Lenovo ThinkSystem M.2 N-30m2 Read Intensive NVMe PCIe 3.0 Industrial SSDs User Guide

: May 15, 2024
: Lenovo

Lenovo ThinkSystem M.2 N-30m2 Read Intensive NVMe PCIe 3.0 Industrial

SSDs

USER GUIDE

The ThinkSystem M.2 N-30m2 Read Intensive NVMe PCIe 3.0 Industrial SSDs, in capacities up to 3.84TB, are high performance NVMe M.2 drives suitable operating system boot purposes and general data storage functions on ThinkSystem servers.

SSDs

Figure 1. ThinkSystem M.2 N-30m2 Read Intensive NVMe PCIe 3.0 Industrial SSDs

Did you know?

The N-30m2 M.2 SSDs deliver performance for edge applications with extended temperature support and superior M.2 random read speeds.
The 960GB drive has sufficient endurance and performance metrics to be suitable for use with VMware vSphere as a data or cache drive (Cache Compliant – Class C).

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ThinkSystem M.2 N-30m2 Read Intensive NVMe PCIe 3.0 Industrial SSDs

Part number information

The following tables list the information for ordering part numbers and feature codes.

Table 1. Ordering part numbers and feature codes

Part number	Feature	Description
4XB7A90720	BZEE	ThinkSystem M.2 N-30m2 480GB Read Intensive NVMe PCIe
3.0 x4 NHS SSD (Industrial)	SFPC480GM1AR2MT-I- 7C-61Q-GEN
4XB7A90721	BZEF	ThinkSystem M.2 N-30m2 960GB Read Intensive NVMe PCIe
3.0 x4 NHS SSD (Industrial)	SFPC960GM1AR4MT-I- 8C-61Q-GEN
4XB7A90722	BZEG	ThinkSystem M.2 N-30m2 1.92TB Read Intensive NVMe PCIe
3.0 x4 NHS SSD (Industrial)	SFPC1T92M1AR4MT-I- 8C-61Q-GEN
4XB7A91531	C0B1	ThinkSystem M.2 N-30m2 3.84TB Read Intensive NVMe PCIe
3.0 x4 NHS SSD (Industrial)	SFPC3T84M1AR4MT-I- YC-61Q-GEN

The part numbers include the following items:
One M.2 drive
Documentation flyer

Features

The ThinkSystem M.2 N-30m2 Read Intensive NVMe PCIe 3.0 Industrial SSDs have the following features:

Based on the Swissbit N-30m2 family of industrial solid state drives
TLC 3D NAND flash
End-to-end data protection
Thermal throttling/sensor
On-Board Power Fail Protection (Power loss protection, PLP)
ROHS-compliant
Command sets: TRIM, S.M.A.R.T, NCQ
TCG Opal compliant self-encrypting drive (SED)

Read Intensive SSDs and Mixed Use SSDs have similar read and write IOPS performance, but the key difference between them is their endurance (or lifetime) — that is, how long they can perform write operations because SSDs have a finite number of program/erase (P/E) cycles. Read Intensive SSDs typically have a better cost per read IOPS ratio but lower endurance and performance compared to Mixed Use SSDs.

The TBW value assigned to a solid-state device is the total bytes of written data (based on the number of P/E cycles) that a drive can be guaranteed to complete (% of remaining P/E cycles = % of remaining TBW). Reaching this limit does not cause the drive to immediately fail. It simply denotes the maximum number of writes that can be guaranteed. A solid-state device will not fail upon reaching the specified TBW. At some point based on manufacturing variance margin, after surpassing the TBW value, the drive will reach the end-of-life point, at which the drive will go into a read-only mode.

For example, the 480GB N-30m2 drive has an endurance of 222 TB of total bytes written (TBW). This means that for full operation over five years, write workload must be limited to no more than 122 GB of writes per day, which is equivalent to 0.3 full drive writes per day (DWPD). For the device to last three years, the drive write workload must be limited to no more than 203 GB of writes per day, which is equivalent to 0.4 full drive writes per day.

The benefits of drive encryption

ThinkSystem M.2 N-30m2 Read Intensive NVMe PCIe 3.0 Industrial SSDs

Self-encrypting drives (SEDs) provide benefits in three main ways:

By encrypting data on-the-fly at the drive level with no performance impact
By providing instant secure erasure (cryptographic erasure, thereby making the data no longer readable)
By enabling auto-locking to secure active data if a drive is misplaced or stolen from a system while in use

The following sections describe the benefits in more details.

Automatic encryption

It is vital that a company keep its data secure. With the threat of data loss due to physical theft or improper inventory practices, it is important that the data be encrypted. However, challenges with performance, scalability, and complexity have led IT departments to push back against security policies that require the use of encryption. In addition, encryption has been viewed as risky by those unfamiliar with key management, a process for ensuring a company can always decrypt its own data. Self-encrypting drives comprehensively resolve these issues, making encryption both easy and affordable.

