Sabrent Rocket Enterprise 15.36TB SSD Review - High Availability and Performance

TweakTown Rating: 92%

Our Verdict

It's powerful and highly available making Sabrent's Rocket Enterprise SSD a perfect choice for SMB enterprises.

Pros

• Availability
• Sequential performance
• Consistency

Cons

• Mixed workloads

Should you buy it?

AvoidConsiderShortlistBuy

Introduction and Drive Details

For many enterprises, SSD availability is a primary concern. With the world's largest enterprises integrating artificial intelligence into datacenters across the globe, there is currently a side effect of bit-scarcity. Small and medium businesses, or SMB enterprises, are having a difficult time sourcing the SSDs they rely on for functionality.

This is exactly where Sabrent is looking to remedy the situation by offering an alternative to the fab-enabled giants, who are selling all they can make to the largest enterprises across the globe. Sabrent states that its Rocket Enterprise PCIe 4.0 U.2 NVMe SSD (SB-P4U2) is a high-performance, high-endurance storage solution for enterprise workloads and environments. The U.2 connector supports PCIe 4.0 performance of up to 7,000/6,800 MB/s for sequential read and write and up to 1,600K/180K IOPS for 4K random reads and writes. In addition, it can handle sustained QD1 random 4K reads and writes with latencies as low as 90µs/15µs for high QoS and availability. Get exactly what you need, nothing more and nothing less.

Sabrent further describes its newest as follows: Durability is also exemplary, made rugged for challenging environments, and high write endurance. The Rocket Enterprise can handle up to one drive write per day (DWPD) or up to over 56PBW for the largest capacity model (30.72TB). Errors are minimized with an UBER of <1 sector per 10^18 bits read and an MTBF of 2.5M hours. Other critical enterprise features are supported, including E2E metadata protection, power loss protection, namespaces, NVMe-MI over SMBus, VPD, crypto erase, and more, with encryption optionally available on demand. Rocket Enterprise SSDs are a readily available storage solution for your toughest server workloads.

This SSD stands out as one of the most readily available of its kind in current circulation, so let's get into the review and find out exactly what the Rocket Enterprise 15.36TB enterprise SSD can do for you by the numbers.

Specs/Comparison Products

31

Rocket Enterprise 15.36TB PCIe Gen4 x4 U.2 SSD

31

31

31

31

31

Sabrent's Rocket Enterprise Series is available at capacity points ranging from 1.92TB -30.72TB in the 15mm 2.5-inch U.2 form factor. The drive we have in hand for this review is 15.36TB - Phison PS5020-E20 16-channel controlled and arrayed with Hynix 3D eTLC flash. These SSDs are compatible with major operating systems such as RHEL, SLES, CentOS, Ubuntu, Windows Server, and VMware ESXi.

Test System Specs & Enterprise Testing Methodology

Enterprise SSD Test System

Prior to the AI revolution, datacenter SSDs' normal operating range would typically never exceed QD32. With AI data pipeline storage being directed by GPU, high queue depth performance has become paramount. Queue depths in the thousands are now commonplace, which is why we've changed our test platform, methodology, and operating system. Our charted upper queue depth range has been revised from QD256 to QD4096 for random data and up to QD1024 for sequential testing.

Testing Methodology

TweakTown strictly adheres to industry-accepted Enterprise Solid State Storage testing procedures. Each test we perform repeats the same sequence of the following steps:

1. Secure Erase SSD
2. Write the entire capacity of SSD 2x (2 loops) with 128KB sequential write data, seamlessly transition to the next step (sequential testing skips step 3)
3. Precondition SSD by filling the drive twice with 4K or 8K random writes
4. Run test-specific workload with a 30-second ramp up for 5 minutes at each measured Queue Depth, and record average result

Best Deals: Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 4TB SSD

	Today	7 days ago	30 days ago
	$499.99 USD	$499.99 USD	$499.99 USD	Buy
	$569.99 USD	$569.99 USD	-	Buy
	$534.16 CAD	$625.74 CAD	$647.15 CAD	Buy
	£489.89	£489.89	£489.89	Buy
	$499.99 USD	$499.99 USD	$499.99 USD	Buy
* Prices last scanned on 4/18/2025 at 8:31 am CDT - prices may not be accurate, click links above for the latest price. We may earn an affiliate commission from any sales.

