Enterprise Functionality

Samsung’s PM9A3 SSD has the power efficiency and cost-effectiveness for large-scale cloud datacenter deployment but delivers features usually reserved for high-end enterprise NVMe SSDs. Samsung’s PM9A3 SSD keeps your private data confidential, with encryption via a hardware-based AES-XTS 256-bit encryption engine, and management via the TCG Enterprise standard. The new secure boot feature cryptographically verifies the integrity of every firmware image’s RSA 3072 digital signature prior to execution, helping defend against advanced security threats that target device firmware.

Samsung’s PM9A3 SSD supports out-of-band drive management through NVMe Basic Management Command over SMBus. This enterprise functionality allows board management controllers to inventory and provision SSDs without operation system dependencies. Samsung’s PM9A3 SSD includes enterprise power loss protection (PLP). During normal power-off periods, the host server allocates time to preserve data integrity by transmitting a standby command to each device.

In the event of an unexpected power loss, though, the cached data in a storage device’s internal DRAM buffers can be lost. This can occur with unexpected power outages, or when users unplug devices from the system. However, the Samsung PM9A3 SSD has been designed to prevent data loss resulting from unexpected power shutdowns with its PLP architecture. Upon detection of a failure, the SSD immediately uses the stored energy from its PLP capacitors to provide enough time to transfer the cached data in DRAM to the flash memory, ensuring no loss of data.