HP is introducing the first in a series of solid state drive products. This device, targeted at extreme operation environments or local boot, brings the reliability of solid state technology, lower power and faster reads than traditional rotating drives. The SFF product, based on NAND Single Level Cell flash technology is available on a limited selection of ProLiant server blades.

Solid State drives have no rotating media and therefore no seek times enabling higher read IOPS. Performance is up to 50x SATA and 15x SAS for random reads. Solid State drives are low power (sub 2W) compared to 9W for a 15K SFF SAS generating less heat with no noise. Solid State drives can operate in extreme environments of up to 70 degrees C.