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Table of Contents
Abstract
The ThinkSystem PM1655 Mixed Use SAS 24Gb SSDs in capacities of up to 6.4 TB are next-generation high-performance 24Gb SAS self-encrypting SSDs (SEDs) suitable for a wide range of applications of running on ThinkSystem servers.
This product guide provides essential presales information to understand the PM1655 SSDs and their key features, specifications, and compatibility. This guide is intended for technical specialists, sales specialists, sales engineers, IT architects, and other IT professionals who want to learn more about the PM1655 SSDs and consider their use in IT solutions.
Change History
Changes in the July 9, 2023 update:
- Added vendor part numbers - Part number information section
Introduction
The ThinkSystem PM1655 Mixed Use SAS 24Gb SSDs are next-generation high-performance 24Gb SAS self-encrypting SSDs (SEDs) suitable for a wide range of applications of running on ThinkSystem servers. The drives are available in capacities of up to 6.4 TB.
The PM1655 SSDs are the follow-on to the PM1645a SSDs and offer improved performance.
Figure 1. ThinkSystem PM1655 Mixed Use SAS 24Gb SSDs
Did you know?
Unlike 6 Gb/s SATA drives, the 24 Gb/s SAS interface on these drives supports full duplex data transfer for higher performance, and enterprise-level error recovery for better availability. By combining the enhanced reliability of Samsung NAND flash memory silicon with NAND Flash management technologies, PM1655 SSDs deliver the extended endurance of up to 3 drive writes per day (DWPD) for 5 years, which is suitable for many enterprise applications.
Self-encrypting drives (SEDs) provide benefits by encrypting data on-the-fly at the drive level with no performance impact, by providing instant secure erasure thereby making the data no longer readable, and by enabling auto-locking to secure active data if a drive is misplaced or stolen from a system while in use. These features are essential for many businesses, especially those storing customer data.
Part number information
The following tables list the information for ordering part numbers and feature codes.
The part numbers include the following items:
- One solid-state drive with a hot-swap tray
- Documentation flyer
Features
The ThinkSystem PM1655 Mixed Use SAS 24Gb SSDs have the following features:
- Server-grade SSD suitable for mixed read-write-intensive workloads
- Features Samsung’s latest sixth-generation, 128-layer V-NAND TLC storage technology
- Endurance of 3 drive-writes per day (DWPD)
- 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch industry standard form factor with hot-swap tray
- SAS 24 Gb/s interface
- Compliant with the Trusted Computing Group Enterprise Security Subsystem Class cryptographic standard (TCG Enterprise 1.01 )
- Protect data integrity from unexpected power loss with Samsung's advanced power-loss protection architecture
- Supports Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T)
- End-to-end data protection
- Support 16 Initiator with Tag Command Queuing (TCQ) Command Set with a queue-depth of up to 128 commands
- Compliant with SCSI Specification (SAS-3 / SPL-3 / SBC-4 / SPC-4 / SAM-5)
- RoHS Compliant
24 Gb/s SAS support: In order to support 24 Gb/s SAS connectivity, the drive, backplane and SAS controller must all support 24 Gb/s speeds.
Read Intensive SSDs and Mixed Use SSDs have similar read and write IOPS performance, but the key difference between them is their endurance (or lifetime) — that is, how long they can perform write operations because SSDs have a finite number of program/erase (P/E) cycles. Mixed Use SSDs have better endurance but lower cost/IOPS ratio compared to Read Intensive SSDs. SSD write endurance is typically measured by the number of program/erase (P/E) cycles that the drive incurs over its lifetime, listed as the total bytes of written data (TBW) in the device specification.
The TBW value assigned to a solid-state device is the total bytes of written data (based on the number of P/E cycles) that a drive can be guaranteed to complete (% of remaining P/E cycles = % of remaining TBW). Reaching this limit does not cause the drive to immediately fail. It simply denotes the maximum number of writes that can be guaranteed. A solid-state device will not fail upon reaching the specified TBW. At some point based on manufacturing variance margin, after surpassing the TBW value, the drive will reach the end-of-life point, at which the drive will go into a read-only mode.
The benefits of drive encryption
Self-encrypting drives (SEDs) provide benefits in three main ways:
- By encrypting data on-the-fly at the drive level with no performance impact
- By providing instant secure erasure (cryptographic erasure, thereby making the data no longer readable)
- By enabling auto-locking to secure active data if a drive is misplaced or stolen from a system while in use
The following sections describe the benefits in more details.
