petabyte
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Intel's push for petabyte SSDs requires a new kind of drive
There aren't many ways to make data center storage exciting, but mentioning a drive that could hold up to one petabyte (1,000 terabytes) comes close. Intel is making the case to swap out old disk-based drives in data centers with SSDs, and as part of that it's showing off a new "Ruler" form factor. Instead of molding to the 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch size of traditional drives or just the dimensions of a PCIe slot, its long skinny shape fits into a standard rack mounted server. As TechGage notes, with regular 10TB hard drives, slapping together a petabyte's worth would fill up a 100-bay 4U server. The new Ruler drives aren't available yet, but Intel claims it will offer them with both its Optane and 3D NAND SSDs in the "near future."
Backblaze now storing 100 petabytes of data, announces Storage Pod 4.0
When it comes to storing large amounts of data inexpensively, Backblaze is a leader. The online backup company just announced that they're now storing 100 petabytes -- that's one hundred million gigabytes -- of data from both Mac and Windows users around the globe. To put the number in perspective, Backblaze CEO Gleb Budman published some fun figures on the company's blog. That 100 petabytes is about a quarter of what Facebook stores for its over 1 billion customers, or equivalent to storing 33 billion songs -- that's all of the songs on iTunes, 1,270 times over. You could store 11,415 years of HD video for viewing 24/7. The 31,954 hard drives in the Backblaze data center stacked on end would reach 9,941 feet (over 3,000 meters) in height, almost as tall as California's Mt. Shasta measured from its base. To be able to offer unlimited storage at an affordable rate, Backblaze created the Storage Pod, an open source project using off-the-shelf components to cram as much storage into a rack-mounted module as possible. The company today announced the fourth generation of the Storage Pod, bringing the cost of mass storage down to a piddling $0.051 per gigabyte. Backblaze buys its components in bulk, so they can build a Storage Pod 4.0 for about US$9,305. If you try to make your own 180 TB Storage Pod 4.0, it's going to cost you about $10,587 plus the cost of your labor. Backblaze VP of Engineering Tim Nufire recorded a video outlining the details of this speedy new Storage Pod, which we present in its entirety for your nerdly viewing pleasure. We're still waiting to hear from a TUAW reader who has built one of these in his or her basement...
Huawei throws R&D dollars at gesture control, cloud storage, being more 'disruptive'
Undeterred by the fact that even humans struggle to interpret certain gestures, Huawei says it's allocating a chunk of its growing R&D budget to new motion-sensing technology for smartphones and tablets. The company's North American research chief, John Roese, told Computerworld that he wants to allow "three-dimensional interaction" with devices using stereo front-facing cameras and a powerful GPU to make sense of the dual video feed. Separately, the Chinese telecoms company is also putting development cash into a cloud computing project that promises to "change the economics of storage by an order of magnitude." Roese provided scant few details on this particular ambition, but did mention that Huawei has teamed up with CERN to conduct research and has somehow accumulated over 15 petabytes of experimental physics data in the process. Whatever it's up to, Huawei had better get a move on -- others are snapping up gesture recognition and cloud patents faster than you can say fa te ne una bicicletta with your hands.
IBM developing largest data drive ever, with 120 petabytes of bliss
So, this is pretty... big. At this very moment, researchers at IBM are building the largest data drive ever -- a 120 petabyte beast comprised of some 200,000 normal HDDs working in concert. To put that into perspective, 120 petabytes is the equivalent of 120 million gigabytes, (or enough space to hold about 24 billion, average-sized MP3's), and significantly more spacious than the 15 petabyte capacity found in the biggest arrays currently in use. To achieve this, IBM aligned individual drives in horizontal drawers, as in most data centers, but made these spaces even wider, in order to accommodate more disks within smaller confines. Engineers also implemented a new data backup mechanism, whereby information from dying disks is slowly reproduced on a replacement drive, allowing the system to continue running without any slowdown. A system called GPFS, meanwhile, spreads stored files over multiple disks, allowing the machine to read or write different parts of a given file at once, while indexing its entire collection at breakneck speeds. The company developed this particular system for an unnamed client looking to conduct complex simulations, but Bruce Hillsberg, IBM's director of storage research, says it may be only a matter of time before all cloud computing systems sport similar architectures. For the moment, however, he admits that his creation is still "on the lunatic fringe."
Apple 'petabyte' server is open-source, keeps doctors away
What's this? Looks like the Internet Archive, everyone's favorite repository for online antiquities, has gotten its hands on a fancy new apple "petabyte" server. The new prototype device is open-source and is scalable like the PetaBox hardware that heats it. Its sliced and dried fruit output is also quite delicious, according to David Glenn Rinehart, the artist who installed the server. Though, as anyone who has followed the industry for any amount of time can tell you, there are always a few bad apples in the bunch.
Researcher promises petabyte Hyper-CDs as we struggle to maintain interest
Holographic storage sure has a lot of potential, but so far all those promises have resulted in nothing more than broken dreams. Now we have some new promises, promises that we'll report with due skepticism. Romanian scientist Eugen Pavel is pledging that his company, Storex Technologies, can create a "Hyper" CD-sized disc (120mm diameter, 1.2mm thickness) capable of absorbing a whopping 1,000,000GB. Yes, a petabyte on a disc. This could (in theory) be achieved thanks to the company's expertise in "glass-ceramics compositions as well as read/write mechanics and optics concept(s) applicable to high-density data storage." You know, the ability to fit lots of stuff into small crevasses. Pavel also claims a 5,000 year disc lifetime, which is interesting, because back in 2000 he talked to PC World about another disc that could last 5,000 years -- one that would store a whopping 10TB. There is, apparently, no expiration date on his optimism. Ours, however, is getting a wee bit stale.
