OCZ Technology Group, a leading supplier of solid-state drives, has introduced a new solid-state drive for PCI Express bus that can be configured by system integrators in order to balance performance and reliability. The device is first of its kind, will offer whopping data protection and MTBF. Without support of enterprise-grade operating systems, it will likely find its place inside workstations and servers used by small businesses.

OCZ VeloDrive is powered by SandForce SF-1565 SSD controller that supports a number of intelligent features that extend endurance of SSDs (such as RAISE [Redundant Array of Independent Silicon Elements], intelligent block management and wear leveling and others), supports ECC and  power loss data protection. The new solid-state drives utilize Intel Corp.'s enterprise-grade multi-level cell (eMLC) NAND flash memory. Thanks to the sophisticated SSD controllers and up to 4 SATA controllers the VeloDrive has the ability to delivers transfer speeds of up to 1GB/s and 130 000 4KB random write IOPS, The VeloDrive will be available in 300GB, 600GB, and 1.2TB configurations. The drive uses PCIe 2.0 x8 interface.

The VeloDrive can be run in either hardware or software RAID mode and can be deployed in half-height or full-height system requirements. When compared with competing PCIe flash-based solutions, the highly-efficient VeloDrive has a minimal impact on system resources including CPU utilization and the system’s DRAM footprint, according to OCZ.

“The VeloDrive is the latest addition to our comprehensive lineup of PCIe SSDs.  A truly configurable solution, it helps a range of customers accelerate their application performance. The ability to run the VeloDrive in multiple modes provides clients with the freedom to use the RAID stack of their choice. This maximizes performance and creates faster, more seamless deployments with RAID stacks that may already have been qualified for their unique usage model," said Daryl Lang, vice president of product management of OCZ Technology Group.

OCZ's VeloDrive delivers whopping 10 million hours meantime between failure (MTBF), which is in line with enterprise-class storage solutions. However, since it is currently only compatible with Microsoft Windows 7, XP, Vista operating systems, it will be mostly used by SMBs or for small non-mission-critical deployments.

Tags: OCZ, SSD, VeloDrive, eMLC, NAND, Flash