Riser cards with multiple M.2-2280 SSDs are nothing new,vertex storagehas gone even further with the new X21 board, which can accommodate up to 21 M.2 drives. This add-in card targets applications that leverage both high storage capacity and performance, such as databases and machine learning applications. At maximum capacity and utilization, the X21 can hold 168 TB of M.2 storage and operate at peak sequential read/write speeds of up to 31 GB/s.
Apex Storage X21 is an unspecified PCIe Gen4 switch system (ed: and what looks like two switches) covered by a large heatsink. The AIC has 21 M.2-2280 slots for SSDs and can provide up to 168 TB of storage capacity when fully populated with 8 TB M.2 drives. Double that when 16 TB M.2 SSDs become available.
Apex Storage says that with fast SSDs, the X21 will be able to deliver up to 30.5 GB/s sequential read speeds and up to 28.5 GB/s sequential write speeds, fully saturating the PCIe 4.0 x16 interface to It’s behind all SSDs available today. The X21 riser card also promises over 10 million random read/write IOPS (7.5M read IOPS, 6.2M write IOPS) and average read and write latencies of 79µs and 52µs respectively.
In fact, considering the total number of drives used, even previous generation SSDs with PCIe 3.0 x4 interfaces could potentially guarantee very high performance in this setup. Still, for maximum performance and to take advantage of the NVMe 2.0 protocol, Apex Storage recommends using drives with a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface and the latest feature set.
Of course, 21 M.2 SSDs consume a lot of power, so the card comes with two 6-pin auxiliary PCIe power connectors that can deliver up to 150W to the card. It is unknown how much power the X21 AIC can draw from the PCIe slots as well, but in theory the two connectors/slot combination could deliver up to 225W to the drives, or just over 10W per drive. increase. However, cramped cards don’t offer much in terms of cooling, so Apex Storage recommends using an external fan that provides at least 400 LFM of airflow. This essentially requires a server-style blower configuration.
Apex Storage’s X21 adapters can work in multi-card configurations if the host has enough PCIe Gen4 lanes. The multi-card storage subsystem sees up to 107 GB/s sequential read performance and 70 GB/s sequential write performance. This is comparable to the throughput offered by typically much larger all-flash arrays.
Apex Storage hasn’t said when the X21 card will be available or how much it will cost.