Automatic encryption
It is vital that a company keep its data secure. With the threat of data loss due to physical theft or improper inventory practices, it is important that the data be encrypted. However, challenges with performance, scalability, and complexity have led IT departments to push back against security policies that require the use of encryption. In addition, encryption has been viewed as risky by those unfamiliar with key management, a process for ensuring a company can always decrypt its own data. Self-encrypting drives comprehensively resolve these issues, making encryption both easy and affordable.
When the self-encrypting drive is in normal use, its owner need not maintain authentication keys (otherwise known as credentials or passwords) in order to access the data on the drive. The self-encrypting drive will encrypt data being written to the drive and decrypt data being read from it, all without requiring an authentication key from the owner.
Drive retirement and disposal
When hard drives are retired and moved outside the physically protected data center into the hands of others, the data on those drives is put at significant risk. IT departments retire drives for a variety of reasons, including:
- Returning drives for warranty, repair, or expired lease agreements
- Removal and disposal of drives
- Repurposing drives for other storage duties
Nearly all drives eventually leave the data center and their owner's control. Corporate data resides on such drives, and when most leave the data center, the data they contain is still readable. Even data that has been striped across many drives in a RAID array is vulnerable to data theft because just a typical single stripe in today’s high-capacity arrays is large enough to expose for example, hundreds of names and bank account numbers.
In an effort to avoid data breaches and the ensuing customer notifications required by data privacy laws, companies use different methods to erase the data on retired drives before they leave the premises and potentially fall into the wrong hands. Current retirement practices that are designed to make data unreadable rely on significant human involvement in the process, and are thus subject to both technical and human failure.
The drawbacks of today’s drive retirement practices include the following:
- Overwriting drive data is expensive, tying up valuable system resources for days. No notification of completion is generated by the drive, and overwriting won’t cover reallocated sectors, leaving that data exposed.
- Methods that include degaussing or physically shredding a drive are expensive. It is difficult to ensure the degauss strength is optimized for the drive type, potentially leaving readable data on the drive. Physically shredding the drive is environmentally hazardous, and neither practice allows the drive to be returned for warranty or expired lease.
- Some companies have concluded the only way to securely retire drives is to keep them in their control, storing them indefinitely in warehouses. But this is not truly secure because a large volume of drives coupled with human involvement inevitably leads to some drives being lost or stolen.
- Professional disposal services is an expensive option and includes the cost of reconciling the services as well as internal reports and auditing. Transporting of the drives also has the potential of putting the data at risk.
Self-encrypting drives eliminate the need to overwrite, destroy, or store retired drives. When the drive is to be retired, it can be cryptographically erased, a process that is nearly instantaneous regardless of the capacity of the drive.
Instant secure erase
The self-encrypting drive provides instant data encryption key destruction via cryptographic erasure. When it is time to retire or repurpose the drive, the owner sends a command to the drive to perform a cryptographic erasure. Cryptographic erasure simply replaces the encryption key inside the encrypted drive, making it impossible to ever decrypt the data encrypted with the deleted key.
Self-encrypting drives reduce IT operating expenses by reducing asset control challenges and disposal costs. Data security with self-encrypting drives helps ensure compliance with privacy regulations without hindering IT efficiency. So called "Safe Harbor" clauses in government regulations allow companies to not have to notify customers of occurrences of data theft if that data was encrypted and therefore unreadable.
Furthermore, self-encrypting drives simplify decommissioning and preserve hardware value for returns and repurposing by:
- Eliminating the need to overwrite or destroy the drive
- Securing warranty returns and expired lease returns
- Enabling drives to be repurposed securely
Auto-locking
Insider theft or misplacement is a growing concern for businesses of all sizes; in addition, managers of branch offices and small businesses without strong physical security face greater vulnerability to external theft. Self-encrypting drives include a feature called auto-lock mode to help secure active data against theft.
Using a self-encrypting drive when auto-lock mode is enabled simply requires securing the drive with an authentication key. When secured in this manner, the drive’s data encryption key is locked whenever the drive is powered down. In other words, the moment the self-encrypting drive is switched off or unplugged, it automatically locks down the drive’s data.
When the self-encrypting drive is then powered back on, it requires authentication before being able to unlock its encryption key and read any data on the drive, thus protecting against misplacement and theft.
While using self-encrypting drives just for the instant secure erase is an extremely efficient and effective means to help securely retire a drive, using self-encrypting drives in auto-lock mode provides even more advantages. From the moment the drive or system is removed from the data center (with or without authorization), the drive is locked. No advance thought or action is required from the data center administrator to protect the data. This helps prevent a breach should the drive be mishandled and helps secure the data against the threat of insider or outside theft.
