________________________________________ From: beowulf-boun...@beowulf.org [beowulf-boun...@beowulf.org] On Behalf Of Bob Drzyzgula [b...@drzyzgula.org]
I do think that this is an interesting exercise in finding exactly how little hardware you can wrap around some hard drives and still have a functional storage system. And as Backblaze seems to have built a going concern on top of the design it does seem to have its applications. However, I think one has to recognize its limitations and be very careful to not try to push it into applications where the lack of redundancy and manageability are going to come up and bite you on the behind. --Bob _ Yes... Designing and using a giant system with perfectly reliable hardware (or something that simulates perfectly reliable hardware at some abstraction level) is a straightforward process. Designing something where you explicitly acknowledge failures and it still works, while not resorting to the software equivalent of Triple Modular Redundancy and similar schemes) and which has good performance, is a much, much more interesting problems. _______________________________________________ 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
