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How well have the first generations of helium drives lasted? I'm wary of trusting my data to something that relies on incredibly good gas seals. But if there are no observed reliability issues, it seems that problem has been solved.
During the time that I was there (1 year, these had been in service longer than that), out of the 250+ drives in service we didn't have a single failure.
As a provider of cloud storage (who actually owns the infrastructure) this is both exciting and frustrating... Exciting because we love the idea of deploying a 450TB zpool in a 4U chassis ... Frustrating because we will have to keep reworking our price per GB. With that in mind, our new attic/borg[1] support has dropped down to 3 cents per GB, per month to kind-of-sort-of match S3 pricing[2]. [1] http://www.stavros.i…
(who actually owns the infrastructure) Hipster
Isn't helium guaranteed to leak out over time because of the tiny atom size, giving these drives a most certain scheduled death?
Isn't helium guaranteed to leak out over time because of the tiny atom size, giving these drives a most certain scheduled death?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In a vacuum, the head would crash into the platter. The gas provides a cushion. Flying height these days is something like 3nm (yes, you read that right), so the tiniest vibration could cause a head crash in a vacuum.
Sure, but at say 1/10th atm Nitrogen would seem to work. So, the question becomes why is helium significantly better?
But then you have to have a case strong enough not to bend under the pressure difference.
At 1 atm, of course, helium has much lower density (and therefore lower viscosity). Nitrogen weighs 28 g/mol; helium just 4 g/mol.
As a provider of cloud storage (who actually owns the infrastructure) this is both exciting and frustrating... Exciting because we love the idea of deploying a 450TB zpool in a 4U chassis ... Frustrating because we will have to keep reworking our price per GB. With that in mind, our new attic/borg[1] support has dropped down to 3 cents per GB, per month to kind-of-sort-of match S3 pricing[2]. [1] http://www.stavros.i…
SuperMicro has 72 drives in a single system, with 10TB drives you are hitting 720TB in a single 4U package. Dell also has their DSS7000, which is 90 drives in a 4U system, so 900 TB in a single 4U package... 9 Petabyte of storage in a single 42U rack...
So if you are optimizing for rackspace, it might make sense, but if you're keeping costs down, the 45 drive chassis is the best bet.
Isn't helium guaranteed to leak out over time because of the tiny atom size, giving these drives a most certain scheduled death?
As a provider of cloud storage (who actually owns the infrastructure) this is both exciting and frustrating... Exciting because we love the idea of deploying a 450TB zpool in a 4U chassis ... Frustrating because we will have to keep reworking our price per GB. With that in mind, our new attic/borg[1] support has dropped down to 3 cents per GB, per month to kind-of-sort-of match S3 pricing[2]. [1] http://www.stavros.i…
Whats your current storage in a 4U chassis?
As a provider of cloud storage (who actually owns the infrastructure) this is both exciting and frustrating... Exciting because we love the idea of deploying a 450TB zpool in a 4U chassis ... Frustrating because we will have to keep reworking our price per GB. With that in mind, our new attic/borg[1] support has dropped down to 3 cents per GB, per month to kind-of-sort-of match S3 pricing[2]. [1] http://www.stavros.i…
Hey, thanks! I stopped reading there. :)