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Date: Fri,  4 Sep 2009 09:52:19 -0700
From: Roman Shaposhnik <rvs@sun.com>
In-reply-to: <0a2891b0ca461335221f7788685fca19@quanstro.net>
To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net>
Message-id: <2443EC7A-38BF-439F-A1C3-EDAF0AAB269C@sun.com>
References: <0a2891b0ca461335221f7788685fca19@quanstro.net>
Subject: Re: [9fans] Petabytes on a budget: JBODs + Linux + JFS
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 64e12d18-ead5-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025

On Sep 3, 2009, at 6:20 PM, erik quanstrom wrote:
> 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.  :-)

*with*, not *on* right?

Now, the information above is quite useful, yet my question
was more along the lines of -- if one was to build such
a box using Plan 9 as the software -- would it be:
     1. feasible
     2. have any advantages over Linux + JFS

Thanks,
Roman.