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Large Scale Solid State Memory Storage?
spacechicken asks: "I am doing a theoretical study of an extremely secure large scale data storage concept. Due to the nature of the (theoretical) location of the (theoretical) warehouse some of our constraints include very few (if any) service visits, complete remote administration and no moving parts. Does anyone have any experience using or information on large scale (on the order of 10^12 - 10^15 bytes) deployment of solid state storage? And to preempt those who will say it - I have Googled."
Never mind the cost. Right now we are looking at the technical problems.
As I said - there will be no visits from service staff to replace/repair failed modules. Also, the site will need to be set up in one go - hence the need for so much storage all at once.
Hard drives can not be used - they would not survive the trip or the location.
And I am most definitely NOT Uncle Sam.
Rest assured it is neitherone of the two screwy thought experiments you have postulated. It is another one entirely. Albeit one with a commercial bent.
As I said earlier the reason for so much storage is that the site needs to be built in one go. There will probably be no ability to increase the size of the facility as requirements grow. We are not pulling numbers out of the air (or counting neurons). We are simply planning ahead
There is a serious topic behind this question. However, it usually requires a lot of explanation.
Some of your guesses are correct - this does have space applications, but not in the way you think.
Suffice to say that the storage is not planned (theoretically) to be used as anything more than a commercial repository.
The reason for the vast amounts (as I keep saying) is because there will probably be only one visit to the site to install it all - meaning no upgrades.
Using solid state drives you could probobly do it on the order of about a half billion dollars. Possible indeed. But there are other things you haven't thought of. You didn't say if you need to have this thing on 24/7, but I'm going to assume you do.
1: Power. Solid state drives tend to forget stuff when shut off, so you'll need a UPS in the data center to handle it. No biggie, except when you realize that the batteries are going to need maintence. They do go bad after a while, I know of no batteries that don't. In theory you could do flash memory instead of volitile for about 3 times the cost (512meg ATA flash storage is $300 on pricewatch, add raid, san, etc, pricey but possible)
2: Cooling. Massive amounts of solid state chips are going to generate massive amounts of heat. This means water chillers (most likely) and fans. Both involve moters. Moters go bad. You can build redundent, but eventually both cooling systems will go out.
3: The hardware it's self. CPUs go bad, controllers blow up, ram chips go out, power supplies blow, etc. You can only leave a redundant system alone for so long until it's no longer redundant.
4: Acts of god. Floods, fire, lack of fuel for power, emi. These things happen. You can build two data centers in seperate locations and write one off when something bad happens, but then you're back to no redundancy.
5: Murphy's law. Don't forget, Murphy always wins.
Having worked on a LARGE scale redundent system (Think uncle sam), I can tell you these things do require maintence. Building a system that large without bugs that creep up in a few years time is going to be next to impossible.
That said, it sounds neat. Let me know when you guys need an engineer to build it, it'd be fun.