We found the Innodisk OCuLinkDOM and it appears to offer 5x the performance and higher capacities than traditional SATADOMs. With embedded platforms and even in rackmount storage servers, primary drive bays and hot-swap bays are valuable commodities. OS drives are often necessary, but they can generally be lower capacity and lower performance devices. We see solutions like the Dell EMC BOSS solve this using a PCIe add-in card with dual SATA SSDs.
In most servers, we see SATADOMs as the primary boot device options for onboard SATA ports. We reviewed a selection of Innodisk SATADOM modules that can utilize SATA power so that they do not require an additional power cable:
- Innodisk SATADOM-SL 3ME3 V2 32GB Benchmarks and Review
- Innodisk SATADOM-SL 3ME3 V2 64GB Benchmarks and Review
- Innodisk SATADOM-SL 3ME3 V2 128GB Benchmarks and Review
- Innodisk SATADOM-ML 3ME3 V2 256GB Benchmarks and Review
As we see the industry transition from SATA to PCIe based solutions, Innodisk is taking on that transition with the OCuLinkDOM.
Innodisk OCuLinkDOM
Here is a Supermciro X11SDV platform with the new Innodisk OCuLinkDOM. You can read more about the Supermicro platform pictured in our Supermicro X11SDV-4C-TLN2F Review.
As you can see, the Innodisk OCuLinkDOM sits on the Oculink motherboard header. It does not require an additional power cable since it draws power from the port itself. It is also low profile so it can be mounted directly and still fit in 1U chassis for compact deployments.
Here is the spec sheet:
The Innodisk OCuLinkDOM is a PCIe 3.0 x2 NVMe device which offers significantly more low latency bandwidth than SATA. Capacities range from 32GB-256GB with MLC NAND and 64-512GB using 3D TLC NAND. MLC variants can do 1.3GB/s read and 360MB/s write speeds. The 3D TLC NAND variants can hit 1.6GB/s read and 600MB/s write. As you can see from our SATADOM reviews linked above, this is a significant bump in performance.
Final Words
Overall, OS boot devices are not known for their performance. At the same time, the Innodisk OCuLinkDOM is a great way to add higher speed embedded storage options to Oculink enabled motherboards.
