All-flash data storage solutions provider Pure Storage has some new 150TB SSD modules in testing. The firm’s General Manager of Hyperscale Solutions, Bill Cerreta recently announced that his firm has started volume shipments of 75TB modules. Cerreta added some sauce to the post, by including an image of “something brewing in the lab,” a 150TB SSD module.
What is all this talk about modules? Pure sells what it calls a pioneering flash management solution to enterprises, into which its DirectFlash Modules (DFM) are fitted. In the top picture, you can see the end of a ‘150T’ module, which is provided in a ruler-like DFM form factor. It is designed to be slotted into a Pure Storage FlashArray or FlashBlade device.
Pure touts DFM devices as superior in several ways compared to the SSD form factors consumers (and enterprises) may be more familiar with. The attractive qualities of DFM are said to include: improved density and efficiency, smart data placement, longer drive life spans, smart telemetry for better performance over time, and that DFM is both simpler and more reliable.
Pure’s customers seem to be pretty happy with the DFM storage. It has sold nearly 800,000 of these devices since 2017, according to Cerreta’s LinkedIn post. The firm’s monitoring seems to back up some important claims regarding durability. For example, Cerreta says that the huge fleet of SSDs and DFMs it monitors shows that end users experience a “2X drop in failure rate,” with DFMs. Furthermore, they benefit from “marked drops in power consumption and wear, higher array-level performance, and better tail latency control.” One of the key design choices with DFMs is that they leverage "raw" flash and the controllers in Pure Storage products access the flash directly (without a flash translation layer (FTL)).
The heralded shipment of 75TB modules is far from the endgame, even this year, we would estimate. Pure execs are already teasing 150TB devices, as per our headline today, and it is only early May. Moreover, about a year ago we looked at the Pure Storage roadmap and reported on the 300TB DFMs planned for 2026 at the latest.
There have been other very large-capacity SSDs in the news recently. Just a few days ago, SK hynix teased 300TB SSDs. Also, in March Samsung detailed its petabyte SSD subscription service, and Nimbus already sells ExaDrive products in capacities up to 100TB, for now.
