On 16 February 2010 07:08, Mark Hahn <h...@mcmaster.ca> wrote: > > I think the real paradigm shift is that disks have become a consumable > which you want to be able to replace in 1-2 product generations (2-3 years). > along with this, disks just aren't that important, individually - even > something _huge_ like seagate's firmware problem, for instance, only drove > up random failures, no?
You have just hit a very big nail on the head. Let's think about current RAID arrays - you have to replace a drive with the same type - take Fibrechannel arrays for instance - they have different drive speeds, and sizes of course. ot FC, but once when doing support I replaced a SATA drive by one of the same size. But not the same manufacturer - and it had just a couple of sectors less, so was not accepted in as a spare drive. We could go on - but the point being that once you select a storage array you are bound into that type of disk. I'm now still getting speedy and good service on a FC array which is rather elderly - replacment drives have been on the shelf for years. Anyway, Mark prompts me to think back to the IBM Storage Tank concept - drive goes bad and it is popped out of a hatch like a vending machine. Remember, this is the Beowulf list and Beowulf is about applying COTS technology. We're in the Web 2.0 age, with Google, Microsoft et. al. deploying containerised data centres - and somehow I don't reckon they keep all their data on some huge EMC fibrechannel array with a dual FC fabric and a live mirror to another lockstep duplicate array in another building, via dark fibre, with endless discussions on going to 8Gbit FC (yadda yadda, you get the point). As Mark says - storage is storage. It should be bought by the pallet load, and deployed like Lego bricks. _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