Technical specifications
The following tables lists the technical specifications for the ThinkSystem PM1655 Mixed Use SAS 24Gb SSDs.
Adapter support
The drives are supported with all ThinkSystem SAS/SATA adapters, except for:
- ThinkSystem RAID 730-8i 1GB Cache PCIe 12Gb Adapter, 7Y37A01083
- ThinkSystem RAID 730-8i 2GB Flash PCIe 12Gb Adapter, 4Y37A09722
Server support
The following tables list the ThinkSystem servers that are compatible.
Operating system support
SAS and SATA SSDs operate transparently to users, storage systems, applications, databases, and operating systems.
Operating system support is based on the controller used to connect to the drives. Consult the controller product guide for more information:
- RAID controllers: https://lenovopress.com/servers/options/raid
- SAS HBAs: https://lenovopress.com/servers/options/hba
IBM SKLM Key Management support
To effectively manage a large deployment of SEDs in Lenovo servers, IBM Security Key Lifecycle Manager (SKLM) offers a centralized key management solution. Certain Lenovo servers support Features on Demand (FoD) license upgrades that enable SKLM support.
The following table lists the part numbers and feature codes to enable SKLM support in the management processor of the server.
The IBM Security Key Lifecycle Manager software is available from Lenovo using the ordering information listed in the following table.
The following tables list the ThinkSystem servers that are compatible with the FoD upgrades for SKLM.
Warranty
The PM1655 SSDs carry a one-year, customer-replaceable unit (CRU) limited warranty. When the SSDs are installed in a supported server, these drives assume the system’s base warranty and any warranty upgrades.
Solid State Memory cells have an intrinsic, finite number of program/erase cycles that each cell can incur. As a result, each solid state device has a maximum amount of program/erase cycles to which it can be subjected. The warranty for Lenovo solid state drives (SSDs) is limited to drives that have not reached the maximum guaranteed number of program/erase cycles, as documented in the Official Published Specifications for the SSD product. A drive that reaches this limit may fail to operate according to its Specifications.
Physical specifications
PM1655 SSDs have the following physical specifications (without hot-swap tray):
- Height: 15 mm (0.6 in.)
- Width: 70 mm (2.8 in.)
- Depth: 100 mm (4.0 in.)
- Weight: 160 g (5.6 oz)
Operating environment
PM1655 SSDs are supported in the following environment:
- Temperature, operating: 0 - 70 °C (32 - 158 °F)
- Temperature, non-operating: -40 to 85 °C (-40 - 185 °F)
- Relative humidity: 5 - 95% (noncondensing)
- Maximum altitude: -300 - 4,572 m (-1,000 to 15,000 feet)
Agency approvals
PM1655 SSDs conform to the following regulations:
- UL
- TUV
- FCC
- IC
- CB
- CE Mark
- C-Tick Mark
- BSMI (Taiwan)
- KCC (Korea EMI)
- VCCI
Related publications and links
For more information, see the following documents:
- Lenovo Press product guides and papers on RAID adapters and HBAs
https://lenovopress.com/servers/options/raid - Lenovo RAID Management Tools and Resources
https://lenovopress.com/lp0579-lenovo-raid-management-tools-and-resources - Lenovo RAID Introduction
https://lenovopress.com/lp0578-lenovo-raid-introduction - Samsung Enterprise SSDs home page
https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/ssd/enterprise-ssd/
Trademarks
Lenovo and the Lenovo logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Lenovo in the United States, other countries, or both. A current list of Lenovo trademarks is available on the Web at https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/legal/copytrade/.
The following terms are trademarks of Lenovo in the United States, other countries, or both:
Lenovo®
System x®
ThinkSystem®
The following terms are trademarks of other companies:
AMD is a trademark of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
Intel® is a trademark of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries.
Other company, product, or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.
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Full Change History
Changes in the July 9, 2023 update:
- Added vendor part numbers - Part number information section
Changes in the June 23, 2023 update:
- Added performance data for a 12 Gb/s single-port SAS connection - Technical specications section
Changes in the June 20, 2023 update:
- The drives are not supported with the RAID 730 adapters - Adapter support section
Changes in the December 13, 2022 update:
- Added the table of technical specifications - Technical specifications section
Changes in the October 7, 2022 update:
- Added information about drive encryption - The benefits of drive encryption section
First published: August 23, 2022
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