Introducing the FlashSystem C200

Capacity optimized Flash for lower performance use cases

Over the last few years we’ve seen the price of NAND based Flash devices get closer and closer to that of the remaining stalwart of the HDD industry – Nearline high capacity 7.2K RPM drives. There is still a delta, but its now possible to look at replacing racks and racks of spinning disk with QLC based NAND capacity.

Enter the FlashSystem C200

Today we introduced a new class of FlashSystem products, starting with the C200. Bringing all the feature/function value propositions of our industry unique FlashCore Modules Gen4 as an alternative to situations where you’d install a 5045 and many 5U92 expansion enclosures.

The C200 comes in a fixed config model, 24x 46TB raw FCM4 providing 1.1PB of raw capacity in 2U. Remember of course that the FCMs are self encrypting and compressing – allowing up to 2.3PB of effective capacity. Compare that to building a 2PB solution with 20TB NL-SAS, where you would need 15 RU… The savings in footprint, power and cooling are obvious. 256GB of cache complements the drive capacity, with either Fibre Channel or Ethernet host attachment.

Clearly, this is aimed at certain use cases. Archive solutions, backup repositories and areas where higher latency is acceptable. With a NL-SAS drive that is not very active, we can probably get 4-5ms latency. With one that is under reasonable load we are talking more like 10ms. Push them beyond their couple of hundred IOPs and you can easily expect 30ms or more!

The C200 is aimed to provide workloads up to 200,000 IOPs, at 1-2ms latency and 23GB/s throughput.

46TB raw FCM4 – RTD and SGC

These device specific, lower performance, FCM4 drives provide all the same capability of those available in the other FlashSystems. Always on Encryption and Compression. Internal pseudo-SLC / QLC tiering for frequently accessed data, best in class endurance with asymmetric wear leveling, variable voltage access and health binning, and of course the industry leading Ransomware Threat Detection (RTD) that can detect anomalous workloads in under 60 seconds, allowing you to trigger and quickly recover using the in-built immutable data protection mechanisms such as Safeguarded Copy (SGC).

FlashSystem grid and Policy Based Management

The C200, like the other NVMe based FlashSystem, includes access to all the Storage Virtualize advanced functions. The licensed machine code is full feature. That means the C200 can join a FlashSystem grid, enabling non-distruptive Storage Partition migration between systems. (Something the 5015 and 5045 cannot) In addition, all the new Policy-based Management features, Replication and High Availability are possible across the entire capacity of the device.

By adding a C200 to your FlashSystem grid, you now have a lower cost tier within your federated grid allowing you to move cold or archived workloads into a system that matches the use which all the time reducing costs overall.

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The writing really is on the wall for the last of the spinning rust… over the next few years we will see the price point for Flash get closer and closer, and eventually even reduce lower than NL-SAS. With 300, 500 and even 1PB Flash drives being teased in the industry, its almost impossible for even the most advanced magnetic platter technologies to keep up.

The C200 is configurable was announced on 25th February 2025, WW GA is 21st March 2025.