back to article By gum: Supermicro's Samsung storage ruler server uses secret SSD

Supermicro's latest Samsung ruler-based thin storage server can cough up 10 million IOPS, has a 20GB/sec throughput and 576TB capacity, which is all very well, but its Intel ruler one can provide 13 million IOPS, 52GB/sec and a whole petabyte. The new Sammy ruler-based product, the SSG-1029P-NMR36L, has 36 x 18TB NF1 format …

  1. Sir Loin Of Beef
    1. GrumpenKraut
      Holmes

      > Cost?

      Hellacious, obviously!

      1. jmsavoy

        Actually ... they are VERY reasonably priced ... I haven't seen the pricing for the Samsung version but the Intel boxes are quite competitive vs traditional all-flash SAS storage. Also -- the Intel boxes come in both Ruler and U.2 form factors. The article also gets one thing wrong, SMCI does indeed have a server version of the Intel boxes in addition to the PCIe-switched JBOF ... really cool stuff !!

    2. confused and dazed
      Megaphone

      sorry, but this is half a story

      Without cost information these articles really just willy waving by the hardware vendors

    3. Adam 1

      if you have to ask....

      you probably aren't their target market.

  2. Aladdin Sane

    Is it as good as the Gavin Belson Signature Box?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Pardon my ignorance....

    I work for a Printer and Ink company with a two letter name that moonlights in client PCs. We chucked the deadweight (and our server business along with her) that was hell-bent in running our company into the ground with shitty products a few years ago, so I'm kind of wondering, why is it called a ruler? Something to do with the form factor or the size of the disks? I'm genuinely curious.

    1. Malcolm Weir Silver badge

      Re: Pardon my ignorance....

      Yup. It's ruler as in "12 inch ruler", not "monarch"!

      This is a new form factor that Intel hopes to standardize that's designed specifically for 1U packages. The things are 38mm tall (call it 1.5inches, which fits into a 1.75in thing nicely) and 330mm (13 inches) long and the usual 9.5mm thick.

      Of course, in my particular corner of the world, a very common form-factor for systems has 12.52in as it's longest dimension, so these are totally useless...

  4. CloudTWGchair

    Ruler or Gumstick?

    Samsung's drive is not long enough to label Ruler. More of a Gumstick.

    Not much improvement over M.2 and dangerous in an environment with both,

    The 1 U Long standard form factor is being developed by multiple vendors, not just Intel.

    There is no standard called Ruler but 1UL was characterized that way.

    The reason only Samsung makes Gumsticks is because they sized it perfectly for their NAND package size.

    1. Malcolm Weir Silver badge

      Re: Ruler or Gumstick?

      Both the Intel and Samsung formats have multiple players.

      The Samsung "NF1" / NGSFF is heavily based on the M.2 design, and I see nothing "dangerous" about that fact (FUD much?). In some circles the thing is referred to as "M.3"! By design, the Samsung devices will work in an M.2 connector (as long as you have the physical space around it). So the "NF1" module could be described (in M.2 terminology) as a "30110"

      And, contrary to the above assertion, it offers a major improvement over M.2 in terms of board real-estate: the 22mm width is just too wide to stack two of them in a 1U space (which is 44mm). The point of the wider format (at 30mm) is that you can mount them vertically in a 1U, plugging into a mid-plane (exactly the same concept as Intel's uses).

      The divergence is seems to be that Intel is targetting "large rack" servers, where >27" depth might be routine, while Samsung is aiming at an incremental improvement over M.2/U.2 while supporting "short rack" configurations (<24") and non-rack applications.

      The biggest challenge with either approach in the 1U configuration is getting the heat out, and Intel is less attractive in that regard because of the encapsulation. By focusing on the SSD only, Samsung makes it easier for designers to add mounting hardware to support whatever cooling scheme suits the application. (Same is true for M.2 over U.2).

  5. 89724102172714182892114I7551670349743096734346773478647892349863592355648544996312855148587659264921

    Good to see Supermicro again doing the moderately insane

    1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

      Meanwhile, Awakened and ACTive, are Spirited Bodies EMPowered with Further Enablements

      Doing the Madly Sane would be a Novel Noble Nobel Test of System Critical Processors for AIRealisations. Ab Fab Fabless Futures for Populating New AIdVentures ...... SMARTR AIMachine Presentations, Revealing how Everything is Done Remarkably Easily with Almighty Virtualised IT Forces for Full Remote AI Command and Control. The Home Realm of Absolutes and their Interns/AIMentored Monitors.

      I suppose if working with that one needs the feed of Completed Original Equipment Workshop Manuals/Original Equipment Operator Bibles.

  6. Andy The Hat Silver badge

    Does anyone else think these are starting to look like banks of Star Trek control crystals?

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Always thought these were a good idea, so much wasted space in 1u rack servers these days.

    We even moved to installing NUCs in a rack and it works great.

  8. ColonelClaw

    Question:

    How does redundancy work with these boxes? I notice they have no RAID (AFAIK no hardware RAID solution exists for PCI-E SSDs), so how does the data they hold get protected? Some sort of software?

    1. the hatter

      Re: Question:

      Software raid has a much better chance of keeping up with your needs, especially since there are fewer instances of spinning rust, and the related paradigms that host cards were built with, and (except at this sort of scale) we have enough spare CPU on the side to manage it, rather than having to offload it to a separate processor. But at this scale, you wouldn't want to fund the development of a controller card powerful enough, given how few units would ship.

    2. Malcolm Weir Silver badge

      Re: Question:

      Generally, either software RAID or higher-level duplication over distributed file systems and the like (the Google model).

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