Seagate just reinvented the disk interface using Ethernet • Hacker News Board

Re: Seagate just reinvented the disk interface using Ethernet

#11

Post by noonespecial » Fri, Oct 25, 2013, 7:07 AM UTC

I really like the "its just a server that takes a 4k key and stores and retrieves a 1M value" approach. I'm not so keen on the physical drive "repurposing" the standard pinout of existing hardware unless they are prepared to gracefully fall back to the old block device standard if it gets plugged into a "muggle" device.

This has real promise so long as it stays as radically open as they are claiming it will be. When I can grab an old scrub machine, put a minimal debian on it and apt-get seagate-drive-emulator and turn whatever junk drives I've got laying around into instant network storage (without buying magic seagate hardware), I'm sold (and then might think about buying said hardware).

Re: Seagate just reinvented the disk interface using Ethernet

#12

Post by tezza » Fri, Oct 25, 2013, 7:20 AM UTC

konstruktor wrote: post #6

"Über alles" will be primarily associated with Hitler's anthem of the Third Reich by most native speakers of German who know some history. Not a good choice for a title.

Yes a very poor choice of phrase, esp when he could've used anything else.

He's not alone ; this issue came up just yesterday: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/davidbolt/100071146/how...

Re: Seagate just reinvented the disk interface using Ethernet

#13

Post by grn » Fri, Oct 25, 2013, 7:25 AM UTC

konstruktor wrote: post #6

"Über alles" will be primarily associated with Hitler's anthem of the Third Reich by most native speakers of German who know some history. Not a good choice for a title.

Do Germans really associate that phrase mostly with Hitler? I find it quite surprising because despite not being German (nor German-speaking) I know that this phrase comes from the first verse of the Deutschlandlied.

Re: Seagate just reinvented the disk interface using Ethernet

#14

Post by chmike » Fri, Oct 25, 2013, 7:27 AM UTC

I don't think this can be seen as a possible replacement for PC disk because of it's high latency. Beside unless you are very rich Ethernet is only 1Gbit/s.

On the oher hand I see an opportunity as shared storage for mobile and ligthweight devices. Using a single and simple protocol, compared to NAS, could open a new technology domain and market. Of course it requires also a good integrated authentication and access control system because on Ethernet this data might be open to the world.

Re: Seagate just reinvented the disk interface using Ethernet

#15

Post by codebolt » Fri, Oct 25, 2013, 7:30 AM UTC

naiv wrote: post #8

konstruktor wrote: post #6

"Über alles" will be primarily associated with Hitler's anthem of the Third Reich by most native speakers of German who know some history. Not a good choice for a title.

yes, I thought it would be some storage reinvented by Aryans

Network storage macht frei.

Re: Seagate just reinvented the disk interface using Ethernet

#16

Post by selectstar » Fri, Oct 25, 2013, 7:30 AM UTC

naiv wrote: post #8

konstruktor wrote: post #6

"Über alles" will be primarily associated with Hitler's anthem of the Third Reich by most native speakers of German who know some history. Not a good choice for a title.

yes, I thought it would be some storage reinvented by Aryans

Every American will think it's California...

Start typing Uber A... into google and what do you get?

Re: Seagate just reinvented the disk interface using Ethernet

#17

Post by throwaway2048 » Fri, Oct 25, 2013, 7:32 AM UTC

this sounds like a hybrid of ataoe[1] and 9p[2], an interesting idea for a protocol

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATAoE

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9P

Re: Seagate just reinvented the disk interface using Ethernet

#18

Post by fabian2k » Fri, Oct 25, 2013, 7:33 AM UTC

grn wrote: post #13

konstruktor wrote: post #6

"Über alles" will be primarily associated with Hitler's anthem of the Third Reich by most native speakers of German who know some history. Not a good choice for a title.

Do Germans really associate that phrase mostly with Hitler? I find it quite surprising because despite not being German (nor German-speaking) I know that this phrase comes from the first verse of the Deutschlandlied.

While the origins of the phrase are not tied to the Nazis, it has become associated with them. It was originally about the unification of Germany, but it is viewed quite differently now and certainly associated with the far right or the extreme right.

The verse of the Deutschlandlied that contains it is also no longer used, only the third verse is the national hymn.

Re: Seagate just reinvented the disk interface using Ethernet

#19

Post by e12e » Fri, Oct 25, 2013, 7:33 AM UTC

Hm, no power-over-ethernet in the design? I guess that really is a good thing. Maybe.

Re: Seagate just reinvented the disk interface using Ethernet

#20

Post by justinsb » Fri, Oct 25, 2013, 7:45 AM UTC

I think this is an incredibly interesting approach, and I hope Seagate open it up a little more. If we could run some computation on the drive, that could be incredibly powerful.

I can imagine that once these are SSD drives, paired with reasonably powerful (likely ARM) chips, that we'll have massively parallel storage architectures (GPU-like architectures for storage). We'll have massive aggregate CPU disk bandwidth, while SSD + ARM should be very low power. We could do a raw search over all data in the time it takes to scan the flash on the local CPU, and only have to ship the relevant data over (slower) Ethernet for post-processing.

I'd love to get my hands on a dev-kit :-)