Lenovo ThinkSystem E1.S DC4800 Read Intensive NVMe PCIe 4.0 x4 HS SSDs

Introduction

The ThinkSystem E1.S DC4800 Read Intensive NVMe SSDs are general-purpose yet high-performance family of NVMe solid-state drives in the EDSFF E1.S form factor. They are engineered for greater performance and endurance in a cost-effective design, and to support a broader set of workloads. With SED encryption as standard, these drives help ensure data security, even when the drive is removed from the server.

SED support: All drives listed in this product guide include SED drive encryption. Our naming convention for new drives doesn't include SED in the name.

Did you know?

Lenovo Read Intensive SSDs are suitable for read-intensive and general-purpose data center workloads, however their NVMe PCIe interface means the drives also offer high performance. Overall, these SSDs provide outstanding IOPS/watt and cost/IOPS for enterprise solutions.

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

Withdrawn: The drives in this product guide are withdrawn from marketing.

• One solid-state drive
• Hot swap drives include a hot-swap tray
• Documentation flyer

Features

Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) is PCIe high performance SSD technology that provides high I/O throughput and low latency. NVMe interfaces remove SAS/SATA bottlenecks and unleash all of the capabilities of contemporary NAND flash memory. Each NVMe PCI SSD has direct PCIe x4 connection, which provides at least 2x more bandwidth and 2x less latency than SATA/SAS-based SSD solutions. NVMe drives are also optimized for heavy multi-threaded workloads by using internal parallelism and many other improvements, such as enlarged I/O queues.

The ThinkSystem E1.S DC4800 Read Intensive NVMe SSDs have the following features:

• NVMe SSD with PCIe 4.0 performance
• E1.S 5.9mm hot-swap drive form factor
• Based on the SMART Modular Technologies DC4800 family of SSDs
• Compliant with Trusted Computing Group Opal 2.0 Security Subsystem Class cryptographic standard (TCG Opal 2.0 SSC)
• SMART 3D TLC NAND technology
• Direct PCIe 4.0 x4 connection for each NVMe drive, resulting in up to 8 GBps overall throughput.
• Advanced ECC Engine and End-to-End Data Protection
• Protect data integrity from unexpected power loss with advanced power-loss protection (PLP) architecture
• Supports Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T).
• AES-XTS 256 encryption and NIST 800-38F key wrapping
• Secure boot with ECDSA-256, SHA3-512
• Supports the following specifications:
  • PCI Express Base Specification 3.1
  • NVM Express Specification Rev. 1.4a
  • NVM Express Management Interface Specification Rev. 1.1
  • NVM Express Cloud SSD Specification 1.0

Drive Endurance and TBW

Read Intensive SSDs and Write Intensive SSDs have similar read IOPS performance, but the key difference between them is their endurance -- how long they can reliably perform write operations. Read Intensive SSDs have a better cost/IOPS ratio but lower endurance compared to Write Intensive SSDs. SSD write endurance is typically measured by the number of program/erase (P/E) write 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.

Because of such behavior by Read Intensive solid-state drives, careful planning must be done to use them only in read-intensive or mixed use (70% read/30% write) environments to ensure that the TBW of the drive will not be exceeded before the required life expectancy.

For example, the DC4800 3.84 TB drive has an endurance of 7,000 TB of total bytes written (TBW). This means that for full operation over five years, write workload must be limited to no more than 3,836 GB of writes per day, which is equivalent to 1.0 full drive writes per day (DWPD). For the device to last three years, the drive write workload must be limited to no more than 6,393 GB of writes per day, which is equivalent to 1.7 full drive writes per day.

The benefits of drive encryption

All ThinkSystem E1.S DC4800 Read Intensive NVMe SSDs support 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.

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

Server Support

The following tables list the ThinkSystem servers that are compatible.

Table 3. Server support (Part 1 of 3)

Table 4. Server support (Part 2 of 3)

Table 5. Server support (Part 3 of 3)

Storage controller support

NVMe PCIe SSDs require a NVMe drive backplane and some form of PCIe connection to processors. PCIe connections can take the form of either an adapter (PCIe Interposer or PCIe extender) or simply a cable that connects to an onboard NVMe connector.

Consult the relevant server product guide for details about required components for NVMe drive support.

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.

Table 6. FoD upgrades for SKLM support

The IBM Security Key Lifecycle Manager software is available from Lenovo using the ordering information listed in the following table.

Table 7. IBM Security Key Lifecycle Manager licenses

The following tables list the ThinkSystem servers that support the SKLM FoD license upgrades.

Table 8. IBM SKLM Key Management license upgrades (Part 1 of 3)

Table 9. IBM SKLM Key Management license upgrades (Part 2 of 3)

Table 10. IBM SKLM Key Management license upgrades (Part 3 of 3)

Warranty

The DC4800 E1.S 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

• Length: 119 mm
• Width: 34 mm
• Thickness, without heatsink: 5.9 mm
• Thickness, with heatsink: 9.5 mm

Operating environment

• Temperature:
  • Operating: 0 to 70 °C (32 to 158 °F)
  • Non-operating: -40 to 85 °C (-40 to 185 °F)
• Relative humidity, Non-operating: 5 to 95% (noncondensing)
• Maximum altitude: 3,050 m (10,000 ft)
• Shock, non-operating: 1,500 G (Max) at 0.5 ms
• Vibration, non-operating (Sine): 20 G_RMS (5-3000 Hz)

Agency approvals

• RoHS
• CE
• FCC
• BSMI

Related publications and links

• Lenovo ThinkSystem SSD Portfolio Comparison https://lenovopress.com/lp1261-lenovo-thinksystem-ssd-portfolio
• SMART Modular Technologies Data Center SSD product page https://www.smartm.com/product/list/data-center-ssd

Related product families

• Drives

Notices

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This document, LP1799, was created or updated on August 22, 2023.

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