11–19 of 19 posts
Same connector as SAS, but a different pinout? Does this not scream "bad idea" to anyone else?
That was my first thought. Wonder what the failure mode is if you mismatch things?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not RAID over IP. Each drive itself is a network endpoint. On the practical side, this means that the drive is "connected" to one or more servers (and can be re-homed on the fly). The storage system itself is responsible for coordinating the communication across the cluster of Kinetic drives. In our case, the coordinating storage system is OpenStack Swift. On the humorous side, this means that technobabble like…
RAID over IP was a joke. I remember reading this story about someone flooding routers to turn them into a broadcasts to view the flow of packets over the network. I imagined the same thing, then said, hey with HDDs and broadcast, you could simulate RAID. I made a long stretch on that one.
It's probably not too long of a stretch.
Same connector as SAS, but a different pinout? Does this not scream "bad idea" to anyone else?
This is a good thing for a couple of reasons. First it allows equipment manufacturers to build chassis with the same drive trays that are already in production. Second, it that from a drive assembly standpoint, the same build and testing equipment can be used. This should speed development and manufacturing quality. Is the concern more from an ergonomic perspective, that someone in a data center may plug in a drive i…
The main concern would be that, yes, someone could plug the drive into the wrong system.
Same connector as SAS, but a different pinout? Does this not scream "bad idea" to anyone else?
This is a good thing for a couple of reasons. First it allows equipment manufacturers to build chassis with the same drive trays that are already in production. Second, it that from a drive assembly standpoint, the same build and testing equipment can be used. This should speed development and manufacturing quality. Is the concern more from an ergonomic perspective, that someone in a data center may plug in a drive i…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
RAID over IP was a joke. I remember reading this story about someone flooding routers to turn them into a broadcasts to view the flow of packets over the network. I imagined the same thing, then said, hey with HDDs and broadcast, you could simulate RAID. I made a long stretch on that one.
That's probably not too far off. If you wanted to do mirror a write, you could imagine broadcasting that same packet to a set of devices. The devices would have to figure out whether or not they needed to store the packet. Otherwise, you'd be sending N packets to the same switch for N-way mirroring. In a typical hardware RAID, the sector write is sent to the RAID controller once. It's probably not too long of a stret…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe they can/will be making the jack on the drive a unique standard color?
Good question. That sounds like a reasonable idea for quickly identify when looking for a replacement in the spares closet.
Same connector as SAS, but a different pinout? Does this not scream "bad idea" to anyone else?
Maybe they can/will be making the jack on the drive a unique standard color?
Even though (for example) USB3 is blue connectors, it's interoperable if you plug USB2 gear in.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good question. That sounds like a reasonable idea for quickly identify when looking for a replacement in the spares closet.
unless you're colorblind, in which case you're SOL.
Incidentally, because the drive is moving to a key/value model vs. sectors it means that the useful life of the device will be much better. This is because the device can manage bad sectors itself vs having that be the responsibility of the filesystem. So the drive would just report lower % capacity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That was my first thought. Wonder what the failure mode is if you mismatch things?
Well given that the device will start asking for a DHCP address when it is powered on, it will probably not do anything.