Today’s data centers have to support everything from cloud computing and virtualization to AI training, analytics, and high-performance computing. As workloads continue to increase, data-center-specific SSDs are rising to meet those workloads with faster PCIe Gen5 interfaces, higher capacities, and improved endurance to keep up with increasing storage demands.

Below are five data center SSDs designed to deliver the performance, reliability, and scalability needed for today's modern data centers.

Micron 6550 ION SSD

Micron's 6550 ION SSD is an ideal choice for data centers as it's designed for dense-cloud, AI, and data-lake storage. The drive’s QLC NAND allows it to reach capacities up to 60 TB with a focus on storage density and power efficiency. According to Micron, a 1U server populated with 20 6550 ION drives can provide more than 1.2 PB of flash storage, allowing data centers to reduce the number of servers and drives needed for large deployments.

Samsung PM1753

The PM1753, a PCIe Gen5 enterprise SSD developed by Samsung, features V9 NAND TLC technology, suiting it for data centers utilizing AI infrastructure, virtualization, OLTP databases, and large-scale analytics. The SSD also supports modern security features, including TCG Opal encryption, SPDM, and power-loss protection while still providing high random read performance.

Solidigm D7-PS1030

Solidigm's D7-PS1030 is designed for mixed and write-intensive enterprise workloads such as cloud infrastructure, AI applications, HPC, logging servers, and transactional databases. Solidigm optimized the drive for PCIe Gen5 performance under real-world workloads rather than peak benchmark numbers. The D7-PS1030 is also touted for its consistent performance with up to 10-GB/s write speeds and 14-GB/s read speeds.

KIOXIA CD9P-V Series

KIOXIA’s CD9P-V Series consists of mixed-use data center NVMe SSDs designed for hyperscale cloud deployments. They’re available in both mixed-use and read-intensive models. The drives come with the company’s BiCS FLASH generation 8 TLC flash memory, in a CD9P-V E3.S form factor. They provide 3 DWPD (Drive Writes Per Day) of endurance and storage capacities up to 12.8 TB.

Kingston DC3000ME

The DC3000ME is touted by Kingston as an enterprise PCIe Gen5 NVMe SSD that’s designed for AI servers, cloud computing, HPC, and edge deployments. The data center SSD incorporates 3D eTLC NAND, takes advantage of the PCIe 5.0 interface, and is backward-compatible with PCIe 4.0 servers and backplanes. The DC3000ME also offers on-board power-loss protection and AES 256-bit encryption for increased data security.

Final Thought

With data centers increasing support for AI infrastructure, cloud storage, and enterprise databases, today's data center SSDs are taking speed, performance, and capacity to new levels. With PCIe Gen5 fast becoming the standard and drive capacities continuing to grow, these SSDs provide data centers with more options for building faster, denser, and more efficient storage infrastructures.