When the self-encrypting drive is in normal use, its owner need not maintain authentication keys (otherwise known as credentials or passwords) in order to access the data on the drive. The self-encrypting drive will encrypt data being written to the drive and decrypt data being read from it, all without requiring an authentication key from the owner.

Drive retirement and disposal

When hard drives are retired and moved outside the physically protected data center into the hands of others, the data on those drives is put at significant risk. IT departments retire drives for a variety of reasons, including:

Returning drives for warranty, repair, or expired lease agreements
Removal and disposal of drives
Repurposing drives for other storage duties

Nearly all drives eventually leave the data center and their owner’s control. Corporate data resides on such drives, and when most leave the data center, the data they contain is still readable. Even data that has been striped across many drives in a RAID array is vulnerable to data theft because just a typical single stripe in today’s high-capacity arrays is large enough to expose for example, hundreds of names and bank account numbers.

In an effort to avoid data breaches and the ensuing customer notifications required by data privacy laws, companies use different methods to erase the data on retired drives before they leave the premises and potentially fall into the wrong hands. Current retirement practices that are designed to make data unreadable rely on significant human involvement in the process, and are thus subject to both technical and human failure.

ThinkSystem M.2 N-30m2 Read Intensive NVMe PCIe 3.0 Industrial SSDs

The drawbacks of today’s drive retirement practices include the following:

Overwriting drive data is expensive, tying up valuable system resources for days. No notification of completion is generated by the drive, and overwriting won’t cover reallocated sectors, leaving that data exposed.
Methods that include degaussing or physically shredding a drive are expensive. It is difficult to ensure the degauss strength is optimized for the drive type, potentially leaving readable data on the drive. Physically shredding the drive is environmentally hazardous, and neither practice allows the drive to be returned for warranty or expired lease.
Some companies have concluded the only way to securely retire drives is to keep them in their control, storing them indefinitely in warehouses. But this is not truly secure because a large volume of drives coupled with human involvement inevitably leads to some drives being lost or stolen.
Professional disposal services is an expensive option and includes the cost of reconciling the services as well as internal reports and auditing. Transporting of the drives also has the potential of putting the data at risk.

Self-encrypting drives eliminate the need to overwrite, destroy, or store retired drives. When the drive is to be retired, it can be cryptographically erased, a process that is nearly instantaneous regardless of the capacity of the drive.

Instant secure erase

The self-encrypting drive provides instant data encryption key destruction via cryptographic erasure. When it is time to retire or repurpose the drive, the owner sends a command to the drive to perform a cryptographic erasure. Cryptographic erasure simply replaces the encryption key inside the encrypted drive, making it impossible to ever decrypt the data encrypted with the deleted key.

Self-encrypting drives reduce IT operating expenses by reducing asset control challenges and disposal costs. Data security with self-encrypting drives helps ensure compliance with privacy regulations without hindering IT efficiency. So called “Safe Harbor” clauses in government regulations allow companies to not have to notify customers of occurrences of data theft if that data was encrypted and therefore unreadable.

Furthermore, self-encrypting drives simplify decommissioning and preserve hardware value for returns and repurposing by:

Eliminating the need to overwrite or destroy the drive
Securing warranty returns and expired lease returns
Enabling drives to be repurposed securely

Auto-locking

Insider theft or misplacement is a growing concern for businesses of all sizes; in addition, managers of branch offices and small businesses without strong physical security face greater vulnerability to external theft. Self- encrypting drives include a feature called auto-lock mode to help secure active data against theft.

Using a self-encrypting drive when auto-lock mode is enabled simply requires securing the drive with an authentication key. When secured in this manner, the drive’s data encryption key is locked whenever the drive is powered down. In other words, the moment the self-encrypting drive is switched off or unplugged, it automatically locks down the drive’s data.
When the self-encrypting drive is then powered back on, it requires authentication before being able to unlock its encryption key and read any data on the drive, thus protecting against misplacement and theft.

While using self-encrypting drives just for the instant secure erase is an extremely efficient and effective means to help securely retire a drive, using self-encrypting drives in auto-lock mode provides even more advantages. From the moment the drive or system is removed from the data center (with or without authorization), the drive is locked. No advance thought or action is required from the data center administrator to protect the data. This helps prevent a breach should the drive be mishandled and helps secure the data against the threat of insider or outside theft.

Technical specifications

The following tables present technical specifications for the N-30m2 M.2 SSDs.

