345-BLXG Dell 15.36TB PCI Express Gen4 NVMe SSD

Dell 345-BLXG 15.36TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe U.2 SSD

Product Overview

The Dell 345-BLXG 15.36TB NVMe Solid State Drive is a high-capacity, enterprise-grade storage solution designed for modern Dell PowerEdge servers. Built with PCI Express Gen4 technology, this hot-swappable U.2 SSD delivers exceptional speed, reliability, and efficiency for read-intensive workloads in data centers and enterprise environments.

General Product Details

• Brand: Dell
• Manufacturer Part Number: 345-BLXG
• Drive Type: Hot-swap Solid State Drive
• Intended Use: Enterprise servers and data center applications

Technical Specifications

Interface & Form Factor

• PCI Express 4.0 x4 NVMe interface for ultra-fast data transfer
• U.2 (2.5-inch SFF) form factor for broad server compatibility

Storage & Memory Technology

• Massive 15.36TB storage capacity
• Advanced 3D TLC NAND flash memory
• Optimized for read-intensive workloads

Performance Capabilities

Sequential Performance

• Maximum sequential read speed up to 13,351 MB/s
• Maximum sequential write speed up to 6,676 MB/s

Random IOPS Performance

• Random read performance up to 2,400,000 IOPS
• Random write performance up to 300,000 IOPS

Endurance Rating

• 1 DWPD (Drive Writes Per Day)
• Designed for consistent performance over a 5-year lifespan

Server Compatibility

This Dell NVMe U.2 SSD is validated for a wide range of Dell PowerEdge servers, ensuring seamless integration and optimal performance.

• PowerEdge C6420, C6520, C6525, C6620
• PowerEdge R650, R650xs, R6515, R6525
• PowerEdge R660xs, R6615, R6625
• PowerEdge R670, R6715, R6725
• PowerEdge R750, R750xa, R750xs
• PowerEdge R7515, R7525
• PowerEdge R760, R760xa, R7615, R7625
• PowerEdge R770, R7715, R7725, R7725xd
• PowerEdge R960
• PowerEdge T550, T560
• PowerEdge XE8640, XE9640, XE9680, XE9680L, XE9685L
• PowerEdge XR7620

Unpacking the U.2 NVMe Enterprise SSD Category

The U.2 (formerly SFF-8639) form factor is a critical enabler for enterprise storage. It provides a robust, hot-swappable 2.5-inch chassis—familiar to server administrators—while utilizing a connector that delivers both PCIe lanes and power. This creates a perfect synergy: the density and serviceability of traditional drive bays with the blistering speed of a direct PCIe connection. When paired with the Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) protocol, which is built from the ground up for flash memory and modern multi-core CPUs, the result is a storage device that minimizes latency and maximizes IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second). The Dell 345-BLXG sits at the top tier of this category, offering a colossal 15.36TB of capacity, making it a cornerstone for data-intensive applications.

Primary Use Cases and Target Workloads

This category of drive is not intended for consumer desktops or light-duty tasks. Its design and specifications target mission-critical enterprise and data center applications.

High-Performance Databases (OLTP & OLAP)

Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) systems handling thousands of transactions per second, such as financial trading platforms or e-commerce checkout systems, demand microsecond-level latency. The 345-BLXG's PCIe Gen4 interface and optimized NVMe stack provide the consistent, low-latency random read/write performance necessary to keep these databases responsive. Similarly, large-scale data warehouses for Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) benefit from the immense capacity and high sequential read speeds for rapid querying of massive datasets.

Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning

AI/ML workflows involve ingesting, preprocessing, and training on enormous datasets. The storage layer can become a major bottleneck. The high throughput of the Dell 345-BLXG accelerates data pipeline stages, enabling faster loading of training batches and checkpointing of model states, thereby reducing overall time-to-insight and improving resource utilization for expensive GPU clusters.

Virtualization & High-Density VDI

Server virtualization and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) impose heavy random I/O loads as multiple virtual machines concurrently access their virtual disks. A single Dell 345-BLXG drive, with its high endurance and massive IOPS capability, can host a significant number of high-performance VMs, improving consolidation ratios and ensuring a smooth user experience even during boot storms or login avalanches.

High-Frequency Analytics & Real-Time Processing

For workloads like telemetry from IoT devices, log analytics, or real-time fraud detection, storage must keep pace with a continuous flood of data. The drive's combination of high sustained write bandwidth and large capacity allows it to absorb and retain vast streams of data for immediate processing and analysis.

Deep Dive: Technical Specifications & Architecture

The Dell 345-BLXG is more than just a large, fast drive. Its architecture incorporates enterprise-grade features for predictability, data integrity, and longevity.

PCIe Gen4 x4 Interface: The Bandwidth Backbone

PCI Express 4.0 doubles the bandwidth per lane compared to PCIe 3.0. With a x4 interface, this drive offers a theoretical maximum bandwidth of approximately 8,000 MB/s per direction. This raw pipe is essential for saturating the capabilities of the latest NAND flash arrays and controller technology, enabling sequential read/write speeds that can exceed 7,000 MB/s and 4,000 MB/s respectively, depending on the specific model and configuration.

