Sun Goes Beyond RAID in Its First Storage Appliance

[grondramb]

Sun Microsystems' new storage appliances can be used either in a small IT system or, using a larger form factor, in a large data center. Code-named Amber Road, the rack-mounted 7000 line comes in 2TB, 44TB and 288TB options. All use the open-source ZFS file system and the DTrace system analysis tool and can be up and running in about 5 minutes, Sun claims.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Data-Storag...age-Appliance/

Because it uses the next-generation Zettabyte File System, Fowler said, the Amber Road storage devices have eliminated the use of RAID arrays, RAID controllers and volume management software.

Fascinating on two levels -

moving beyond RAID...

and that 288TB is no longer enterprise level.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Data-Storag...age-Appliance/

[JackBurton]

Originally Posted by grondramb

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Data-Storag...age-Appliance/

Fascinating on two levels -

moving beyond RAID...

and that 288TB is no longer enterprise level.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Data-Storag...age-Appliance/

Not really impressed at 10K for 2TB they need to re-think who their market is.

[d-dub]

Sun has a hard time competing with the storage industry on price/terabyte. I wonder if this is Sun designed/built, or if they bought the technology. I work in a big Sun shop, but honestly, we're very frustrated that Sun keeps rebranding someone else's storage products, and every generation is unique, and not compatible with the previous generation.

[Marc]

Remember, Sun bought StorageTek a couple of years ago, so it could very well be Sun-owned stuff that is based on technology we acquired.

[Marc]

Originally Posted by JackBurton

Not really impressed at 10K for 2TB they need to re-think who their market is.

I was shocked to read this. Then I went to sun.com and saw the price is actually just about $11K.

They're obviously going for some very high performance with "14 x 146GB SAS 10K RPM Drive" and 8 GB of memory installed.

I can't even fathom buying 7 spindles per terabyte, but then again, my I/O throughput needs are much, much, much less!

[grondramb]

Originally Posted by Marc

They're obviously going for some very high performance with "14 x 146GB SAS 10K RPM Drive" and 8 GB of memory installed.

I can't even fathom buying 7 spindles per terabyte, but then again, my I/O throughput needs are much, much, much less!

Me either but I wouldn't turn one down if it showed up at Christmas...

[Marc]

Looking for extra heating down there, or just need to consume extra electricity?

[grondramb]

Originally Posted by Marc

Looking for extra heating down there, or just need to consume extra electricity?

Sadly I have so much computer equipment my server room needs cooling even in February...

[d-dub]

Originally Posted by Marc

Remember, Sun bought StorageTek a couple of years ago, so it could very well be Sun-owned stuff that is based on technology we acquired.

The StorageTek storage hardware is pretty nice... as long as they maintain an upgrade path.

[d-dub]

Originally Posted by Marc

I was shocked to read this. Then I went to sun.com and saw the price is actually just about $11K.

They're obviously going for some very high performance with "14 x 146GB SAS 10K RPM Drive" and 8 GB of memory installed.

I can't even fathom buying 7 spindles per terabyte, but then again, my I/O throughput needs are much, much, much less!

I've got a 6320 system with 10 trays of 146GB SCSI drives. I can't wait to get rid of it... it takes too much space, uses too much power, and generates too much heat for the amount of storage we get out of it (20 TB in a full rack). I can't wait for 1TB 15k RPM SAS drives

[JackBurton]

Originally Posted by Marc

I was shocked to read this. Then I went to sun.com and saw the price is actually just about $11K.

They're obviously going for some very high performance with "14 x 146GB SAS 10K RPM Drive" and 8 GB of memory installed.

I can't even fathom buying 7 spindles per terabyte, but then again, my I/O throughput needs are much, much, much less!

The only thing that I could imagine that needed that type of bandwidth is high transaction databases. I don't think smaller organizations are going to be buying these boxes. There are so many vendors in this market already.

[d-dub]

Originally Posted by JackBurton

The only thing that I could imagine that needed that type of bandwidth is high transaction databases. I don't think smaller organizations are going to be buying these boxes. There are so many vendors in this market already.

I support 25 research groups, a half dozen or so that generate a *lot* of data... some of them terabytes/day, with the capability of 1TB/hour. Even though they're writing flat files, bandwidth is my friend

[JackBurton]

Originally Posted by d-dub

I support 25 research groups, a half dozen or so that generate a *lot* of data... some of them terabytes/day, with the capability of 1TB/hour. Even though they're writing flat files, bandwidth is my friend

I get you. But I can buy nearly 4 TB for my HP EVA for 10K. You got to admit, your needs are rather unique.

[d-dub]

Originally Posted by JackBurton

I get you. But I can buy nearly 4 TB for my HP EVA for 10K. You got to admit, your needs are rather unique.

Yeah, especially considering my budget. I use SATA drives for all of the mundane storage needs... they're plenty fast for that.

My next goal... implementing an FTP server that can move terabytes of data off site every week.

[Marc]

Which reminds me...

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon filled with magtapes.

How much bandwidth is that? Of course, the latency is killer.

[mbklein]

Originally Posted by Marc

Which reminds me...

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon filled with magtapes.

How much bandwidth is that? Of course, the latency is killer.

Can you say "massively parallel"?

[bsnelson]

Originally Posted by Marc

Which reminds me...

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon filled with magtapes.

How much bandwidth is that? Of course, the latency is killer.

Ah yes, variation on the theme of "CTAM"*

*(Chevy truck access method) There's a decently good story behind that, if anyone is interested.

Brad

[grondramb]

For that matter, imagine a plane load of Netflix DVDs...

[Drewster]

"Real bandwidth is a 747 filled with Exabytes." -- Vint Cerf


(I'm assuming he meant Exabyte tapes.)

[d-dub]

We have a new supercomputer here (IBM Blue Jean) that is filled up with 1TB SATA drives... 8,000 of them!

I have a paltry 100 TB... I feel so ashamed!

[mercurial]

Originally Posted by d-dub

We have a new supercomputer here (IBM Blue Jean) that is filled up with 1TB SATA drives... 8,000 of them!

I have a paltry 100 TB... I feel so ashamed!

Imagine how fast that thing could stream pr0n!

[Otto]

Originally Posted by grondramb

"Zettabyte"? Seriously?

They're actually talking about ZFS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS , which AFAIK, is not "zettabyte" anymore. The guy originally picked it by searching Google for *FS and figuring out that "ZFS" was more or less unused at this point. He called it "zettabyte" for a while, but that turned out to not take, and ZFS is the actual name.

ZFS is super-duper-cool, I grant you. Storage pools, snapshots, copy-on-write, dynamic striping, etc. While it doesn't necessarily support "RAID", it doesn't really need to. The block devices can be configured as non-redundant (like RAID 0), mirrored (like RAID 1), or in groups of three or more (which is similar to RAID 5, but which they call RAID Z because the "write hole" of R5 is eliminated by copy-on-write operations, thus avoiding the potential data loss problem there).

However, "volume management software" would still be required in some form. I mean, you have to be able to make snapshots when you want, and configure the devices, etc.