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Apple Locks in 12 Petabytes of iTunes Video Content Storage?
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I think it's funny all the comments about "is that enough?" I think this proves two things...
1. Most people don't quite understand just how much a million/billion/trillion of something is.
2. People think that this 12PB amount must have been decided upon arbitrarily, as if Apple didn't do a crapload of research to decide what a good starting amount would be.
Here's another good visual representation of trillion, in dollars:
What does a trillion dollars look like?
1. Most people don't quite understand just how much a million/billion/trillion of something is.
2. People think that this 12PB amount must have been decided upon arbitrarily, as if Apple didn't do a crapload of research to decide what a good starting amount would be.
Here's another good visual representation of trillion, in dollars:
What does a trillion dollars look like?
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It'll take you little over 111 days to download it's entire capacity via Thunderbolt.
It'll take you little over 111 days to download it's entire capacity via Thunderbolt.
Largest single data center != largest storage capacity.
According to this link, there are ~170 million Gmail users. Lets say each as 250MB of email in their archive. I am assuming this would be a close average overall. That is 41,503,906.2 GB, or 39.58 PB.
Keep in mind, this does not include the movies (YouTube), Search Indexes or any of the other large-scale services that Google offers.
My first thought has already been said.
My first question has been asked.
My first concern has been noted.
---
This thread has read my mind today. I learned what a Petabyte is - today is a good day.
I am concerned about how long Apple will take to fill that space and need to expand, of course, this is the first round of storage purchasing, and I'm sure there is more to come - but I'm not as concerned as I am interested. The rate at which this storage is used, consumed, and expanded upon will really show how far we've come in terms of computing capacity.
An IT professor I know whom I saw today said, "It's a great time to be alive", and that has stuck with me very well for the past few hours. I truly am happy to be here to witness our expansion in technology.
~sheds single tear~
I agree, it doesn't seem like all that much, especially if it's meant to store video. According to Wikipedia, Google processes about 24 PB per day.
I wonder how much storage Netflix has? And their catalog of streaming video is still hardly comprehensive.
It's not just hard drives. There are filers on top of the drives and fiber optic connections between the components.
Your typical desktop hard drive runs at 7200 rpm. Depending on the system these may run at 10,000 or even 15,000 rpm. These drives are on a shelf in a rack. The shelves are connected to the filers with fiber.
There are multiple filers and head units. They are connected in such a way that if one fails then another can pick up the slack so you don't get an interruption in service. As the price of the filers go up so does the number of transactions it can handle.
The drives are indeed striped and/or mirrored in some way. How it is setup depends on the needs of the company. In addition to the mirroring and striping the hardware can perform snapshots and backups.
Enterprise storage is a whole different ballgame. Take a look at EMC to get an idea of the offerings.
Hope that made some sense.
I can remember much smaller disk drives, under 100MB that used 14 inch diameter patters and hydraulic pistons to move the read/write heads. The disk drive was about the same size and shape as a home washing machine. This was in the early 1970's.
Here's what I understand about how much 12 PB is: My own video/music collection is a shade over 3 TB. That's .025% of 12 PB, and that's not taking RAID or similar backup/redundancy solutions into account. Considering how many movies and TV shows I don't own, 12 PB doesn't seem like all that much to me, if you're trying to be a media provider.
I'm generally inclined to trust that Apple knows what it's doing, and I'm sure they did their research well. When I wonder if this will be "enough", this implies that I have some expectations, or at the least hopes, for Apple's plans for this storage capacity. Point being: 12 PB may not be enough for what I'm hoping Apple will offer in the near future, which implies that Apple may not be planning what I'd hoped they were planning.
1TB Fiber Channel , 15K RPM SAS drives or SSD are much more expensive. You don't really use desktop harddrives in a SAN.
Isilon Systems
The Isilon gear is phenomenal. Lot's of huge players using that gear including Facebook, ABC, etc.
I may be biased (EMC Partner), but I think that is a great choice.
The Isilon gear is phenomenal. Lot's of huge players using that gear including Facebook, ABC, etc.
I may be biased (EMC Partner), but I think that is a great choice.
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Yea.. But they dot have 7GB actually sitting there for that one customer. They might have 10 allocated to 10 customers and add as they need to, because I bet 99% of gmail users don't have 1Gb on there! People don't think about stuff like this...
So of EVERYONE had a 64gb iPad that was going to have auto sync to these servers, a 64gb space might work for 2 or 3 customers that only have half or a third of their iPad filled. When a company says you get 7GB they don't hol that space for you, they just allow you to use that much.
Dwalls90 said:
Yea.. But they dot have 7GB actually sitting there for that one customer. They might have 10 allocated to 10 customers and add as they need to, because I bet 99% of gmail users don't have 1Gb on there! People don't think about stuff like this...
So of EVERYONE had a 64gb iPad that was going to have auto sync to these servers, a 64gb space might work for 2 or 3 customers that only have half or a third of their iPad filled. When a company says you get 7GB they don't hol that space for you, they just allow you to use that much.
The Datasette transferred around 50 bytes per second.
1 TB = 1099511627776 bytes
1099511627776/50 ~ 21,990,232,556 Seconds or 366,503,876 Minute etc...
http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01/petabytes-on-a-budget-how-to-build-cheap-cloud-storage/
Pretty amazing considering the date and cost....
Much more interested in this sort of solution over the typical enterprise that simply phones up a vendor and orders a SAN.
Pretty amazing considering the date and cost....
Much more interested in this sort of solution over the typical enterprise that simply phones up a vendor and orders a SAN.
Wonder if they run Windows Server 2000.
That is one butt load of memory. Wonder what Amazon needs?
That is one butt load of memory. Wonder what Amazon needs?
I'm sure the base will be ESXi with some flavor of Linux virtualized for the front end.
It's storage not memory