Re: [9fans] Petabytes on a budget: JBODs + Linux + JFS

[erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net>]

On Thu Sep  3 20:53:13 EDT 2009, rvs@sun.com wrote:
> "None of those technologies [NFS, iSCSI, FC] scales as cheaply,
> reliably, goes as big, nor can be managed as easily as stand-alone pods
> with their own IP address waiting for requests on HTTPS."
>    http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01/petabytes-on-a-budget-how-to-build-cheap-cloud-storage/
>
> Apart from the obvious comment that I swear I used a quote like that
> to justify 9P more than once, I'm very curious to know how Plan9
> would perform on such a box.
>
> Erik, do you have any comments?

i'm speaking for myself, and not for anybody else here.
i do work for coraid, and i do do what i believe.  so
cavet emptor.

i think coraid's cost/petabyte is pretty competitive.
they sell 48TB 3u unit for about 20% more.  though
one could not build 1 of these machines since the
case is not commercially available.

i see some warning signs about this setup.  it stands
out to me that they use desktop-class drives and the
drives appear hard to swap out.  the bandwith out
of the box is 125MB/s max.

aside from that, here's what i see as what you get for
that extra 20%:
- fully-supported firmware,
- full-bandwith to the disk  (no port multpliers)
- double the network bandwidth
- ecc memory,
- a hot swap case with ses-2 lights so the tech doesn't
grab the wrong drive,

oh, and the coraid unit works with plan 9.  :-)

- erik