345-BJNS Dell 1.92TB PCI-E 4.0 X4 Gen4 NVMe Read Intensive SFF SSD

Dell 345-BJNS 1.92TB PCI-E 4.0 X4 SSD

Understanding the detailed specifications of the Dell 345-BJNS is crucial for making an informed infrastructure decision. Below is a comprehensive breakdown of its core technical attributes.

Capacity and Form Factor

The drive offers a usable capacity of 1.92 Terabytes, a sweet spot for many enterprise applications balancing cost and performance. It is housed in a U.2 (SFF-8639) Small Form Factor (SFF) 2.5-inch enclosure with a 15mm z-height. This industry-standard form factor is designed for hot-pluggability and is widely supported in enterprise server bays, allowing for easy installation and replacement in the field without requiring tools or system downtime.

Detailed Capacity Information

The 1.92TB capacity is presented as a native storage size. It is important to note that a portion of this capacity is reserved for over-provisioning, a standard practice in SSD design that enhances performance and extends the drive's lifespan by managing wear-leveling, garbage collection, and bad block management more efficiently. This ensures consistent performance and long-term reliability under sustained write workloads.

Interface and Protocol Performance

At the heart of this drive's performance is its PCI Express 4.0 x4 NVMe interface. The NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) protocol is built from the ground up for flash storage, significantly reducing latency and increasing Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS) compared to legacy protocols like SATA or SAS.

PCIe Gen 4.0 Advantages

PCIe Gen 4.0 doubles the bandwidth per lane compared to the previous PCIe 3.0 generation. With a x4 lane configuration, this drive achieves a theoretical maximum bandwidth of nearly 8 GB/s, enabling it to saturate the bus with high-speed data transfers. This is critical for applications requiring rapid data access, such as real-time analytics, high-frequency trading, and large-scale virtualization.

NAND Flash Technology and Endurance

The Dell 345-BJNS utilizes 3D TLC (Triple-Level Cell) NAND flash memory. This technology stacks memory cells vertically, allowing for higher densities and lower costs per gigabyte compared to planar NAND, while maintaining a strong balance of performance and endurance.

Read-Intensive Workload Classification

This drive is classified as a Read-Intensive (RI) solution. This means it is engineered to handle workloads where read operations significantly outnumber write operations. The endurance, measured in Drive Writes Per Day (DWPD), is calibrated for this use case. For example, a typical rating might be 1 DWPD over a 5-year warranty period, meaning you can write the entire 1.92TB drive capacity once every day for five years. This makes it perfect for boot drives, application hosting, web servers, and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) where data is frequently read but not constantly overwritten.

Performance Metrics and Benchmarking

The theoretical advantages of the PCIe 4.0 and NVMe interface translate into tangible real-world performance gains. The Dell 345-BJNS is designed to deliver consistent, low-latency throughput.

Sequential Read and Write Speeds

This drive excels in sequential data transfer tasks, which involve reading or writing large, contiguous blocks of data. This is essential for tasks like loading large database files, video streaming, and scientific computing. Expect sequential read speeds to reach up to several gigabytes per second, with sequential write speeds also being exceptionally high, though typically lower than read speeds in a read-intensive design.

Random Read and Write IOPS

For server applications, Random IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second) are often a more critical metric than sequential speed. This measures the drive's performance when accessing small, random blocks of data, which is representative of database transactions, email servers, and operating system operations. The Dell 345-BJNS delivers high random read IOPS, ensuring rapid response times for user requests and application queries. Random write IOPS are robust, sufficient for handling the write components of its targeted read-centric workloads.

Integration with Dell PowerEdge Servers

The 345-BJNS is not a generic drive; it is a Dell-branded and qualified component, ensuring deep integration and flawless operation within the Dell ecosystem.

