This 245TB enterprise SSD shows how fewer drives can deliver petabyte storage while exposing trade-offs in endurance and write performance
- Four DapuStor Roealsen6 R6060 drives now offer a full petabyte of storage
- Read speeds remain high while write limitations become more apparent
- Fewer physical disks reduce rack space, power consumption and overall infrastructure complexity
Projections made in 2025 that SSD capacities could reach around 246TB by the end of 2025 are now coming to fruition, with DapuStor’s latest drive meeting expectations.
The DapuStor Roealsen6 R6060 offers 245.76 TB capacity in a single E1.L form factor and maintains the “doubling trend” from 61.44 TB to 122.88 TB and now almost 256 TB equivalent.
This scale means that only four such drives are needed to achieve a petabyte of storage, significantly changing the way data centers approach physical space and infrastructure planning.
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Petabyte-scale storage with fewer disks
The drive leverages PCIe Gen5 connectivity and a 16-channel controller, achieving a sequential read throughput of up to 14,000 MB/s and approximately 2.1 million IOPS for random reads.
These numbers closely match the measured results, suggesting that the claimed specifications are not exaggerated in this case.
However, the architecture relies on eQLC NAND and limited onboard DRAM, which introduces tradeoffs that become more visible as capacity increases.
This SSD is compatible with systems such as Ubuntu, Windows Server and VMware ESXi, implying that it targets deployment in large-scale environments rather than individual use.
The Roealsen6 R6060 is designed primarily for read-intensive workloads, and this design choice shapes its overall behavior.
Sequential read performance slightly exceeds the official figures, reaching over 14,000 MB/s in testing, while sequential write speeds remain around 3,600 MB/s.
Random read operations also work very well, especially under 4K and 8K workloads, where the drive reaches its rated limits.
However, writing performance does not scale in the same way. As capacity increases, the indirection unit becomes larger, reducing both endurance and writing efficiency.
This limitation is recognized in the broader category of QLC-based enterprise storage, where fast recovery takes priority over sustained, write-heavy operations.
Therefore, workloads involving frequent random writes are not the intended use case and their performance seems relatively limited.
Despite the density of the E1.L form factor, thermal behavior remains relatively controlled under sustained workloads.
Tests show maximum temperatures of around 51°C using air cooling, suggesting that cooling requirements are manageable even under conditions of continuous stress.
This is notable because enterprise compact drives often face thermal issues that affect stability and consistency of performance.
Because the high-capacity drive reduces the number of physical units required in a rack, the total power consumption per petabyte will be lower, reducing costs.
The R6060 reflects a shift in enterprise storage priorities, where capacity and retrieval speed are more critical than balanced performance across all workloads.
Via TweakVille
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