Data storage systems and methods for storing data are described herein. The storage system may be integrated with or coupled with a compute cluster or super computer having multiple computing nodes. A plurality of nonvolatile memory units may be included with computing nodes, coupled with computing nodes or coupled with input/output nodes. The input/output nodes may be included with the compute cluster or super computer, or coupled thereto. The nonvolatile memory units store data items provided by the computing nodes, and the input/output nodes maintain where the data items are stored in the nonvolatile memory units via a hash table distributed among the input/output nodes. The use of a distributed hash table allows for quick access to data items stored in the nonvolatile memory units even as the computing nodes are writing large amounts of data to the storage system quickly in bursts.