Kioxia and Dell cram 10 PB into slim 2RU server

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Pricing and Economics

  • Estimates put these 245–256 TB enterprise SSDs in the $15k–$50k range each, with recent anecdotes suggesting ~$400–$500/TB and sharp price increases over the last year.
  • Filling a 10 PB chassis is estimated at $600k–$2M in drive cost alone; some Dell configurator pricing suggests eight‑figure list prices for maxed-out systems, with the usual remark that “nobody pays sticker,” but discounts likely still leave it in the multi‑million range.
  • There’s frustration that such density is effectively limited to hyperscalers, defense, and high-end research, with jokes about needing to sell a house to afford one.

Consumer vs Enterprise and Trickle-Down

  • Multiple commenters dream of replacing large HDD NAS setups with single massive SSDs “in 20 years” or grabbing these cheap on secondary markets.
  • Others note enterprise SSDs are increasingly leased, not sold outright, and many are shredded for data-security reasons; only a minority of recycled drives are fit for resale.
  • Several people complain that SSD $/TB has stagnated or reversed for consumers; past builds with 4 TB NVMe were cheaper per TB than current 1 TB drives.

Reliability, Endurance, and Thermals

  • SSDs are described as “consumable” compared to HDDs; refurb experience suggests certain brands fail disproportionately, often after heavy cache duty in arrays.
  • Concerns are raised about data retention on very dense flash for archival purposes.
  • Each drive draws up to ~25 W; a full 40-drive server is ~1 kW, but even multiple such servers are seen as comparable to or lower than modern GPU racks in power density.

Form Factors and Connectivity

  • The drives’ E3.L (EDSFF) form factor interests homelab and portable-storage enthusiasts, who speculate about PCIe and USB-C adapter chains.
  • Some wish for high-capacity 3.5" SATA SSDs; others argue there’s no economic or technical reason now that M.2, U.2, and EDSFF exist and PCIe lanes are common.
  • PCIe 5.0 bandwidth is a bottleneck: with this many SSDs, networking is limited to a handful of 400 Gbps NICs; commenters look ahead to PCIe 7.0/8.0.

Use Cases, Scale, and Futures

  • Suggested use cases include high-density colo where space is the main constraint and massive backtesting datasets, though some argue HFT itself wouldn’t touch storage in hot paths.
  • One remark claims 10 PB could store lifetime records for an entire medium-sized country; another counters that such records are small and modest per-person telemetry remains limited.
  • There’s cautious excitement about “HDD killer” nearline SSDs and talk of a future where everyone runs large all-SSD NAS or “AI clouds” at home, tempered by skepticism over NAND costs and current supply constraints (e.g., Kioxia reportedly sold out of some products).

Space and Environmental Tangents

  • Long subthread debates orbital data centers/CDNs: critics cite radiation, limited chip rad-hardening, high power/heat, short satellite lifetimes, and difficulty of recycling hardware in space.
  • Others note that modern, smaller-node space-qualified SoCs do exist, with mitigation via redundancy and error correction, but still question whether any real-world problem is better solved in orbit than with terrestrial datacenters.
  • Some worry generally about the recyclability and repairability of ultra-dense electronics, though standard enterprise interconnects may at least help future reuse.