Solid state drives are changing data centers for the better. These drives are not only faster, but more energy efficient too. While not necessarily more cost effective for businesses, prices are slowly on the decline. It is only a matter of time before mechanical hard drives are dead entirely. The death of HDD may not be in the immediate future, but make no mistake, it is coming.

Intel has been an SSD leader for a while, and the company has two new drives that are designed for data centers. Both the DC P4500 and P4600 feature 3D NAND, and can be had with two connection types -- a PCIe NVMe add-in card or 2.5-inch U.2. Both series of solid state drives offer capacities up to 4TB. Read speeds are up to 3270 MB/s, with write reaching 2100 MB/s -- depending on model and capacity, of course.

"The latest additions to the Intel SSD Family for Data Center have been designed from the ground up for cloud storage solutions, including software defined storage and converged infrastructure. The Intel SSD DC P4500 Series, optimized for reads, enables data centers to get more value out of servers and store more data. Designed for mixed workloads, the Intel SSD DC P4600 Series accelerates caching and enables more workloads per server," says Intel.

The famed company also shares, "The Intel SSD DC P4500 Series and P4600 Series pair Intel's triple level cell (TLC) 3D NAND that delivers industry-leading density with an all-new Intel-developed controller, unique firmware innovations and PCIe/NVMe. The new data center SSDs deliver a blend of performance, capacity, manageability and reliability, and they offer game-changing value to data centers. These unique features will accelerate the move to software defined storage with effective scaling, increase efficiency of data centers and reduce the total cost of ownership while improving service levels. Initially, the Intel SSD DC P4500 Series and P4600 Series will launch in a half-height half-length add-in card and U.2 2.5-inch form factors in 1, 2 and 4TB capacities."

Pricing and exact availability are unknown, but they are sure to be pricey -- especially the 4TB variants. These drives will not be sold in normal retail channels, so if you want to buy them for the data center in your business, you should consult your technology decision-maker.