HEXUS has previously reported upon the Nimbus ExaDrive SSDs with their gargantuan storage capacities, and equally towering prices. Actually, the last report we published was the result of Nimbus going public with its prices for its 50TB and 100TB 3.5-inch SSDs. That was the Nimbus ExaDrive DC series which used TLC flash NAND. Prices per TB varied from US£$250 to a premium of $400 for the largest capacity ExaDrive DC SSD.
Now Nimbus has made some steps to address the high $/TB with its ExaDrive NL series. These drives are supplied in the same 3.5-inch form factor as the DC series, and share a lot of specs but there are some key differences. At the heart of the matter is Nimbus has specced the ExaDrive NL series with QLC flash NAND. For various reasons that means a different range of capacities are available but more telling for the commercial / enterprise / data centre target market the endurance ratings have been toned down.
If you head on over to the Nimbus specs pages you can see a comparison between the new ExaDrive NL and ExaDrive DC. I've embedded a cropped screenshot of the table above, for your convenience. Yes, understandably perhaps, while Nimbus didn't put in place any endurance limits for the ExaDrive DC, the cheaper QLC model is rated for 0.2 to 0.6 DWPD (depending on IO size).
Depending upon your use cases that endurance rating might be fine, and if so you will be able to grab these significant chunks of SSD storage for the following prices:
- ExaDrive NL 16TB - $2,900
- ExaDrive NL 32TB - $5,600
- ExaDrive NL 64TB - $10,900
The above prices mean the new NL series costs between US$170 and $181 per terabyte. Remember I mentioned in the intro that the DC series costs from US£$250 to $400 per terabyte.
In its marketing materials Nimbus highlights that it isn't just the capacity you are paying for with these bumper SSDs. It touts other attractions such as "superior reliability over mechanical HDDs, 95 per cent lower data access latency than HDDs, Up to 7.5 higher density than NVMe SSDs, 76 per cent lower power usage per TB than NVMe SSDs, and Plug-and-play with existing 3.5-inch HDD slots," and more.
