Micron Unveils SSDs: Micron 6500 ION NVMe SSD and Micron XTR NVMe SSD

Micron Technology, Inc. has made an exciting announcement today, introducing two groundbreaking SSDs: the Micron 6500 ION NVMe SSD and the Micron XTR NVMe SSD. These cutting-edge drives are specifically designed to keep up with the ever-expanding data landscape, offering data centers a significant leap forward in terms of cost reduction and storage efficiency.

The Micron 6500 ION sets a new standard for high-capacity SSDs, outperforming competing QLC-based drives by delivering exceptional performance and contributing to a more environmentally sustainable data center. This remarkable drive achieves the perfect balance between TLC performance and QLC-like cost, thanks to Micron's pioneering 232-layer technology node. In contrast, competitors rely on sub-200-layer QLC technology. By leveraging Micron's technological leadership, the 6500 ION provides superior value to businesses seeking efficient and cost-effective storage solutions.

Additionally, the Micron XTR SSD complements the Micron 6500 ION and other SSDs by offering unmatched endurance, further optimizing system performance. When combined with Micron 6500 ION drives or other SSD options, the Micron XTR SSD empowers data centers with exceptional durability, ensuring consistent and reliable operation."Customers are looking for new capabilities to address the data growth and performance needs of artificial intelligence data lakes and other demanding workloads. As a result, we are seeing tremendous traction on the 6500 ION and XTR with customers who are deploying storage at scale due to their unrivaled combination of large capacity, superior performance, and amazing endurance," said Alvaro Toledo, vice president and general manager of Micron's Data Center Storage group. "The 6500 ION SSD offers QLC value with TLC performance and up to a 20% reduction in power consumption versus competing QLC SSDs, allowing our customers to reduce their carbon footprint. Together, these SSDs enable customers to leap ahead and harness the power of artificial intelligence without compromising performance."

Micron 6500 ION SSD: QLC value. TLC performance. Micron innovation.
The Micron 6500 ION SSD is the demonstrably better performing high-capacity value SSD compared to the primary alternative with:

• 34% better average read latency
• 58% faster sequential writes
• Up to 62% more 4 KB random read IOPS
• Over 30 times more 4 KB random write IOPS at a queue depth (QD) of 128 and over 10 times more at QD1
• More than 10 times better 4 KB random write endurance (RDWPD)

The Micron 6500 ION also unleashes this high performance in real-world workload testing:

• For Ceph object storage workloads, high-performance, high-capacity NVMe SSDs like the Micron 6500 ION are an ideal fit offering high performance and massive capacity in the same object store. Moreover, the Micron 6500 ION NVMe SSD test results show meaningful performance improvements in all tested workloads against the leading competitor.

Ceph object storage workload results:

• 100% sequential writes are up to 3.5 times better
• 100% sequential reads are up to 47% better
• 100% random reads are up to 49% better
• Mixed I/O (sequential reads and writes) are up to 62% better
• Mixed I/O (random reads and sequential writes) are up to 27% better

• For Cassandra NoSQL database, a highly scalable, distributed database used for workloads such as fraud detection, global logistics, cloud document storage, and social media applications, the Micron 6500 ION SSD routinely demonstrates higher peak performance and better 99.99% (four nines) read latency than the competitor's QLC SSD. The Micron 6500 ION's peak performance is up to 2.6 times better than the competitor's drive for the Yahoo! Cloud Serving Benchmark (YCSB) Workload C (100% read profile). The four nines read latency is up to 9.2 times better for the YCSB Workload F (recording user sessions profile). These improvements across a broad range of common NoSQL workloads will often have a significant impact on data center performance, making the Micron 6500 ION SSD the preferred high-capacity SSD for Cassandra and other NoSQL database deployments.
• For WEKA software-defined storage, a high-performance, scalable software storage solution, the Micron 6500 ION proves that it can help deliver massive storage capacity and workload results without the compromises of the competitor's QLC SSD. In a six-node cluster configuration, the WEKA cluster with 48 Micron 6500 ION SSDs delivers up to 5.2 million IOPS and up to a whopping 112 GB/s throughput per node - all while providing nearly 1.5PB to the cluster.

"WEKA is leading a paradigm shift in how data is stored, managed, and processed. Our software-defined solution helps organizations transform their traditional, stagnant data silos into dynamic, fluid data pipelines that fuel next-generation workloads like AI, ML, and HPC seamlessly and sustainably," said Nilesh Patel, WEKA's chief product officer. "The WEKA Data Platform requires a high-performance hardware or cloud foundation to deliver maximum value to our customers. Through our collaboration with Micron and its new 6500 ION, we can deliver the performance our customers rely on with improved power consumption and cost savings."

The Micron 6500 ION reduces upfront purchase costs by coming in at a comparable price point to QLC SSDs while improving performance and endurance. It decreases operating expenses by using less power and requires less cooling. The drive's 30.72 TB capacity and dense form factors facilitate server consolidation lessening server software license costs and carbon emissions - all while outperforming and outlasting the competition. The 6500 ION also provides the industry's most advanced security features including Federal Information and Processing Standards (FIPS) ASIC certifiability and compliance with the Trade Agreement Act (TAA).

"Supermicro works with leading suppliers such as Micron to bring the latest technology to demanding customers worldwide who require a high-performing and secure storage technology," said Wally Liaw, Co-Founder and Senior Vice President of Business Development at Supermicro. "Customers that choose the new Micron 6500 ION SSD for their storage solutions can leverage its security features and the value of QLC with TLC performance."Micron XTR SSD: Extreme endurance for write-intensive workloads.
The Micron XTR SSD delivers extreme endurance to enable the reliable caching necessary for write-heavy workloads. When paired with the Micron 6500 ION, the Micron XTR optimizes storage workloads with minimal investment when compared to storage class memory-based solutions. The Micron XTR SSD is ideal for use cases that are write-intensive such as caching tiers, write buffering, logging and journaling, and online transaction processing workloads. Designed with Micron's proven vertically integrated storage architecture, the Micron XTR SSD also features an industry-leading security suite to instill confidence in data center deployments.

The Micron XTR SSD allows:

• Up to 35 random drive writes per day (DWPD) and up to 60 sequential DWPD; endurance ratings that far exceed conventional SSDs
• Up to 35% of the random DWPD endurance at 20% of the cost of a SCM SSD
• Up to 44% less power consumption
• 20% more usable capacity

In Microsoft SQL Server Analytics workload testing, where exceptional storage performance and optimal endurance are vital, the Micron XTR and Micron 6500 ION SSDs perform similarly to a solution using Micron 6500 ION and storage class memory (SCM) SSDs.13 When the Micron XTR and 6500 ION SSDs are combined, the Micron XTR fulfills the same role as the SCM SSDs by delivering nearly identical query performance.14 The Micron 6500 ION offers primary storage to meet the SQL Server performance and capacity needs, while the Micron XTR enables the endurance needed for the write-intensive operations in SQL Server, such as the tempdb volumes.