Benchmarks - Sequential

128K Sequential Write/Read

31

We precondition the drive using 100 percent sequential 128K writes at QD256 using 1-thread for 2-drive fills, receiving performance data every second. We plot this data to observe the test subject's descent into steady-state and to verify steady-state is in effect as we seamlessly transition into testing at queue depth. A steady-state is achieved after 1-drive fill. Average steady-state 128K sequential write performance at QD256 is approximately 7,200 MB/s.

31

31

Sabrent specs its Rocket Enterprise 15.36TB SSD as capable of delivering up to 6,900 MB/s 128K sequential write throughput. We are getting up to 7,349 MB/s, so the factory spec seems to be on the conservative side. The performance curve here is the best we've ever encountered coming from any PCIe Gen4 SSD. Impressive.

31

31

Here, the drive is factory spec'd for up to 7,000 MB/s 128K sequential read throughput. We are hitting up to 7,520 MB/s, so the factory spec is again on the conservative side. At lower queue depths, the drive is lagging behind much of its competition. However, at queue depths of eight and higher, our contender leaps ahead of most of the drives featured on this chart. At queue depths of 32 or more, our 15.36TB test subject is screaming away at the highest rate we've encountered from any PCIe Gen4 SSD. Nice.

Benchmarks - Random

4K Random Write/Read

31

We precondition the drive using 100 percent random 4K writes at QD256 for 2-drive fills, receiving performance data every second. We plot this data to observe the test subject's descent into steady-state and to verify steady-state is in effect as we seamlessly transition into testing at queue depth. A steady-state is achieved after 1-drive fill. Average steady-state 4K random write performance at QD256 is approximately 200K IOPS. The pattern observed here is exactly what we love to see. Its tight and consistent pattern attests to its high QOS design.

31

31

Our 15.36TB contender is rated at up to 180K for 4K random write IOPS. We are getting up to 212K. We do appreciate how consistently the drive performs across all measured queue depths.

31

31

Factory spec here is up to 1,600K IOPS at QD256. We are getting 1,800K IOPS at QD256 with our configuration. This additional 200K IOPS over factory spec is great to see. The drive's performance curve here is among the best we've recorded with a flash-based PCIe Gen4 SSD. Impressive.

4K 7030

31

31

Here, we find our test subject following along the queue depth ladder pretty closely with the ubiquitous P5520 datacenter SSD. Good enough.

4K 5050

31

31

Exactly what we witnessed at 4K 7030, we again find our test subject following along the queue depth ladder pretty closely with Solidigm's P5520 datacenter SSD.

8K Random Write/Read

31

We precondition the drive using 100 percent random 8K writes at QD256 for 2-drive fills, receiving performance data every second. We plot this data to observe the test subject's descent into steady-state and to verify steady-state is in effect as we seamlessly transition into testing at queue depth. A steady-state is achieved after 1-drive fill. Average steady-state 8K random write performance at QD256 is approximately 280K IOPS. The pattern observed here again is exactly what we love to see. Its tight and consistent pattern attests to its high QOS design. Impressive.

31

31

We expect 8K random to track pretty much the same as 4K random here, just at a lower IOPS rate because it's moving twice the amount of data. Here, we find our test subject delivering exactly half the IOPS it did at 4K.

31

31

Our test subject delivers an excellent performance curve here. At low to mid-range, Sabrent's new enterprise SSD is running in the middle of the pack. At the top end, it's delivering as good as it gets for a PCIe Gen4 SSD. Outstanding.

8K 7030

31

31

8K 7030 is representative of a common database workload. At the low end of the queue depth ladder, our test subject delivers average to above-average performance. At mid-range queue depths and beyond, performance is somewhat lackluster.

8K 5050

31

31

Everything just stated about its performance curve at 8K 7030 applies here as well.

Final Thoughts

Overall, we like what Sabrent's Rocket Enterprise SSD has to offer. The drive excels at sequential workloads, both read and write. Pure random workloads are good enough when programming data and border on exceptional when serving data to the host. Additionally, we do love the consistency the drive demonstrates via our preconditioning charts. The unusually tight patterns produced by the drive verify its high QOS design.

As we see it, Sabrent's first enterprise SSD is a welcome addition to the enterprise storage ecosystem, especially for SMB enterprises, where availability issues have been plaguing many companies. The Rocket4 enterprise SSD is readily available with little to no lead time involved, and Sabrent is already shipping to its customers.

31

It's highly available, exceptionally consistent, delivers plenty of performance, and is backed by a 5-year warranty. Sabrent's Rocket Enterprise SSD is TweakTown Recommended.