Samsung PM9A3 7.68TB PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe U.2 Data Center SSD MZ-QL27T60 (MZQL27T6HBLA-00A07)

The Samsung PM9A3 NVMe SSD supports PCI Express Gen 4, breaking through the read performance bottleneck experienced by SSDs that only support PCI Express Gen 3, and delivering up to 900k IOPS of random read performance. With the PM9A3, I/O operations benefit from hardware acceleration, which improves performance, while containing power consumption.
Random write performance of up to 200k IOPS is more than three times as fast as the previous generation of mainstream Samsung NVMe SSDs.

To meet the demand for high-utilization, high-duty cycle data centers, the PM9A3 SSD utilizes firmware which prioritizes quality of service (QoS) for sustained random workloads, to keep all virtual machines and containers running quickly and smoothly.
The firmware is optimized for always-on, always-busy workloads ready to respond quickly to incoming work requests.
Consistent latency on mixed read/write workloads is enhanced by the ability to suspend flash erase and program operations, in order to prioritize incoming read operations.

Best of all, Samsung PM9A3 delivers these high performance SSD features to the mainstream cost points, comparable to SATA SSDs, and with the ability to support high-volume cloud datacenter deployments.

Enterprise Functionality

Samsungs PM9A3 SSD has the power efficiency and cost effectiveness for large scale cloud datacenter deployment, but delivers features usually reserved for high-end enterprise NVMe SSDs.

Samsungs PM9A3 SSD keeps your private data confidential, with encryption via a hardware based AES-XTS 256-bit encryption engine, and management via the TCG Opal 2.0 standard. The new secure boot feature cryptographically verifies the integrity of every firmware images RSA 3072 digital signature prior to execution, helping defend against advanced security threats that target device firmware.

Samsungs PM9A3 SSD supports out-of-band drive management through NVMe Basic Management Command over SMBus. This enterprise functionality allows board management controllers to inventory and provision SSDs without operation system dependencies.

Samsungs PM9A3 SSD includes enterprise power loss protection (PLP).
During normal power-off periods, the host server allocates time to preserve data integrity by transmitting a standby command to each device. In the event of an unexpected power loss, though, the cached data in a storage devices internal DRAM buffers can be lost.
This can occur with unexpected power outages, or when users unplug devices from the system. However, the Samsung PM9A3 SSD has been designed to prevent data loss resulting from unexpected power shutdowns with its PLP architecture.
Upon detection of a failure, the SSD immediately uses the stored energy from its PLP capacitors to provide enough time to transfer the cached data in DRAM to the flash memory, ensuring no loss of data.