IBM Developing Lego-like Storage Brick

AaronW writes "According to this story at EE Times IBM is developing a 32TB storage system built around blocks that can be stacked like Lego bricks. Apparently they will be connected in a 3x3x3 mesh using capacitive coupling and will be water cooled."

Comments

Water cooled? How to interconnect?

[E1ven]

I'm not sure I follow. They say they want it to be easily stackable, and fault tolerant (they specifically mention leaving blocks in place if they fail), but how do you combine that with a water cooling system?

With a water cooling system, you need to make sure that the joints between cubes are water-tight, and maintain them over time, thus defeating their "no maitance" theory.

Or am I missing something? Perhaps they could use "disk blocks" and "cooling blocks" and just swap out the "cooling blocks" if there is a problem? Still takes more work than air cooling, but less than inegrating it into every block would.

What about just leaving air holes, and using it in a chilled room? Most server rooms are chilled anyway.

Just some ignorant thoughts.

Colin Davis

Re:Water cooled? How to interconnect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently the watercooling is used to take the heat from the internal heatpipes. Thus the internal cooling is a closed system and the external cooling system only needs to cool the end of the heatpipes. The water probably runs through a vertical pipe onto which the cubes are stacked and the heat is transferred through touching metal surfaces.

Block topology and failures

[cybergibbons]

I feel that the "lego" comparison is a bit flawed - this to me suggests a completly sealed box which stores data, power being inductively coupled, data through RF, etc. Also, lego is designed to be built, taken apart, built again.

This system is meant to have 27 cubes in a 3x3x3 cube, and when part fails, it is supposed to remain in place. Low latencies and high throughput are due to their being interconnected to the surrounding bricks.

First issue here is, that people don't like seeing things fail, and leaving them. This thing contains a "fast x86 processor", a gig of ram, (later on) six port Infiniband switches, plus all the disks. One of these failing is expensive - and getting the middle brick out would require removal of many other bricks, and probably knock out the system quite well....

It isn't really exandable either. For 27 cubes, perhaps the 3x3x3 is the best layout or topology of the blocks, but as you increase the size of the array (100 bricks or something), a cube becomes far more complex, with longer paths between cubes, longer latency, impossibility of removing a central brick. Heat would build up in the centre (yes, they are watercooled, but every part will be making heat, and not all of them connected to the heatpipe and watercooling system).

Maybe some mad buckyball style arrangement would provide the shortest average path between disks (but this would require a lot of statistical work, and depend on how the data was stored, what sort of access was required).

We could end up with huge, weirdly shaped storage arrays, like in films.

The watercooling is a step forwards, working in server rooms is getting far too loud.

Reliability may be an issue - 2.5" disks which it uses are known to be not as reliable as their larger counter parts. And there are a lot of them in this (12x27 = 324 disks), so failure is almost guaranteed within a short time.

I think this may be more of a concept thing than a final product - certainly the lego and modularity aspects need to be re-thought.

How long will it last?

[eamber]

Great - but will it die after 6 months of use - or not be fit for 24/7/365 use like some of their current drives?