Conclusion, Pricing, and Final Thoughts

Conclusion:

Pros:

  • Outstanding IOPS performance.
  • Outstanding Latency / QoS performance.
  • Very high density with 2.4TB (or even 3.2TB for PRO) in a 2.5" U.2 package.

Cons:

  • Care must be taken to properly cool the 2.5" U.2 form factor under heavy load.

Pricing:

We don't have specific pricing, but Micron gave us guidance that the 9100 MAX Series will come in at ~$1.35/GB. That works out to the following:

  • 1.2TB – $1620
  • 2.4TB – $3240

Micron also stated that the 9100 PRO series will come in at ~$1.10/GB:

  • 800GB – $880
  • 1.6TB  – $1760
  • 3.2TB  – $3520

Considering the P3700 launched at $2/GB, these are quite the deal (but still expensive).

Final Thoughts:

Micron has certainly knocked our socks off with the performance of their new 9100 MAX Series. With 2.2GB/s writes, 3.2GB/s reads, and a measured 735,000 random 4KB read IOPS, the 9100 MAX can handle random IO faster than the Intel P3700 can go in a straight line! Our new QoS testing showed far lower latency peaks under a PACED load, and that new method of SSD loading was also carried over to our Latency Percentile testing, where the 9100 MAX once again showed its prowess. If you are an enterprise builder after the fastest thing to fuel your next high-powered SAN build, the Micron 9100 Series is absolutely worth a good hard look. 

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