Fastest external NVMe RAID storage enclosures

HighPoint has unveiled the RocketStor 654x Series, a new line of external NVMe RAID enclosures created to elevate Gen4 Storage applications to new heights by effectively packaging uncompromised x16 transfer performance and nearly ½ petabyte of storage capacity into a robust, compact external form factor that can be easily integrated into any x86 platform with a free PCIe x16 slot; ideal for industrial and edge computing platforms and professional workstation environments.

Available with four or eight Hot-Swappable, vertically aligned 2.5" drive bays and powered by the company's industry-proven PCI Switching Architecture and RAID technology, RocketStor 654x series enclosures can deliver up to 28GB/s of transfer bandwidth and support up to eight DC and Enterprise class U.2 and U.3 media configured into as many as four independent RAID 0, 1 or 10 arrays.

A major game-changer is the ability to fully optimise x16 lanes of Gen4 upstream or direct CPU bus bandwidth, combined with self-bifurcation (managing and distributing x48 lanes of internal host bandwidth). This advanced architecture allows each enclosure to reach its full performance and capacity potential while allowing for a remarkably compact 4.84" chassis, making them ideal solutions for applications that must rapidly access, transfer and process large volumes of data, such as AI training, M&E post-production, and medical imaging or diagnostic platforms.

The enclosures deliver what no other external NVMe storage solutions can: uncompromised, host-to-device PCIe x16 connectivity. Each component has been engineered to maximise the performance and reliability of data transfer, from the compact eight-bay low-profile chassis to the robust CDFP 400Gbps cabling solution and discreet PCIe x16 adapter card.

The integrated PCIe switching technology allows enclosures to maximise data transfer speed by fully utilising the host platform's x16 lanes of PCIe bandwidth. The enclosure (device-side) and PCIe adapter (host-side) have dedicated PCIe switch ICs.

This allows each solution to provide x16 lanes of dedicated PCIe Gen4 upstream bandwidth and x4 lanes of dedicated downstream bandwidth to each U.2 or U.3 SSD. The unique architecture minimises latency and significantly improves signal integrity to streamline I/O transmission between the host computer and NVMe storage.

The external form factor enables administrators to easily expand or upgrade storage capacity for any PC platform with PCIe Gen4 x16 connectivity.

The enclosures are particularly suited for space-constrained industrial and edge computing platforms, enabling such systems to employ large configurations of enterprise-grade 2.5" NVMe media without compromising the compact hardware footprint.

Administrators need only install the discreet low-profile PCIe adapter card into the host platform.