March 4, this was posted. 8 months later, other users who asked for information got nothing, I see.
This is a massive screw up, especially on the enterprise class SSDs, like the DC 3500/3700 series. We can't just stick a 4K drive in an array formatted with 512b disks. Many arrays (most notably ZFS based storage, which is increasingly popular as software defined storage makes waves) will not accept a replacement drive with a different physical sector format.
For those running the older firmware when creating their arrays, their only option is to back everything up, destroy the array, then recreate the array after updating the firmware on all of the existing disks, then restore everything - assuming, of course, you have somewhere to back up all of the existing data. On a large SSD array, this is next to impossible. And all because Intel has decided to change the physical sector size on their SSDs without changing the part number. Any replacement disks we buy or get via RMA are useless to us.
There has been mention that there is a way to toggle the SSD between 4K and 512b, but no where is it mentioned how to do that. You'd think the SSD workbench tool would offer the option, but it doesn't.
Egg on your face, Intel. This will anger enterprise customers - I promise you.
