Rating: 4.2 / 5
1.44 petabytes. One server. Ships tomorrow.
That’s the SSG-542B-E1CR60-01-G2 in a sentence. Supermicro has crammed 60 x 24TB SATA HDDs into a single 4U node — backed by a 32-core Intel Xeon 6730P and 512GB of DDR5-5200 — and priced the whole thing to compete seriously on cost-per-terabyte. If bulk storage is your bottleneck, this box removes it.
Two 960GB U.2 NVMe SSDs round out the storage tier for caching and metadata. Dual 25GbE SFP28 ports handle the network side. It’s a focused, no-fluff build.
Key specs
- CPU: Intel Xeon 6730P (32-core, 2.5GHz, 250W)
- RAM: 512GB DDR5-5200 (16x 32GB RDIMM)
- Storage: 60x 24TB 3.5″ SATA HDD + 2x 960GB U.2 NVMe SSD
- Raw capacity: 1.44PB
- Networking: 2x 25GbE SFP28
- Chassis: 4U / 1 Node
- TPM 2.0 included
Built for density, not speed
Let’s be clear about what this box is. It’s not a GPU training rig or a high-IOPS transactional system. It’s a purpose-built bulk storage platform, and it excels at exactly that.
The Xeon 6730P is a solid single-socket choice — 32 cores, 288MB cache, and enough grunt to handle the I/O management and parity workloads that come with 60 spinning disks. You’re not bottlenecked on compute.
The 512GB of DDR5-5200 gives you plenty of headroom for large directory operations, in-memory caching layers, or software-defined storage stacks like Ceph or TrueNAS.
The NVMe tier matters
Two 960GB U.2 NVMe SSDs might seem modest alongside 1.44PB of HDD, but they earn their keep. Use them as read/write cache, a metadata tier, or a fast landing zone before data migrates to cold storage. In tiered storage setups, this combination works well.
25GbE networking — not a bottleneck
Dual 25GbE SFP28 ports give you sufficient throughput for bulk ingest and retrieval. For most archiving and data warehousing workflows, this is more than adequate. If you’re running a heavily concurrent access workload, you’ll want to think about bonding — but for the primary use cases here, it holds up.
Who should buy this?
This server is built for organisations that generate data faster than they can afford to ignore it. Media production houses managing raw video libraries, research institutions archiving datasets, enterprises running long-retention compliance storage — this is their box.
It’s not for you if you need high random IOPS or sub-millisecond latency. It is for you if you need petabyte-scale density, fast deployment, and a predictable cost per terabyte.
Verdict — 4.2 / 5
The SSG-542B-E1CR60-01-G2 does exactly what it promises: dense, reliable, enterprise-grade storage that’s ready to rack within 24 hours. At ~$85K fully configured, the cost per terabyte is genuinely competitive. Half a point off for the modest NVMe tier and no 100GbE option at this config level — but for bulk storage, it’s a clean, confident choice.