"For example, each standard server rack can store 2400 TB of data if fully populated with 10 TB HDDs today. If 12 TB hard drives are installed into the same rack, its total storage capacity increases to 2880 TB at the same power and at the same space, which is quite an upgrade."
A fairly generic 4U JBOD chassis can hold 45x 3.5" hard drives today (SuperMicro SC836-series, for example). You can stuff 10 of those, along with a 2U head unit filled with HBAs, into a standard 42U server rack.
That gives you 45 * 10 * 10 TB = 4500 TB of storage in a standard server rack with 10 TB drives.
Or, 45 * 10 * 12 TB = 5400 TB of storage in a standard server rack with 12 TB drives.
My first thought was HP's SSA70's. Microsoft in the past made frequent use of these in a few different scenarios. 70 x 14TB.......makes me smile. When we first started using them we had 40x750GB setups.
Dropbox is storing in their custom pods more than a PB already (I think it was 105 10TB or 90 12TB drives or something like that) and I think they are the size of a 7U.
That's a common feature for SAS drives. It's extra metadata used by the raid controller, unfortunately like much highly enterprisy stuff user facing documentation is relatively hard to find. The best I could do was for the original 520byte version, which had 2 bytes for a CRC, 2 for a blob of some sort, and 4 for a write order tracker. I'm not sure what else is in the 512+16 or 4k+16/64/128 versions.
Are we not slated to run out of helium in the next couple decades? Tech advancements are great, but it just seems irresponsible using such a prescious element on this.
How do you run out of a noble gas that does not react with anything? You don't use it up like gasoline or something. A drive will probably leak He during its life span and once it expires it will either be recycled and the He will be used in another drive or it will just release all the He into the atmosphere, thus supplying more He for other things. And eventually, we will have fusion reactore where we generate all the He from H2 we can ever need. All the uses I can think of for He are generally in the tech department and not vitally important for anyone (sub zero cooling, these drives, some inert gas use).
He is not captured from the atmosphere, it is mined from the earth, and current sources are running low. When it enters the atmosphere it rises until it leaves and we never see it again.
You nailed it. Cost prohibitive is exactly how a free market should work. Less becomes more expensive. Regardless, its not in as short a supply as previously thought. https://www.wired.com/2016/06/dire-helium-shortage...
I wonder how far you can go before you run up against the limits imposed by the OS?
I used to think I would never need a 1TB drive and now my 4TB is nearly full of 4K video and 20 megapixel photogrpahs plus my medium format film I have been scanning in recently
Depends on which OS you mean... 32-bit Windows XP does not support GPT for example, which is already needed for drives above 2TB. There are ways to use MBR with larger drives by using larger sector sizes, but it's a bit of a hack - it uses sector size as reported by the hardware and can not be user-specified, and if you put the drive in a different external HDD case or use a different sata adapter or something, it may report a different size and become unreadable. GPT support brings the limit up to zettabytes, for which "I would never need" seems more reasonable. On the filesystem level the situation is similar - several common ones have the same limits as MBR just replacing sectors with clusters, the size of which however can be easily user controlled so "crisis averted" for a while. And newer filesystems already use 48 or 64 bit addressing for exobyte or zettabyte limits.
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phoenix_rizzen - Friday, December 9, 2016 - link
"For example, each standard server rack can store 2400 TB of data if fully populated with 10 TB HDDs today. If 12 TB hard drives are installed into the same rack, its total storage capacity increases to 2880 TB at the same power and at the same space, which is quite an upgrade."A fairly generic 4U JBOD chassis can hold 45x 3.5" hard drives today (SuperMicro SC836-series, for example). You can stuff 10 of those, along with a 2U head unit filled with HBAs, into a standard 42U server rack.
That gives you 45 * 10 * 10 TB = 4500 TB of storage in a standard server rack with 10 TB drives.
Or, 45 * 10 * 12 TB = 5400 TB of storage in a standard server rack with 12 TB drives.
gfody - Friday, December 9, 2016 - link
60 per 4U if you go top-loading (SuperMicro R1K66JBOD) - 7200TBcolinstu - Friday, December 9, 2016 - link
Don't get about 45drives, they have a 60 drive top-loading 4U too. http://www.45drives.com/products/storinator-model-...Holliday75 - Friday, December 9, 2016 - link
My first thought was HP's SSA70's. Microsoft in the past made frequent use of these in a few different scenarios. 70 x 14TB.......makes me smile. When we first started using them we had 40x750GB setups.Holliday75 - Friday, December 9, 2016 - link
*70phoenix_rizzen - Friday, December 9, 2016 - link
60 drives in 4U is more dense than 70 drives in 5U. :)600 drives in 40U (10 JBODs) vs 560 drives in 5U (8 JBODs).
