form factor, PCIe NVMe M.2, which translates into better latency, lower total cost of ownership and more long-term value.”
BEST uses the Marvell 88NR2241, which can perform RAID 1 mirroring across two M.2 NVMe SSDs. If one M.2 boot drive fails, the server turns to the second drive. This is critical for enterprise organizations, which simply cannot afford to have a server out of operation for long periods of time. In addition to the impact on operations, this lack of availability can lead to financial loss.
Critical programs needed to launch a server, including operating systems (OS) reside in boot drives. Many enterprise organizations still invest in more economical options, like hard disk drives (HDDs). As new standards come along offering improved features, speeds and reliability, SSD-based boot drives are becoming the go-to approach for most forward-thinking companies.
“Enterprise organizations don’t always put as much thought as they should into boot drives, but they’re actually one of the most important IT buying decisions they can make,” said Gregory Wong, founder and principal analyst at Forward Insights. “We estimate the market for NVMe-based drives will continue to expand at a CAGR of 42 percent between now and 2022. LITE-ON appears to be well positioned in this space, delivering a small form-factor SSD built around the emerging PCIe standard instead of SATA, which is increasingly being relegated to legacy applications.”
To learn more, please visit the LITE-ON booth (#621) at Flash Memory Summit 2019.
