Abstract: A storage system includes a plurality of solid-state drives (SSDs) in which each SSD is an endpoint of a peer group in which one SSD is a primary SSD of the peer group, or all SSDs are treated as equal peers. Each SSD further includes a host interface port coupled to a host computing device that receives receive input/output (I/O) communications from the host computing device, a peer-interface port coupled to the peer-interface port of each other SSD in the peer group; and a controller coupled to the host interface port and the peer-interface port. The primary SSD controller is responsive to I/O communications received from the host computing device to provide data-protection computations relating to a coordinated data-protection configuration provided by the peer group and to pass the coordinated data-protection configuration information to the controllers of the other end points of the peer group through the peer-interface port.