Table 2. Technical specifications

Feature| 480 GB drive| 960 GB drive| 1.92 TB drive| 3.84 TB drive
---|---|---|---|---
Interface| PCIe 3.1 x4| PCIe 3.1 x4| PCIe 3.1 x4| PCIe 3.1 x4
Form factor| M.2 2280| M.2 2280| M.2 2280| M.2 2280
Capacity| 480 GB| 960 GB| 1.92 TB| 3.84 TB
SED encryption| TCG Opal| TCG Opal| TCG Opal| TCG Opal
Endurance (drive writes per day for 5 years)| 0.3 DWPD| 2.7 DWPD| 0.3 DWPD| 0.4 DWPD
Endurance (total bytes written)| 222 TB| 4,800 TB| 1,124 TB| 2,946 TB
Data reliability (UBER)| < 1 in 1016 bits read| < 1 in 1016 bits read| < 1 in 1016 bits read| < 1 in 1016 bits read
MTBF| 3,000,000 hours| 3,000,000 hours| 3,000,000 hours| 3,000,000 hours
Performance| | |
IOPS reads (4 KB blocks)| 121,000| 379,000| 325,000| 378,000
IOPS writes (4 KB blocks)| 308,000| 487,000| 427,000| 520,000
Sequential read rate (128 KB blocks)| 3490 MB/s| 3510 MB/s| 3490 MB/s| 2460 MB/s
Sequential write rate (128 KB blocks)| 2420 MB/s| 2980 MB/s| 3110 MB/s| 2240 MB/s
Environment| | |
Shock, non-operating| 1,500 G (Max) at
0.5 ms| 1,500 G (Max) at
0.5 ms| 1,500 G (Max) at
0.5 ms| 1,500 G (Max) at
0.5 ms
Vibration, non-operating| 50 GRMS (80-2000
Hz)| 50 GRMS (80-2000
Hz)| 50 GRMS (80-2000
Hz)| 50 GRMS (80-2000
Hz)
Power (R/W, sequential)| 4.0 W / 4.0 W| 3.8 W / 4.6 W| 4.0 W / 5.3 W| 3.6 W / 4.3 W
Power (R/W, random)| 3.0 W / 3.8 W| 4.0 W / 4.0 W| 4.5 W / 4.1 W| 4.1 W / 4.1 W

Server support

The following tables list the ThinkSystem servers that are compatible.

Table 3. Server support (Part 1 of 4)

Table 3

Table 4. Server support (Part 2 of 4)

Table 4

Table 5. Server support (Part 3 of 4)

Table 5

Table 6. Server support (Part 4 of 4)

Table 6

Storage controller support

NVMe PCIe SSDs require a NVMe drive backplane and some form of PCIe connection to processors. PCIe connections can take the form of either an adapter (PCIe Interposer or PCIe extender) or simply a cable that connects to an onboard NVMe connector.

Consult the relevant server product guide for details about required components for NVMe drive support.

Operating system support

The following table lists the VMware support for these drives, based on endurance and performance. For more information, see this page:
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2145210

Table 7. VMware support

Part number| Description| VMware classification| VMware boot support| VMware data support| vSAN
cache support
---|---|---|---|---|---
4XB7A90720| ThinkSystem M.2 N-30m2 480GB Read Intensive NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4 NHS SSD (Industrial)| Boot ready| Yes| No| No
4XB7A90721| ThinkSystem M.2 N-30m2 960GB Read Intensive NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4 NHS SSD (Industrial)| Cache compliant – Class C| Yes| Yes| Yes
4XB7A90722| ThinkSystem M.2 N-30m2 1.92TB Read Intensive NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4 NHS SSD (Industrial)| None| No| No| No
4XB7A91531| ThinkSystem M.2 N-30m2 3.84TB Read Intensive NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4 NHS SSD (Industrial)| Data ready – Class B| No| Yes| No

IBM SKLM Key Management support

To effectively manage a large deployment of SEDs in Lenovo servers, IBM Security Key Lifecycle Manager (SKLM) offers a centralized key management solution. Certain Lenovo servers support Features on Demand (FoD) license upgrades that enable SKLM support.

The following table lists the part numbers and feature codes to enable SKLM support in the management processor of the server.

Table 8. FoD upgrades for SKLM support

Part number	Feature code	Description

Security Key Lifecycle Manager – FoD (United States, Canada, Asia Pacific, and Japan)
00D9998| A5U1| SKLM for System x/ThinkSystem w/SEDs – FoD per Install w/1Yr S&S
00D9999| AS6C| SKLM for System x/ThinkSystem w/SEDs – FoD per Install w/3Yr S&S
Security Key Lifecycle Manager – FoD (Latin America, Europe, Middle East, and Africa)
00FP648| A5U1| SKLM for System x/ThinkSystem w/SEDs – FoD per Install w/1Yr S&S
00FP649| AS6C| SKLM for System x/ThinkSystem w/SEDs – FoD per Install w/3Yr S&S

The IBM Security Key Lifecycle Manager software is available from Lenovo using the ordering information listed in the following table.

