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US Government Upgrades RAM

Posted by michael on from the one-ramdisk-to-find-them-all dept.

Deep Throat writes "Techworld has the scoop on a new super-sized RAM disk that the US government has just bought for a few million dollars in order to speed up searching through huge databases. It's 2.5TB! The VP of the company that made it says it is for Washington DC and searching databases but won't say who. Techworld explains why it reckons it's the Department of Homeland Security searching in the NSA and Pentagon databases for terrorists. And apparently the government is 'very happy' with the purchase and thinking about getting more."

4 of 445 comments (clear)

  1. Like google by robslimo · · Score: 5, Informative

    Sounds like they're taking heed of Google's success in attaining blazing search speeds by holding all the data in RAM.

    See here.

  2. More stats by Maskirovka · · Score: 5, Informative
    A RamSan 320 unit holds up to 64GB of RAM in a 3U rack unit. The US government order is housed in three full height rack units. There are over 320 2Gbit/s Fibre Channel ports and the aggregate I/O rate is 36Gbit/s.

    No comment needed.

  3. Re:Power Failure by eric2hill · · Score: 5, Informative

    RTFA dude. "It also includes three independent internal UPS systems to ensure that no power loss or power supply failure will stop the RamSan from performing its internal backup procedures."

    --
    LOAD "SIG",8,1
    LOADING...
    READY.
    RUN
  4. Re:It's awesome and all... by Maskirovka · · Score: 5, Informative
    How are they going to save the data if the power goes out? That's a lot of data to store on hard copies.

    This is supposed to be a caching system, not a long term archive. They also undoubtedly have both Uninteruptable Power Supplies (think racks full of car batteries) and generators to protect from power failure. The databases that it caches are more than likely mirrored at multiple locations, and backed up daily, if not in realtime to an autmated tape library system.