KIOXIA America and Dell Technologies have put 157PB of raw flash in a single 42U rack, using 640 KIOXIA LC9 Series 245.76TB SSDs across 16 Dell PowerEdge R7725xd servers running software-defined Dell ObjectScale. KIOXIA calls it the first 157PB object storage configuration in an industry-standard rack, a claim it bases on its survey of the market. The rack builds on the 40-drive, 9.83PB ObjectScale node Dell qualified earlier this year. Neither company has given availability for the rack configuration.
Object Storage Configuration
The rack total follows from that node: each 2U R7725xd holds 40 of the 245.76TB drives for 9.83PB, and 16 servers come to 157.29PB in 32U, which leaves 10U of the rack open. ObjectScale is Dell’s object storage platform for unstructured data, and the companies name AI training, big data analytics, and cloud-native applications as the target workloads. The 157PB figure is raw capacity, and neither company has published usable capacity, the data protection scheme, or performance for the rack.
KIOXIA frames the efficiency case as consolidation, with a smaller storage footprint, higher TB per watt, and lower cooling requirements than hard drives or lower-capacity SSDs at the same capacity. Dell adds that packing the data into fewer systems and racks also cuts cabling. No power or cooling measurements accompany those claims, so the comparison against a hard drive or mixed-media object store at 157PB is left to the buyer.
“AI is driving unprecedented growth in unstructured data, and customers need to scale capacity without scaling their data center footprint and power consumption,” said George Papadopoulos, SVP, Product & Engineering, Dell Technologies. “With Dell ObjectScale and KIOXIA’s 245.76 TB SSDs, customers can consolidate more data into fewer systems and racks while reducing cabling, power and cooling requirements.”
LC9 Series NAND and Form Factors
The KIOXIA LC9 Series uses BiCS FLASH generation 8 3D QLC in a 32-die stack. Capacity tops out at 245.76TB in the E3.L form factor and at 122.88TB in the 2.5-inch and E3.S form factors, so the rack-level figure depends on E3.L bays. The drives comply with PCIe 5.0, NVMe 2.0, and NVMe-MI 1.2c, and KIOXIA lists support for the Open Compute Project Datacenter NVMe SSD specification v2.5 with some requirements unmet. Flexible Data Placement is included to reduce write amplification and extend drive life.
Reliability and Security
KIOXIA rates the LC9 Series at a mean time to failure of 2.5 million hours, a statistical figure the company notes is not a guarantee or estimate of product life. The drives also carry flash die failure protection, which KIOXIA says allows a NAND die to fail while the SSD continues to operate with full reliability. That protection carries more weight at this density, where one drive holds 245.76TB and one server holds nearly 10PB.
Security comes through optional SIE, SED, and FIPS SED models, along with CNSA 2.0 firmware-signing support across the series. The SED models support TCG Opal and Ruby, and the FIPS models use a security module designed to comply with FIPS 140-3, with the current validation status available from KIOXIA on request. KIOXIA notes that the security models are not offered in every country because of export and local regulations.
For readers who want to try the software without the hardware, Dell offers a free edition of ObjectScale for non-production use with no time limit. It is distributed as a virtual appliance, currently version 4.4, and Dell recommends 8 CPU cores, 64GB of RAM, and 1TB of additional block storage to run it.
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