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Apple Locks in 12 Petabytes of iTunes Video Content Storage?
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Depends if you use "Turbo Loader" or anything similar or not ... How long would it take to rewind a tape like that?
I am assuming this is a cluster? I seriously doubt that would be enough space for every person to access their iTunes content via the cloud. The only conceivable way is if you were limited to the amount of space (like allocated into your 20GB default mobileme account). That would be weak. There are and have been options out there to use your home mac as a media server over the net. Orb is one of them. Besides, any unfortunate souls that were not grandfathered into the unlimited iPhone/iPad data plan would destroy their 3G usage. I still think ATT is the weakest link here for those. I am fortunate enough to have the unlimited data, but many, many people out there do not. (How do you live with 2GB a month???)
Also, you can currently store music and video on your iDisk and access it via Quicktime on the iphone/pad/pod. It's just not a seamless interface with iTunes.
Since they bought Lala, we've been anticipating this: I am really hoping Apple can convince the music and movie labels to allow a streaming subscription service to compete with Mog and Rhapsody (I use Mog currently), but it doesn't look all too promising because these said studios and labels are already at the mercy of Apple via iTunes.
MobileMe is an ok service. I am a subscriber. But I think like the majority of everyone, I feel it can be so much more. The collaboration uses for MobileMe are extremely limited. For example: It's a shame that in order to collaborate with iCal (Read/Write both ends) you need to implement Google to make it work. That's lame. Anyway, enough ranting. Let's just say I really hope Apple finally blows us away with the possibilities in the cloud.... and sooner rather than later.
Also, you can currently store music and video on your iDisk and access it via Quicktime on the iphone/pad/pod. It's just not a seamless interface with iTunes.
Since they bought Lala, we've been anticipating this: I am really hoping Apple can convince the music and movie labels to allow a streaming subscription service to compete with Mog and Rhapsody (I use Mog currently), but it doesn't look all too promising because these said studios and labels are already at the mercy of Apple via iTunes.
MobileMe is an ok service. I am a subscriber. But I think like the majority of everyone, I feel it can be so much more. The collaboration uses for MobileMe are extremely limited. For example: It's a shame that in order to collaborate with iCal (Read/Write both ends) you need to implement Google to make it work. That's lame. Anyway, enough ranting. Let's just say I really hope Apple finally blows us away with the possibilities in the cloud.... and sooner rather than later.
meh, my first HD was 52MB that .052GB or .000052TB or .000000052PB
Mine was 10MB ... and people told me I was wasting money since a second floppy drive (5 1/4) would be more than enough (one to boot the OS, one for the data).
hmmmm
12 PB... that's like, what?... 1,200,000,000 songs? hahahaha
OR uhhh just a guess? 12,000,000 HD Movies?
12 PB... that's like, what?... 1,200,000,000 songs? hahahaha
OR uhhh just a guess? 12,000,000 HD Movies?
Hehe, I once partitioned a 20MB drive into 24 partitions but that was for testing purposes.
I also bought a 100MB drive for $1100 and a 32MB SIMM for the same price. Sometimes I cry when I think back.
12 PB = 12,884,901,888 MB. 200 million iTunes accounts (at the iPad 2 event).
Either everybody is getting 64 megabytes, or this is going to be more of a cloud locker for previous iTunes purchases (where the files are exactly the same for each user and don't have to be duplicated).
Either everybody is getting 64 megabytes, or this is going to be more of a cloud locker for previous iTunes purchases (where the files are exactly the same for each user and don't have to be duplicated).
A petabyte can be defined as either 1000 terabytes or 1024 terabytes. The same with the other measures. This leads to endless confusion, which began in the days when K meant either 1000 or 1024. For example, if you had $1K of cash in your left pocket and 1K of RAM cache in your right pocket you'd probably have $1000 plus 1024 bytes!
Rough calculations...
If you stored 12 petabytes in Apple's 500,000 square foot North Carolina data center, that's 1.1E15 bytes in 5E5 square feet, or 2.3E9 bytes/sq. ft. In other words they'd have only about 2GB per square foot. They'll need a lot more data to fill up that building.
So let's figure it out. The latest disk drives might hold 4TB in 490,000 cubic mm, or 0.0173 cubic feet, which means you can store 2.4E5 GB per cubic foot. Let's cut that down to 1E5 to leave room for enclosures and cabling. The data center appears to be a one-story building so let's assume the ceilings leave 10 feet of vertical usable space. That gives us 5E6 cubic feet x 1E5 GB per cubic foot, or 5E11 GB. So they have room for 476,837 petabytes!