Supported PowerEdge Generations

This drive is certified for use in Dell's 14th, 15th, 16th, and 17th Generation PowerEdge servers. This includes a wide range of models such as the R740xd, R750xa, R760, and MX760c, among others. Using a Dell-qualified drive guarantees that the server firmware, iDRAC (Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller), and OpenManage systems will correctly recognize, monitor, and manage the drive, providing health alerts, predictive failure analysis, and seamless firmware updates.

Deployment in PowerEdge 16G and 17G Servers

For 16th and 17th Generation PowerEdge servers, which natively support PCIe 4.0, the 345-BJNS SSD operates at its full potential. These servers are architected to handle the increased bandwidth, allowing the drive to deliver maximum performance and reduce bottlenecks in the storage subsystem, thereby accelerating overall application performance.

Backwards Compatibility with PowerEdge 14G and 15G

When installed in 14th and 15th Generation PowerEdge servers (which are based on PCIe 3.0), the drive will automatically operate at the slower PCIe 3.0 speeds. While this means the maximum theoretical bandwidth is capped, the drive still provides exceptional performance thanks to the efficiency of the NVMe protocol, often outperforming native PCIe 3.0 NVMe drives. This backwards compatibility protects your investment and provides a clear upgrade path.

Hot-Plug

The U.2 form factor supports hot-plug capability. This allows system administrators to install or replace the drive while the server is still running, ensuring maximum uptime and serviceability. Furthermore, these drives can be configured in hardware or software RAID arrays using Dell PERC (PowerEdge RAID Controller) cards or software solutions to provide data redundancy (RAID 1, 10, 5, 6) and enhance performance.

End-to-End Data Protection

To safeguard data from corruption as it moves through the drive's internal architecture, the 345-BJNS employs end-to-end data protection. This means data is protected by cyclic redundancy checks (CRC) from the moment it enters the drive's buffer until it is written to the NAND and vice-versa, preventing silent data corruption.

Ideal Use Cases and Application Workloads

The specific design of the Dell 345-BJNS makes it exceptionally well-suited for a range of server applications where fast data access and high read throughput are paramount.

Hypervisor and Virtualization Hosts

In virtualized environments running VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, or KVM, this drive can host a large number of virtual machines (VMs). The high random read performance allows multiple VMs to boot and run their applications simultaneously without experiencing I/O contention, leading to higher VM density and better user experience.

Database Servers 

For database systems like Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle Database, this drive is ideal for housing read-only replicas, reporting instances, or indexing tables. The fast read speeds enable complex queries to return results much faster, accelerating business intelligence and analytics processes.

Application Hosting and Caching

Hosting applications such as CRM systems (e.g., Salesforce), ERP software (e.g., SAP), and large-scale caching solutions (e.g., Redis or Memcached) on this drive ensures that data is retrieved from storage with minimal delay, directly improving application performance and transaction times.

Advanced Features

Beyond raw performance, the drive includes a suite of enterprise features for robust management and security.

NVMe Management Interface (NVMe-MI)

The drive supports the NVMe Management Interface, a standardized command set for managing NVMe devices over a sideband interface (like SMBus/I2C) or in-band. This allows data center management tools, including Dell OpenManage, to monitor drive health, temperature, and performance metrics, and perform management tasks without consuming host processor resources.

Security and Data Sanitization

To protect sensitive data, the drive likely supports security features compliant with the TCG (Trusted Computing Group) Opal and Pyre standards. This enables hardware-based full-disk encryption. Additionally, it supports instant, cryptographically secure erase (Sanitize) and block erase commands, which render all data on the drive irrecoverable in a matter of seconds, a crucial capability for decommissioning or repurposing drives.

Power Loss Protection

Enterprise SSDs are equipped with sophisticated Power Loss Protection (PLP) circuits. These typically include a bank of capacitors that, in the event of a sudden power failure, provide enough hold-up energy to complete any in-progress writes from the volatile DRAM cache to the non-volatile NAND flash. This prevents data corruption and ensures data integrity, a fundamental requirement for any mission-critical storage device.