Table 9. IBM Security Key Lifecycle Manager licenses

Part number	Description
7S0A007FWW	IBM Security Key Lifecycle Manager Basic Edition Install License +

SW Subscription & Support 12 Months
7S0A007HWW| IBM Security Key Lifecycle Manager For Raw Decimal Terabyte Storage Resource Value Unit License + SW Subscription & Support 12 Months
7S0A007KWW| IBM Security Key Lifecycle Manager For Raw Decimal Petabyte Storage Resource Value Unit License + SW Subscription & Support 12 Months
7S0A007MWW| IBM Security Key Lifecycle Manager For Usable Decimal Terabyte Storage Resource Value Unit License + SW Subscription & Support 12 Months
7S0A007PWW| IBM Security Key Lifecycle Manager For Usable Decimal Petabyte Storage Resource Value Unit License + SW Subscription & Support 12 Months

The following tables list the ThinkSystem servers that are compatible with the FoD upgrades for SKLM.

Table 10. IBM SKLM Key Management support (Part 1 of 4)

Table 10

Table 11. IBM SKLM Key Management support (Part 2 of 4)

Table 11

Table 12. IBM SKLM Key Management support (Part 3 of 4)

Table 12

Table 13. IBM SKLM Key Management support (Part 4 of 4)

Table 13

Warranty

The N-30m2 M.2 SSDs carry a one-year, customer-replaceable unit (CRU) limited warranty. When the SSDs are installed in a supported server, these drives assume the system’s base warranty and any warranty upgrades.

Solid State Memory cells have an intrinsic, finite number of program/erase cycles that each cell can incur. As a result, each solid state device has a maximum amount of program/erase cycles to which it can be subjected. The warranty for Lenovo solid state drives (SSDs) is limited to drives that have not reached the maximum guaranteed number of program/erase cycles, as documented in the Official Published Specifications for the SSD product. A drive that reaches this limit may fail to operate according to its Specifications.

Physical specifications

The N-30m2 M.2 SSDs have the following physical specifications:

Length: 80 mm
Width: 22 mm
Thickness: 3.8 mm
Weight: 9g

Operating environment

The N-30m2 M.2 SSDs are supported in the following environment:

Temperature, operating: -40 °C to 85 °C (-40 to 185 °F)
Temperature, non-operating: -40 °C to 85 °C (-40 to 185 °F)
Relative humidity: 85% (noncondensing)

Agency approvals

The N-30m2 M.2 SSDs conform to the following regulations:

CE 2014/30/EU
FCC 47 CFR Part 15
UKCA S.I. 2016 No. 1091 and S.I. 2012 No. 3032
RoHS 2011/65/EU with 2015/863/EU and 2017/2102/EU
REACH 1907/2006/EU and 207/2011/EU
WEEE 2012/19/EU

For more information, see the following documents:

Lenovo ThinkSystem SSD Portfolio Comparison
https://lenovopress.com/lp1261-lenovo-thinksystem-ssd-portfolio
Swissbit product web page
https://www.swissbit.com/en/products/nand-flash-products/pcie-ssd-modules/
VMware SSD support page
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2145210

Product families related to this document are the following:

Drives

Notices

Lenovo may not offer the products, services, or features discussed in this document in all countries. Consult your local Lenovo representative for information on the products and services currently available in your area. Any reference to a Lenovo product, program, or service is not intended to state or imply that only that Lenovo product, program, or service may be used. Any functionally equivalent product, program, or service that does not infringe any Lenovo intellectual property right may be used instead. However, it is the user’s responsibility to evaluate and verify the operation of any other product, program, or service. Lenovo may have patents or pending patent applications covering subject matter described in this document. The furnishing of this document does not give you any license to these patents. You can send license inquiries, in writing, to:

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Attention: Lenovo Director of Licensing

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Specifications

Product Name: ThinkSystem M.2 N-30m2 Read Intensive NVMe PCIe 3.0 Industrial SSDs
Capacities: Up to 3.84TB
Features: End-to-end data protection, Thermal throttling/sensor, Power loss protection, Command sets: TRIM, S.M.A.R.T, NCQ, TCG Opal compliant self-encrypting drive (SED)
Endurance: Varies based on capacity
Compatibility: Suitable for ThinkSystem servers

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Q: What is the difference between Read Intensive SSDs and Mixed Use

SSDs?

A: Read Intensive SSDs have better cost per read IOPS ratio but lower endurance compared to Mixed Use SSDs.

Q: How do I know the endurance of my N-30m2 SSD?

A: The endurance varies by capacity; refer to the product specifications for details on total bytes written (TBW) and daily write workloads for optimal performance.