Hardware for MogileFS

[Bryn Forbes]

We were considering doing the same thing (except with smaller servers).
One way to avoid the having to build a bunch of boxes, would be to
purchase lacie's Ethernet disks. They have 2TB for much closer to $1/GB.
However, the disadvantage is that they are running embedded xp, but the
thought was the os could be overwritten potentially. 

Of course if you are building your own, my experience has proven out
that you need to have spares. In building 60 boxes, we had about 5 with
"issues" and it was easier to plan on building 10-20% more capacity than
was needed. 

Those cases scare me from a heat/power density perspective. Also, you're
going to run in to issues with multiple cards in a system being a more
complicated (and thus less tested, less reliable) than a simple sata or
ide controller on a smaller system (fewer drives per motherboard).

Anyway, just a couple random thoughts.

Bryn


-----Original Message-----
From: mogilefs-bounces at lists.danga.com
[mailto:mogilefs-bounces at lists.danga.com] On Behalf Of Jay Buffington
Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2005 2:41 PM
To: mogilefs at lists.danga.com
Subject: Hardware for MogileFS

I read about internet archive's new petabox:
http://www.archive.org/web/petabox.php

Capricorn Technologies (http://www.capricorn-tech.com/) makes these. 
They cram 2 terabytes (4 500gb drives I assume) in to 1U and it only
takes 80 watts.

If I were to build a petabyte (or even 100 terabytes) for use with
mogilefs it would make sense use higher density boxes with cheaper
hardware.

For example:
* 300 gb Maxtor 6L300R0 (about 40 cents per gigabyte)
* AIC RMC5D2-XP 5U chassis - holds 48 drives, costs about $3500:
http://www.aicipc.com/productDetail.asp?id=164
* Highpoint RocketRAID 2240 16-port SATA RAID

(300gb * 48 drives) / 5U = 2880gb per 1U

Each drive takes a max of about 10W.  Assuming the other components
take 120W  (its probably much lower than this) we get:

      (10W * 48 drives + 120W) / (300gb * 48 drives)
=~ 600W / 14.4tb
=~ 42 watts per terabyte

Which is comparable to the 40 watts per terabyte of the capricorn box.
 This configuration would be just as reliable but much cheaper than
Capricorn tech's.

Thoughts?
Jay