Rough calculations...
If you stored 12 petabytes in Apple's 500,000 square foot North Carolina data center, that's 1.1E15 bytes in 5E5 square feet, or 2.3E9 bytes/sq. ft. In other words they'd have only about 2GB per square foot. They'll need a lot more data to fill up that building.
So let's figure it out. The latest disk drives might hold 4TB in 490,000 cubic mm, or 0.0173 cubic feet, which means you can store 2.4E5 GB per cubic foot. Let's cut that down to 1E5 to leave room for enclosures and cabling. The data center appears to be a one-story building so let's assume the ceilings leave 10 feet of vertical usable space. That gives us 5E6 cubic feet x 1E5 GB per cubic foot, or 5E11 GB. So they have room for 476,837 petabytes!
The original post doesn't say it will be used for customers to store their own files, only for Apple to store all the video content on the iTunes store. Each video file is only stored once so 12PB is probably more than enough for all the videos they currently have (you'd have to be a pretty lazy data architect not to account for growth in the original plan).
I'm sure they already have a large enough storage system for cloud storage/iDisk, or will be planning to expand or replace one soon.
Google has become aware of the interest in the word "petabyte." Made me think that Google truly has its finger on the pulse of the world because what is the first thing people do when they hear about something and want more information? They Google it. Seems like, in the way meteorologist predict the weather, based largely on past experiences from which they derive predictions, that Google will soon be able to predict what you are going to enter as your query and instead will simply offer you the answer when you load the Google page instead. And, I'm not even kidding when I think about this to myself.
Clearly the new DC wont be serving up iTunes content if they are using an external storage provider...making the article stupidly misleading to many folks.
This must mean the DC will be primarily for MobileMe. Resulting in the continuation of crap iDisk performance for Apples largest audience: Anyone outside the US.
This must mean the DC will be primarily for MobileMe. Resulting in the continuation of crap iDisk performance for Apples largest audience: Anyone outside the US.
My first computer stored data on audio cassette tape. Anyone know how much data that is?
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/8G4)
I can't wait to be able to purchase a 120YB iPad.
I can't wait to be able to purchase a 120YB iPad.
In theory you could have had petabytes of data if your cassette tape was long enough!
However, at the data rates used by early personal computers a 90-minute cassette tape might hold about 600K of data.The real limit was the capacity of your computer to hold data read off the cassette tape. For example, the Sinclair ZX-81 had a minimum capacity of 1K and a maximum of 56K, so that's the most you could read off of a cassette tape and into memory.
Yes, we all have doubts. I, for one, think it is a scam. Verizon et al will charge you to get your "own" data once you exceed your "cap". And one well placed terrorist act will erase any data center anywhere. Back up and hold your data. Do not rely on the cloud.
Isilon is pretty good for what it is, cheap and deep storage (cheap in relation to other enterprise storage solutions). Now if they just fixed their buggy code ...
+1
This is what I e been wanting to do for a very long time. Apple just wants to own all your data so they can market and advertise to you.
johnnyturbouk
macrumors 68000
ahh my useless school mats finally came in handy
12 PB = 12x10 ^ 15 bytes
wonder when we start getting zetta and yotta portable hard drives
12 PB = 12x10 ^ 15 bytes
wonder when we start getting zetta and yotta portable hard drives
Hopefully this means they'll be expanding the movie and TV show selections on iTunes. I can rarely find anything good to watch. And decrease the compression already! I've had to ask for my rental money back on several occasions because dimly lit scenes look horrific.
Wow
That's a lot of rack space! Considering the high density NL series is probably the type of node being spec'ed, that's at least a good 10 racks completely filled with equipment. That's excluding network gear.
That's a lot of rack space! Considering the high density NL series is probably the type of node being spec'ed, that's at least a good 10 racks completely filled with equipment. That's excluding network gear.
12 PB doesn't sound like a lot for iTunes in the cloud. I mean if that's 12 million GB's that would only store about ~500,000 people with the amount of music I have. My libraries at 24GB and growing, but I know people with multiple 100 GB libraries.
And even if it's just a small 1 GB library, 12 PB would only cover 12 million people with libraries of that size, which again is small considering the sheer amount of people using iTunes/iPods/iPhones.
And even if it's just a small 1 GB library, 12 PB would only cover 12 million people with libraries of that size, which again is small considering the sheer amount of people using iTunes/iPods/iPhones.