Systems and methods of deduplication aware scalable content placement am described. A method may include receiving data to be stored on one or more nodes of a storage array and calculating a plurality of hashes corresponding to the data. The method further includes determining a first subset of the plurality of hashes, determining a second subset of the plurality of hashes of the first subset, and generating a node candidate placement list. The method may further include sending the first subset to one or more nodes represented on the node candidate placement list and receiving, from the nodes represented on the node candidate placement list, characteristics corresponding to the nodes represented on the candidate placement list. The method may further include identifying one of the one or more nodes represented on the candidate placement list m view of the characteristic and sending the data to the identified node.