XSan Does 2 "Petabytes"

[Daveway]

www.apple.com/xsan

High-Performance Storage Networking
Xsan version 1.1 takes advantage of the 64-bit file system in Mac OS X v10.4 “Tiger” — so users in your organization can share files and volumes up to two petabytes (2PB) in size.

I challenge anyone to explain a way to fill 2 petabytes.

FYI I think 1 petabyte=1000 terabytes

 

[ReanimationLP]

PORN!

LMFAO. Couldnt resist.

 

[Lacero]

Digital Cinema, like Star Wars Ep 3 could fill up 2 PT pretty easily.

 

[friarbayliff]

PORN!

LMFAO. Couldnt resist.

Ha. Nothin' like laughing randomly in the middle of a crowded office

 

[dotdotdot]

Digital Cinema, like Star Wars Ep 3 could fill up 2 PT pretty easily.

Uh... no.

I doubt a movie could fill 2 PT...

 

[Lacero]

Uh... no.

I doubt a movie could fill 2 PT...

I should have clarified and said Digital Cinema movie making...

ie. raw footage, intermediaries, comps, outtakes, language versions, workprints, final edits, alternate versions, backups etc.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

An uncompressed Hollywood movie project with all the previous versions and all accompanying media files uncompressed could conceivably consume 1 petabyte of space.

 

[anonymous161]

PORN!

LMFAO. Couldnt resist.

Petaphile

 

[mkrishnan]

I wouldn't be surprised if Google has petabytes of storage space for their caches and metadata soon, if they don't already....

I haven't heard that much discussion of petabytes so far. Exciting! Petawatts, yes. Petabytes, no....

 

[7on]

And if you have one 2pt xSan, you'd need a second as a backup. Can you imagine loosing 2PT of data?

 

[ChrisBrightwell]

I challenge anyone to explain a way to fill 2 petabytes.

I imagine HD content will make this relatively simple. I remember when *no one* could figure out how to fill 10MB (yes, megabyte).

With my personal data store at the house quickly reaching the 1TB number (768GB or so right now), it's really easy to see how a small video production shop or a hi-res audio (24/96, especially) facility could fill 2PB with workspace and backup file storage.

FYI I think 1 petabyte=1000 terabytes

I think it's actually 1024 TB, but whatever.


I did some digging and found this ...

A petabyte (derived from the SI prefix peta- ) is a unit of information or computer storage equal to one quadrillion (one long scale billiard) bytes. It is commonly abbreviated PB.

Because of irregularities in using the binary prefix in the definition and usage of the kilobyte, the exact number in common practice could be either one of the following:

* 1 000 000 000 000 000 bytes - 1000^5 or 10^15
* 1 125 899 906 842 624 bytes - 1024^5, or 2^50. This capacity may be expressed unambiguously as a pebibyte.

... so it looks like we're both right.


EDIT: You think people bitch about losing several GB on a 500GB HDD, look at this ...

((1 024^5) bytes) - ((1 000^5) bytes) = 114.505298 terabytes

Holy crap. Imagine "losing" 114TB on a 2PB array.

That's insane. I wish people would agree on a single definition for these things and use it.

 

[ChrisBrightwell]

Uh... no.

I doubt a movie could fill 2 PT...

1080p w/ hi-res multi-channel audio? I wouldn't be surprised.

Look at the compressed 1080p Quicktime trailers w/ low-res two-channel audio. ~150MB for what? 2-3 minutes? That works out to 1MB/s.

A feature film, at that rate, would run 5.2GB. So, to me, a movie filling 2PB of data isn't that far-fetched.