Petabytes On the Cheap
37 posts remaining…
With all the talk about cloud computing I thought it would be interesting to post this article. It turns out you can create a single chassis that contains around 67 terabytes in it for $7,867. That’s pretty incredible, and most interestingly, if you follow the link, you’ll see the cost breakdown compared with other alternatives which it pretty much blows away. It almost doesn’t make any cost sense to outsource your storage to the cloud with those cost savings. It really can be cheaper to bring it in house.
Now there are some down-sides, and they primarily have to do with high availability. There’s a good article explaining some of the potential downsides although id told me, “port multiplier doesn’t matter there, even 2-1 oversubscribed they are fine for doing what they are meant to” so take the criticism with a grain of salt and do your own fact checking. Either way, the cost savings are so dramatic, this could be an evolutionary step and I bet things will get a lot more solid down the road to elevate the issues of availability. So it might be premature to jump into this kind of storage for those massive databases you’re supporting, but given a little time and increased density I bet this technology makes a huge difference in cost down the road.
As a side note, for you people who were around for a while, I did some quick math - it would take just north of 46.5 billion floppies to equal that one 4U box. Also, as a fun fact most smart-cell phones these days are faster than the machine that we started ha.ckers.org on. Amazing how times have changed!
July 21st, 2010 at 11:49 am
The first link is broken (missing opening href quote).
July 21st, 2010 at 1:23 pm
The first link have a double quote at the end.
July 21st, 2010 at 2:45 pm
Ty guys!
July 21st, 2010 at 3:06 pm
Both links go to the same article - are you trying to link to the follow-up on the Backblaze blog?
http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/25/fallout-of-the-backblaze-storage-pod-post/
I’d like to see the potential downsides,
July 21st, 2010 at 3:33 pm
@Ryan - Sorry, no, I fixed the other link. Thanks…. I was typing way too fast I see.
July 23rd, 2010 at 3:51 am
Times do change fast,
I’ve heard that the CPU of an average watch is more powerfull then the CPU(’s) of the Apollo 13 (the one that delivered the first guy on the moon)
July 23rd, 2010 at 5:08 am
Are those 5.25″ floppies, 3.5″ floppies.. Double sided?
Wonder how much space you’d have if you used every floppy ever created..
July 24th, 2010 at 10:17 pm
@ Johan: Apollo 11 landed the first guy on the moon. Apollo 13 was the one that had a Hollywood movie made about it, because there were issues, and they were lucky to get back alive - never made it to the Moon.
IIRC, the computer in the Apollos had 1k RAM — my Atari Pong had 2k — but don’t quote me on that. I’m sure your car, watch, toaster, electric razor, etc. have more than that.
July 25th, 2010 at 2:31 pm
Pretty clever business model as well.
July 29th, 2010 at 10:34 am
The Seagate drives they mention are only $80 on Newegg now.. so it’s actually more like $6k.
July 29th, 2010 at 11:34 am
@Johan:
I’ve multiple references that the Apollo program had computing power equivalent to approximately 3 Commodore 64’s. This isn’t comparable to your cell phone. This is more comparable to those key fobs that play Homer Simpson quotes when you press the buttons.
Also, Apollo 11 was the first manned mission to land on the Moon. Apollo 13 never made it.
July 29th, 2010 at 6:58 pm
Okay, but what would the average yearly electrical cost he on such a box?
August 3rd, 2010 at 12:09 am
@ ConceptJunkie:
“Also, Apollo 11 was the first manned mission to land on the Moon. Apollo 13 never made it.”
Pardon me, but did I post in invisible ink (three above yours) — i. e., sneak a [transparent] or [clear] tag past RSnake’s filters or something? He needs to know about that weakness!
