The EDSFF E1.S Form Factor, M.2 With A Tie
Optane found a home in the servers of companies willing to pay the premium price it comes with and so Intel has continued to develop new products. In addition they are using a new form factor to replace M.2 in Enterprise systems, the EDSFF E1.S form factor is similar to the gumsticks we have become familiar with but with heavier duty cooling and support for hot swapping. This helps overcome the two main hurdles to supporting M.2 SSDs in production servers.
The Intel Optane P5801X will come in 400GB and 800GB models and will use 3D XPoint to deliver the what Intel is describing as the fastest SSD in the world. That speed does come at the cost of capacity, which is what the D7-P5520 is for. That drive will come in capacities between 1.92TB to 7.68TB, offering large amounts of high speed storage for customers. You might be able to find larger U.2 Enterprise drives but if you want to keep your storage density high and be able to hot swap your drives this is the one to go with.
The drives should arrive some time in Q3 of this year so ServeTheHome doesn’t have much more detail than that, apart from a glance at a new 5U Vulkan City server chassis.
The new standard has benefits such as better cooling and hot-swap capabilities which can be challenges in M.2 SSD deployments. The new Intel Optane P5801X is a SSD designed for high-performance but lower capacity using 3D XPoint while the Intel D7-P5520 is designed for capacity and performance.
