Samsung unveils its first ZNS solid state drive

Samsung Electronics today announced the PM1731a Enterprise Solid State Drive with Zoned Namespace (ZNS) technology. This technology maximizes the user-available capacity and the lifespan of the SSD.

ZNS allows you to group data based on usage and frequency of access and store it sequentially in independent zones on an SSD. By eliminating the need to move and organize data, ZNS SSDs can dramatically reduce the number of writes by lowering the write gain (WAF) of the drive, defined as the number of actual writes performed by the drive compared to the writes originally assigned by the host system. The closer the WAF is to one, the more efficiently the SSD is used and the longer it will last.

In the case of Samsung’s new SSD with ZNS, the WAF is close to one, which is a significant improvement over the standard server SSDs of three to four. The service life is extended to the same extent. In addition, users have access to the entire capacity of the solid state drive, since there is no need to reserve disk space.

The 2.5-inch PM1731a drives, which use Samsung’s sixth-generation V-NAND flash, will be available in 2TB and 4TB sizes. They will get two ports each for constant availability and minimizing downtime.

Samsung plans to start mass production of ZNS SSDs in the second half of the year.