Kingston DC3000ME 15.36TB SSD Review

1. Introduction2. Kingston DC3000ME 15.36TB3. Testing Methodology4. ATTO5. Sustained Sequential Read/Write Performance6. 4KB Random Read/Write Performance7. 8KB Random Read/Write Performance8. 4K Random 80/20 Mix Read/Write9. 8K Random 80/20 Mix Read/Write10. SPECworkstation 3.111. Workload Scenarios12. Performance Stability13. Temperatures14. Closing Thoughts15. View All Pages

Kingston’s first PCIe 5.0 enterprise SSD is the DC3000ME, available (at the time of writing) in three capacities: 3.84TB, 7.68TB and the flagship 15.36TB drive, which Kingston supplied for review.

Designed for use in data centre / enterprise market segments for applications including AI, Cloud services, HPC, Edge computing and software-defined storage, the DC3000ME features a Marvell Bravera SC5 16-channel NVMe SSD controller married to Micron 232-layer 3D eTLC B58R NAND flash memory running at 2400MT/s. The drive uses a U.2 (PCIe NVMe Gen5 x4) interface, which is hot-pluggable and compatible with U.2 backplanes of storage systems and enterprise servers.

Kingston quotes sequential read figures for the DC3000ME range as up to 14,000MB/s for all three drives. Writes are quoted as up to 5,800MB/s for the 3.84TB model, 10,000MB/s for the 7.68TB drive and up to 9,700MB/s for the 15.36TB flagship drive. We confirmed the official read figure with our own sequential tests using a single thread, achieving a peak read test result of 14,013 MB/s, with writes peaking at 9,133 MB/s, which is shy of the official 9,700 MB/s. Using four threads, we got a best read result of 14,009MB/s with writes at 9,155MB/s.

The random 4K read performance for the drive is quoted as up to 2.7M IOPS for the 3.84TB and 15.36TB models, while the 7.68TB model is rated at up to 2.8M IOPS. Write performance is listed as up to 300,000 IOPS for the 3.84 TB unit, 500,000 IOPS for the 7.68 TB drive, and 400,000 IOPS for the 15.36 TB model. When tested with our four-threaded tests, the best 4K random read figure we saw was 439,018 IOPS (1,799.06MB/s) at QD128, so it was nowhere close to the official maximum. However, the best 4K write figure was 398,046  IOPS (1,630.40MB/s) at QD8, so just shy of the official maximum figure. The best 4K random figures we saw from the drive came from a quick test using CrystalDiskMark 9, which produced a read figure of 1,340,861 IOPS, still short of the maximum official figure but much closer, while the best write result of 902,401 IOPS rocketed past the official maximum.

As you might expect for a data centre/enterprise-focused drive, the DC3000ME comes with a host of features aimed at this market segment; reliability and usage statistics tracking, hardware power loss protection (PLP), telemetry monitoring, end-to-end data path protection, TCG Opal 2.0, AES 256-bit encryption and multiple namespace management (128 namespaces supported).

Power-wise, the 15.36TB DC3000ME is rated at 8W idle, 8.2W for maximum reads and 24W for maximum writes. Kingston has given the 15.36TB DC3000ME an endurance rating of 1 DWPD (Drives Written Per Day) / 28,032TBW over the length of the 5-year warranty Kingston backs the drive with.

You can buy the 15.36TB version of the DC3000ME for around £1380 from Ballicom HERE.

Pros

• Overall performance.
• Multiple namespace support.
• Endurance.

Cons

• Couldn't hit the official maximum random reads under testing.
• Pricey.

KitGuru says: Kingston's latest flagship data centre / enterprise class drive, the 15.36TB DC3000ME, marries very large capacity with impressive low latency performance. It comes with all the features that you might expect for a drive aimed at this market segment: hardware-based power loss protection, AES 256-bit encryption, enterprise-class diagnostics, and namespace management.

 

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