Again in March 2023, Apex Storage, a specialist in giant capability, multi-SSD storage, unveiled an add-in card (AIC) that may accommodate a whopping 21 PCIe SSD. Earlier right this moment Sabrent, a preferred storage vendor, confirmed that they’ll promote the cardboard because the Sabrent Apex X21 destroyer with a price ticket more likely to be round $3,000 with none SSDs.
On the coronary heart of the X21 is the HighPoint SSD7540 PCIe Gen4 x16 RAID card which has been tweaked to accommodate 21 playing cards. Why 21? As a result of that’s the utmost quantity playing cards that Apex might bodily match on the AIC.
Sabrent additionally mentioned that “The X21 will not be outfitted with a RAID controller chip, which permits finish customers to set the X21 up relying on system necessities. Additionally, no followers are outfitted on the cardboard, so customers would require cooling fan help to function.”
The US-based firm has been testing the cardboard with their very own Rocket 4 Plus 8TB merchandise and a spokesperson for Sabrent confirmed that the X21 can be suitable with 16TB SSD. When pressed for dates and costs, our contact mentioned that these 16TB SSD (more likely to be Rocket 4 Plus) will value round $2000 at launch, a big however anticipated value premium.
He added “Keep in mind when the primary 8TB’s got here out they had been like $2K, we had a number of hundred thousand $’s to get better, and now they’re fairly low cost in comparison with then. We now have to pay some huge cash to have these developed; then after they get within the provide chain and bought for a bit, we typically decrease the worth.”
Leading edge expertise to bleed you dry
The X21 loaded with 21 16TB playing cards would value about $45,000 when made out there later this 12 months. Sabrent advised me in June 2022 that they’d launch a 16TB SATA enterprise SSD however no M.2 SSD of this capability for a foreseeable future and information that it was testing a 16TB M.2 SSD emerged again in …. December 2020.
This card is primarily geared in direction of a prosumer/skilled/enterprise market. Suppose workstations, video enhancing computer systems and the likes. With sequential learn and write speeds as much as 30.5GBps and 28.5GBps, respectively, a random efficiency of seven.5 million IOPS reads/6.2 million IOPS writes plus full UEFI/Safe Boot Assist, the X21 affords each pace and capability for individuals who can afford it.
And sure, it is possible for you to to mix a pair of those in a RAID-0 configuration to double the efficiency and the capability. Simply just be sure you’ve obtained a stable backup plan (maybe with an answer from our greatest cloud backup or greatest backup software program lists) in case of snafus. In spite of everything, with 42 SSD and a complete mixed storage capability of 672TB, the (minute) dangers of one thing going flawed enhance by an order of magnitude.