asendra - Friday, December 9, 2016 - link
Dropbox is storing in their custom pods more than a PB already (I think it was 105 10TB or 90 12TB drives or something like that) and I think they are the size of a 7U.zipcube - Friday, December 9, 2016 - link
90 per 4U with a number of chassis, including the SuperMicro 6048R-E1CR90LDanNeely - Sunday, December 11, 2016 - link
That's an over sized chassis though, 35.66" long vs the ~29-30" that conventional rackmount servers top out at.iwod - Friday, December 9, 2016 - link
I wonder what capacity HDD they use for Amazon 100PB container.QChronoD - Saturday, December 10, 2016 - link
I don't remember ever seeing multiple sizes listed for 4k sectors before. Does the drive do it's own sector level parity (or ECC)?DanNeely - Sunday, December 11, 2016 - link
That's a common feature for SAS drives. It's extra metadata used by the raid controller, unfortunately like much highly enterprisy stuff user facing documentation is relatively hard to find. The best I could do was for the original 520byte version, which had 2 bytes for a CRC, 2 for a blob of some sort, and 4 for a write order tracker. I'm not sure what else is in the 512+16 or 4k+16/64/128 versions.https://oss.oracle.com/~mkp/docs/dix.pdf
frostyfiredude - Saturday, December 10, 2016 - link
Are we not slated to run out of helium in the next couple decades? Tech advancements are great, but it just seems irresponsible using such a prescious element on this.vladx - Saturday, December 10, 2016 - link
Is He currently needed in a life-and-death situation? Otherwise I don't see why it matters since it would've escaped naturally anyways.frostyfiredude - Saturday, December 10, 2016 - link
Anything superconducting needs it, so it's extremely valuable to researchers and a key requirement to machines such as MRIs in hospitalsDeath666Angel - Saturday, December 10, 2016 - link
How do you run out of a noble gas that does not react with anything? You don't use it up like gasoline or something. A drive will probably leak He during its life span and once it expires it will either be recycled and the He will be used in another drive or it will just release all the He into the atmosphere, thus supplying more He for other things. And eventually, we will have fusion reactore where we generate all the He from H2 we can ever need. All the uses I can think of for He are generally in the tech department and not vitally important for anyone (sub zero cooling, these drives, some inert gas use).Reflex - Saturday, December 10, 2016 - link
He is not captured from the atmosphere, it is mined from the earth, and current sources are running low. When it enters the atmosphere it rises until it leaves and we never see it again.That said, recently a major reserve was found, you can read more about it here: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jun/28/hu...
AutomaticTaco - Tuesday, December 13, 2016 - link
https://www.wired.com/2016/06/dire-helium-shortage...Fujikoma - Sunday, December 11, 2016 - link
I'm sure that children's balloons will be banned (cost prohibitive) if helium supplies interfere with the tech industry.AutomaticTaco - Tuesday, December 13, 2016 - link
You nailed it. Cost prohibitive is exactly how a free market should work. Less becomes more expensive. Regardless, its not in as short a supply as previously thought. https://www.wired.com/2016/06/dire-helium-shortage...AutomaticTaco - Tuesday, December 13, 2016 - link
Dire Helium Shortage Vastly Inflatedhttps://www.wired.com/2016/06/dire-helium-shortage...
James5mith - Sunday, December 11, 2016 - link
https://www.supermicro.com/products/system/4U/6047...72 drives in 4U if you want to go even further with Supermicro solutions.
72x10 = 720 drives in 40U.
7200TB in 40U @10TB/drive
10080TB in 40U @12TB/drive
Ushio01 - Sunday, December 11, 2016 - link
Woo so it's only going to take another year or two for 3.5" HDD's to reach capacity parity with current 2.5" SSD's yay.johnhenry922 - Monday, December 12, 2016 - link
I wonder how far you can go before you run up against the limits imposed by the OS?I used to think I would never need a 1TB drive and now my 4TB is nearly full of 4K video and 20 megapixel photogrpahs plus my medium format film I have been scanning in recently
Visual - Tuesday, December 13, 2016 - link
Depends on which OS you mean... 32-bit Windows XP does not support GPT for example, which is already needed for drives above 2TB. There are ways to use MBR with larger drives by using larger sector sizes, but it's a bit of a hack - it uses sector size as reported by the hardware and can not be user-specified, and if you put the drive in a different external HDD case or use a different sata adapter or something, it may report a different size and become unreadable.GPT support brings the limit up to zettabytes, for which "I would never need" seems more reasonable.
On the filesystem level the situation is similar - several common ones have the same limits as MBR just replacing sectors with clusters, the size of which however can be easily user controlled so "crisis averted" for a while. And newer filesystems already use 48 or 64 bit addressing for exobyte or zettabyte limits.
Anonymous Blowhard - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
> HDDs featuring future magnetic recording technologies as well (i.e., HAMR, BPM, etc.)I imagine the BPM drives will make a very loud "unce unce unce" noise all night long.