Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., global memory technology leader, is announcing that its SM1625 enterprise SSD has been certified by VMware as an optimized solution when utilized with VMware’s Virtual SANTM. VMware Virtual SAN is a new software-defined enterprise storage system that enables users to pool server HDDs with Flash resources, creating a resilient, high-performance and dynamic shared storage solution for virtual machines.

Samsung’s SM1625 SSD is a dual-ported SAS high-performance solid-state drive that features high density (up to 800GB) and low power consumption. The SM1625 is Samsung’s first SSD to be certified for the VMware Virtual SAN. Utilizing 20nm-class architecture, the SM1625 offers up to 200 times greater power efficiency compared to conventional 15,000 RPM HDDs, and also features power loss protection to keep data safe in the event of a power outage or interruption.

According to John Gilmartin, vice president of Cloud Infrastructure Products at VMware, “VMware Virtual SANTM provides customers a simpler and more flexible tier of storage for their virtual machines. By clustering Flash and direct-attached storage, VMware Virtual SAN provides a shared storage solution that is high-performing, cost-effective, and seamlessly integrated into VMware vCenterTM Server. We are proud to have Samsung’s SM1625 SSD as a high-performance storage option for our joint customers.”

Samsung’s newly certified SM1625 SAS SSD is capable of sequential reads of 950 MB/s, and is also rated for random read speeds of 120,000 IOPS. The SM1625 can handle up to 10 drive writes per day, which is an endurance rate that will cover the full five-year warranty period. The SM1625 enterprise SSD is offered in capacities of 100GB,200GB, 400GB and 800GB.

JaeHyeong Lee, vice president of memory product planning and application engineering at Samsung Electronics. states that “We are very enthusiastic about this SM1625 certification as the basis for partnering with VMware to offer a SAS storage solution for the enterprise. We will work closely with not only our OEM customers but also global software companies such as VMware in looking to develop high performing and environmentally-friendly IT systems for data center applications and enterprise storage.”

Samsung indicates that it will continue to partner with VMware for other high-performance, low-power solid-state drives with robust features, including V-NAND and NVMe SSDs, for use with VMware infrastructures.