WD Gold NVMe U.2 SSD Range Revealed – WDS960G1D0D WDS192T1D0D WDS384T1D0D & WDS768T1D0D

New U.2 PCIe Gen 3.1×4 NVMe SSD in the WD Gold Series

WD is still one of the biggest names in enterprise Storage and their recently re-adopted WD Gold label has gained a new addition. This new top tier class Solid State Drive will utilize the PCIe based U.2 form factor and enable small and medium-sized enterprise users to easily make the jump from SATA and/or traditional SAS HDDs, to NVMe U.2 storage and dramatically improve application performance. These are the first enterprise-class NVMe SSD in the WD Gold range, though NVMe is available in their SATA connected WD Black ad Blue ranges, the big shift towards NVMe and U.2 connected drives has opened the door to WD Gold adopting this connection, equipped with the U.2 (SAS) based connection to ensure the PCIe throughout of there SSDs is not reduced. The appeal of this kind of storage is growing rapidly, with increased in huge Xeon powered, multi-core, multi-threaded CPUs appearing in modern NAS servers and SAN solutions, thereby removing the restrictions of SATA. Highlights of the new range are:

• Give your enterprise system an endurance boost with 0.8 DW/D
• Rest easy with up to 2.0M hours of MTBF
• Help eliminate sensitive data for good with fast and effective secure erase
• Specifically designed for use in enterprise-class storage systems and datacenters
• Improve system responsiveness and boost your business’s productivity
• Our 5-year limited warranty will give you peace of mind

WD Gold NVMe SSD Range – What Do We Know?

We are being indicated that this new series will arrive in Q2 2020, with these new WD Gold U.2 NVMe SSDs will be available in four tiers of storage capacities, starting at 960GB, this range will scale all the way upto 7.68TB in capacity. Designed to be used in bulk and as a suitable alternative to the WD Gold SAS Hard Drives ranges, the hope is that now capacities are approaching the arguable higher values available in slower and more exhaustive HDDs, that users will make the cross over for their storage as the usability of their current media reaches the end of its optimal performance and reliability. These drives are available for us and are compatible with largely any modern system that uses the U.2 / SAS connector, though the PCIe Gen will play a factor in overall performance in real-world tests.

Design
Capacity	960GB	1.92TB	3.84TB	7.68TB
Price (Dollars and TBC)	$241.99	$434.99	$870.99	$1,739.99
Model Number	WDS960G1D0D	WDS192T1D0D	WDS384T1D0D	WDS768T1D0D
Form Factor	U.2	U.2	U.2	U.2
Interface	PCIe Gen 3.1 x4	PCIe Gen 3.1 x4	PCIe Gen 3.1 x4	PCIe Gen 3.1 x4
Endurance (Drive writes per day, DW/D)	0.8	0.8	0.8	0.8
Read Throughput (max MiB/s, Seq 128KiB)	3K	3.1K	3.1K	3.1K
Write Throughput (max MiB/s, Seq 128KiB)	1.1K	2K	1.8K	1.8K
Read IOPS (max, Rnd 4KiB)	413K	472K	469K	467K
Write IOPS (max, Rnd 4KiB)	44K	63K	63K	65K
Maximum Petabytes Written	1.4	2.8	5.61	11.21
MTBF (M hours)	2	2	2	2
Dimensions (width x length, mm)	69.85 (+/- 0.25) x 100.45	69.85 (+/- 0.25) x 100.45	69.85 (+/- 0.25) x 100.45	69.85 (+/- 0.25) x 100.45
Operating Modes (W, Average)	10, 11, 12	10, 11, 12	10, 11, 12	10, 11, 12
Idle (W, average)	4.6	4.6	4.6	4.6
Security Encryption	No	No	No	No
Limited Warranty (yrs)	5	5	5	5

WD Gold NVMe SSD Range – Who Are They For?

These new series of WD Gold NVMe SSDs are designed with Western Digital’s silicon-to-system design history and include their own 3D TLC NAND SSD media, along with enterprise-focused purpose-built firmware and own integrated WD controllers. As you would expect from both an SSD and an enterprise-grade media product, the WD Gold WDS960G1D0D, WDS192T1D0D, WDS384T1D0D and WDS768T1D0D SSD all arrive with 5 years of manufacturers warranty to support clients who are using this media in their day to day operations. Alongside this, we have the other WD enterprise SSD inclusions of secure boot and secure erase options to give their clients additional data-management protection. Largely highlighted everywhere is the quote that according to IDC (International Data Corporation) in a study, presented an updated outlook at the SSD market through to 2023.

“2019 has proved to be a challenging year for the SSD industry to navigate and to find balance between supply and demand,” said Jeff Janukowicz, research vice president for Solid State Drives and Enabling Technologies at IDC. “However, price demand elasticity and secular trend remain intact for SSDs in client devices and for enterprise datacenter solutions, and as a result, IDC increased its outlook and expects worldwide SSD industry revenue to grow at a 2018–2023 CAGR of 10.7%.”  – IDC

This is interesting to see, that PCIe grade SSD is now arriving at a pricepoint that can make it appealing in the long term of medium business users and above to factor into their long term portfolio. However, as mentioned previously, we are seeing hardware shortages in a number of areas of technology due to natural disasters in recent years and the recently spreading Coronavirus, that is leading to many factories in the east closing large sections of their production operations out of both pre-emptive measures or sheer necessity to eliminate it spreading. This may well affect the launch of this range, as well as the adopted price at launch and should be factored into consideration. Nevertheless, units WILL arrive but expect quantities to be low at initial launch.

WD Gold NVMe SSD Range – How Much Will They Be?

Prices for the WD Gold NVMe SSD series are still tentative, but the WD Offical Website listed them (in dollars), but this is almost certainly subject to change. Here are the prices we know:

WD Gold 960GB NVMe SSD WDS960G1D0D – $241.99

WD Gold 1.92TB NVMe SSD WDS192T1D0D – $434.99

WD Gold 3.84TB NVMe SSD WDS384T1D0D – $870.99

WD Gold 7.68TB NVMe SSD WDS768T1D0D – $1,739.99

WD Gold NVMe SSD Range – What is the Alternative To Buy?

As mentioned, the WD Gold NVMe SSD series is still not available to buy yet (though pre-orders are possible). If you are looking at buying new storage media for your data center and are focused on U.2 NVMe SSD options, but cannot wait till the eventual release of the WDS960G1D0D WDS192T1D0D WDS384T1D0D & WDS768T1D0D, then I recommend the WD UltraStar DC SN640 and SN630 Series here:

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