Kioxia and Dell showcased a single-rack object storage configuration, packing 157PB of raw flash capacity into a 42U server rack. The entire system uses 640 solid-state drives, primarily targeting large-scale data infrastructure.
The system runs Dell's software-defined ObjectScale object storage platform, composed of 16 PowerEdge R7725xd servers. Each 2U server is equipped with 40 Kioxia LC9 series E3.L solid-state drives with a capacity of 245.76TB. The servers occupy a total of 32U, leaving 10U of space in the 42U rack. This configuration was developed by combining 16 servers, building upon the single-server 9.8PB solution demonstrated by both parties in May.
The LC9 is a PCIe 5.0 NVMe solid-state drive, utilizing Kioxia's eighth-generation BiCS FLASH QLC flash memory and 32-layer die stacking. The full 245.76TB capacity is only available in the E3.L form factor; the maximum capacity for the 2.5-inch and E3.S versions is 122.88TB. If these latter two specifications were used instead, the single-rack capacity would be roughly halved to approximately 78.6PB.
Based on its own market research, Kioxia calls this configuration the "industry's first" 157PB single-rack object storage system. Dell stated that increasing storage density allows customers to consolidate more data with fewer systems and racks, while reducing cabling, power, and cooling requirements. The focus of this solution is to improve storage density and data center resource utilization, rather than updating SSD products for the consumer market.