Nutanix and Micron collaborate to deliver high-capacity storage innovations

Walking around recently at a tradeshow, I was reminded of all the characteristics that are required for storage systems. Wherever I looked, it was performance, capacity, endurance, space efficiency, power efficiency, price and manageability. Generally, it was messaged in more “marketing-esque” words, but you get the idea. These are all critical considerations when it comes to storage solutions in the data center. And every data center is different from the next. That means each data center requires its own careful balance of these characteristics. In some environments, space efficiency (aka, storage density) and power efficiency reign supreme. Let’s talk about that.

Micron has a long history of increasing storage density

Micron is a leading pioneer in NAND, the basic building blog of the modern SSD, especially for bit density growth. Essentially, we make bits fit in less space. We have led the industry many times as we shrank the process node size of our 2D NAND, and we pioneered the use of 3D NAND as far back as 2015.¹  And for multiple new NAND generations, we’ve been first-to-market, which has consistently provided us the densest storage, allowing us to deliver high-capacity SSDs while still using highly performant TLC-based NAND.  While this NAND leadership is vital to delivering the best SSDs, we aren’t done yet. 

We asked ourselves what was next, and we found it

Following these successes, we started asking more questions. How can we help customers scale their storage even faster? What can we do to help our customers deliver more value to their customers?

This thinking led us to develop the Micron 6500 ION SSD, born from a fresh look at that challenge. It’s a meaningful step toward more scalable data center economics, maximizing IT budgets, and promoting sustainability by offering:

• Capacity up to 30.72TB that helps facilitate a lower carbon footprint by consolidating more storage in fewer server platforms. 
• Higher performance and endurance to outlast the competitor’s capacity-focused data center SSD.²
• Capacity and low power consumption make the Micron 6500 ION ideal for AI data lakes.³

Sustainable AI starts on the servers that store AI’s massive data lakes. By delivering more performance while consuming 20-50% less power than previous 30 terabyte drives on the market, the Micron 6500 ION solves the world’s hidden power problem, specifically scaling AI in the data center.

Experts agree: the Micron 6500 ION SSD is a winner

As a testament to our innovation, the Micron 6500 ION won the 2023 International Innovation Award⁴  for making AI more sustainable and the 2024 Edison Gold Award for the world's most innovative energy and storage technology product.⁵

The Micron 6500 ION also garnered data center SSD reviewers’ accolades. Serve the Home said that the Micron 6500 ION is a great drive for large numbers of servers that have fast AI or video accelerators and need fast storage capacity in-node.⁶  Storage Review noted that it stands out for its innovation and design to thrive in data centers due to its capacity and cost profile, and that it offered scalable and cost-effective storage options for data centers and other similar environments.⁷

Many of our OEM customers agreed. They integrated the Micron 6500 ION into multiple data center products designed to bring capacity and performance into a single platform.

When Micron develops leading products like the Micron 6500 ION, I am reminded of an old proverb:

“If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together”

Looking at this differently, we asked ourselves with whom does Micron collaborate to bring all these benefits to an even broader audience? Specifically, which storage innovator had the right mix of simple scalability, built-in file, object and block support, data management across multiple clusters, integrated data management, and local-to-cloud mobility?

Enter Nutanix

Nutanix does. At its core, Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) enables simplified management through one pane of glass from private to public cloud. It is a software-defined data services solution that consolidates management and protection of siloed block, file and object storage into a single platform. 

Cooperation between software innovators like Nutanix and storage innovators like Micron is the key to substantial, long-lasting progress that brings the greatest benefits to more end users.

Nutanix and Micron satiate ravenous storage consumers

My colleague Lee Caswell, senior vice president of Product and Solutions Marketing at Nutanix, summed up the benefits of integrating the Micron 6500 ION into NUS saying,

“Customer appetite for enterprise storage is insatiable, yet budgets are fixed and the search for talent has never been more worrisome. We are working with Micron to bring the Nutanix cloud operating platform data services to enterprise users hungry for the latest in flash performance and capacity innovations.”

Lee is spot-on!

Collaboration makes it work!

The importance of collaboration in driving technological innovation and delivering value to end-user customers is hard to overstate. It is through these close relationships that companies can leverage each other’s strengths, leading to products and services that are greater than the sum of their parts. 

I congratulate Nutanix on successfully integrating the Micron 6500 ION into NUS. It manages a broad range of AI data lifecycle requirements. This is a major milestone in our journey toward enabling the use and benefits of AI for all.

I know this product using our 6500 ION SSD is the next, among many other, successful products from Nutanix. We wish Lee and the entire Nutanix team tremendous success knowing that great products like this are consistently well-received by customers!

Learn more about:
The Micron 6500 NVMe SSD
Micron 6500 ION SSD technical specifications
An overview of the Micron 6500 ION SSD
All of Micron’s data center SSDs
Micron leadership in memory, storage, and applications 

Nutanix thoughts on NUS and the benefits if integrating the Micron 6500 ION SSD into NUS platform 
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)
Nutanix leadership (blog)