3D TLC NAND & Advanced Controller

The 15.36TB capacity is achieved using high-density 3D Triple-Level Cell (TLC) NAND flash memory. Enterprise TLC is engineered for endurance far beyond consumer-grade drives. It is managed by a sophisticated, multi-core SSD controller equipped with dedicated hardware accelerators for tasks like encryption, error correction, and wear leveling. This controller is the brain of the drive, orchestrating data placement, garbage collection, and ensuring consistent performance under all load conditions.

Power Loss Protection (PLP) / Capacitors

A hallmark of enterprise SSDs. Integrated capacitors (or "caps") provide backup power in the event of a sudden server power loss. This allows the drive's controller to complete any in-flight writes from its volatile cache to the non-volatile NAND, preventing data corruption and ensuring transactional integrity—a non-negotiable feature for database and financial applications.

End-to-End Data Protection

Data integrity is paramount. The drive employs end-to-end data path protection, meaning data is protected by error-correcting codes (ECC) from the moment it enters the drive's DRAM cache until it is written to NAND and read back. This safeguards against silent data corruption that can occur due to electrical interference within the system.

DWPD & TBW: The Endurance Metrics

Enterprise drives are rated for endurance. For the Dell 345-BLXG 15.36TB, this is typically expressed as Drive Writes Per Day (DWPD) and Total Bytes Written (TBW). A rating of, for example, 1 DWPD over a 5-year warranty means you can write the entire 15.36TB capacity every single day for five years. The corresponding TBW figure would be astronomically high (e.g., over 28,000 TB). This level of endurance is designed for write-intensive workloads, ensuring the drive will last its intended service life without NAND wear-out.

Integration, Management, and Ecosystem

Deploying an enterprise SSD involves considerations beyond plug-and-play.

Compatibility & Server Integration

The U.2 form factor ensures broad compatibility with modern server platforms from Dell (PowerEdge), HPE, Cisco, and others that support NVMe U.2 hot-plug bays. It is critical to verify server BIOS and backplane support for PCIe Gen4 to realize the full performance benefit. The drive is designed for seamless integration into Dell PowerEdge servers, with firmware optimized for Dell's management stack.

NVMe Management Interface (NVMe-MI)

This drive supports the NVMe Management Interface, a standardized out-of-band management protocol. It allows system administrators to monitor drive health (temperature, remaining life, media errors), update firmware, and perform diagnostics via the Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) without booting the host operating system. This is essential for large-scale data center operations and remote management.

Dell-specific Firmware & Diagnostics

As a Dell-branded drive, it comes with Dell-certified firmware that has undergone rigorous validation testing within Dell server platforms. Tools like Dell OpenManage Server Administrator (OMSA) and SupportAssist provide enhanced visibility into the drive's status, predictive failure analysis, and simplified firmware updates as part of a holistic system management approach.

Performance Benchmarks and Real-World Expectations

While synthetic benchmarks show peak numbers, enterprise performance is about consistency and quality of service.

Latency: The Critical Metric

For transactional workloads, average and tail latency (e.g., 99.9th percentile) are more important than peak bandwidth. A high-end enterprise NVMe drive like the 345-BLXG is engineered to deliver remarkably consistent low latency, often in the range of 100-200 microseconds for random reads, even under mixed workloads. This predictability is what allows applications to perform reliably.

Sustained Throughput Under Load

Unlike consumer drives that may throttle under sustained writes, enterprise drives use robust thermal designs and over-provisioning (extra NAND capacity not visible to the user) to maintain high performance during prolonged operations. This ensures that data ingestion, backup, or large-scale analytics jobs do not slow down as the drive fills up.

Comparing to SATA/SAS and PCIe Gen3

The performance leap is dramatic. Compared to a high-end SATA SSD, the Dell 345-BLXG can offer over 10x the random IOPS and 5-10x the sequential bandwidth. Even against a PCIe Gen3 NVMe drive, the Gen4 interface provides a near doubling of sequential throughput, which directly benefits data transfer and large-file processing tasks.

The Strategic Value for IT Infrastructure

Investing in high-capacity, high-performance enterprise NVMe drives is a strategic decision with cascading benefits.

Consolidation and TCO Reduction

One 15.36TB Dell 345-BLXG can replace numerous lower-capacity or slower drives. This reduces the number of drive bays consumed, lowers power and cooling requirements per terabyte, and simplifies storage management—all contributing to a lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) over time, despite a higher initial investment.

Enabling Next-Generation Applications

The capabilities of this drive category directly enable the deployment of previously impractical or slow applications. It allows for larger in-memory databases (with fast swap/paging), more detailed real-time analytics, and more agile, scalable cloud-native infrastructures where storage performance is aligned with compute performance.