Micron 5210 QLC SSD Updated For The Data Center

by Adam Armstrong April 10, 2020

written by Adam Armstrong April 10, 2020

This week Micron announced new capacities and use cases for its QLC-based SSD, the Micron 5210 ION enterprise SATA SSD. This drive is predominantly aimed at replacing HDDs in the data center. These QLC drives will bring better performance and lower power usage without breaking the bank.

Micron 5210

HDDs have a place in the data center and most likely will keep having a place for years to come. However, several workloads that started on HDDs will be better served moving to flash-based storage (e.g. SQL and NoSQL databases, big data and analytics, object stores, and vSAN capacity tiers). While these workloads used to be stored on 10K HDDs with capacity around 1TB, they will see a definite performance advantage switching over to Micron 5210 SSDs. The company states that users will see 175x read performance, 2x write performance, and up to 3x energy savings.

New 5210 Product Developments:

QLC firmware innovations — An industry first, Micron’s latest QLC custom firmware helps remove QLC endurance concerns and workload limitations, enabling QLC SSDs to reliably replace HDDs in general-purpose servers and storage.
960GB SKU — Micron’s new 960GB SKU (now generally available) satisfies strong customer demand to replace 900GB to 1.2TB 10K HDDs with cost-competitive SATA QLC SSDs.
OEM qualifications — The Micron 5210 is now qualified by most major server OEMs, providing end customers numerous supply chain options and confidence that the 5210 has been stringently tested.
VMware vSAN-certified — The Micron 5210 is newly certified on VMware vSAN and one of the most cost-effective ways to move to all-flash vSAN.

Key Specifications

Capacity	960GB		1.92TB	3.84TB	7.68TB
Performance
Sequential reads (MB/s)	540		540	540	540
Sequential writes (MB/s)	130		260	350	360
Random reads (K IOPS)	40		70	83	90
Random writes (K IOPS)	7		13	6.5	4.5
Endurance
100% 128K Sequential Writes	0.8		0.8	0.8	0.8
90% 128K Sequential Writes/ 10% 4K Random Writes	0.71		0.72	0.62	0.56
80% 128K Sequential Writes / 20% 4K Random Writes	0.65		0.66	0.56	0.39
70% 128K Sequential Writes / 30% 4K Random Writes	0.56		0.56	0.41	0.27
50% 128K Sequential Writes / 50% 4K Random Writes	0.43		0.44	0.25	0.16
100% 4K Random Writes	0.2		0.2	0.09	0.05
Basic Attributes
Interface		SATA 6 Gb/s
Form factor		2.5-inch, 7mm
NAND		Micron 3D QLC NAND
Encryption		AES 256-bit (TCG Enterprise options available)
Reliability		MTTF 2 million device hours
UBER		<1 sector per 1017 bits read
Warranty		5 years
Environmental characteristics
Power consumption		Idle: 1.5W Sequential read: 2.8W max Sequential write: 6.3W max
Temperature (operating)		0-70° C
Physical characteristics
Size (L x W x H)		100.45mm x 69.85mm x 7.00mm
Weight		<70g