Interchangeable Data Storage Bricks?

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Interchangeable Data Storage Bricks?

Posted by michael on Friday December 17, 2004 @04:39AM from the rated-n-for-not-as-easy-as-they-say dept.

shokk writes "EWeek is reporting that IBM is working on a concept called Ice Cube Storage Bricks that uses a conductive ceramic or mylar plate to transmit data between bricks across an air gap. Research center staff member Robert Gardner says that the idea is 'to walk up to the system, attach the storage and then walk away.' No mention is made of what happens when a brick in the middle of the cube needs to be replaced and the whole thing needs to be disassembled. To be really effective, this would need to be teamed up with some sort of a backplane, but the tech is new and neat."

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Very Tough Error Isolation-Biological by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 05:00 · Score: 1, Insightful

Ask yourself how biological systems handle error propogation?
1. Re:Very Tough Error Isolation-Biological by Number44 · 2004-12-17 05:10 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  That's a pretty trite answer but I'm on vacation, so I'll respond.
  
  Let me throw it back at you this way: assume you are SPRINTING a marathon, one that lasts a whole year. You are contractually obligated to run as fast as you can, at peak speed from the start to the end and you can't stop for anything, you have to eat and drink and eliminate on the run.
  
  Now let's say you catch a cold, or the flu in the middle of the race. Your biological system starts to steal resources to increase white blood cell counts, to fight the infection and eliminate it. In the meantime you are slowing down, staggering, unable to concentrate on the task. The flu can take DAYS to eliminate from your system. In that time, you have failed to fulfill the contract (ie, maintain max speed) and lost the race.
  
  These are the conditions placed on the vendors of enterprise level storage systems. Modelling error recovery after biological systems doesn't work that easily. You MUST FIX THE ERROR RIGHT NOW when it happens and reject the failed part and isolate it from the system. We strive to do it in mere seconds, which corresponds to just shy of the timeout values of the host system that's trying to use your storage.
  
  When you stub your finger, it doesn't fall off immediately because it MIGHT inhibit your ability to work at max efficiency. Yet, that's how it has to happen in storage. We see a part start to fail, and blammo, we shut it off and call for service.
hmmm, easily removable good? by mzwaterski · 2004-12-17 05:01 · Score: 1, Insightful

Is an easily removable drive really that great of an idea? What if I trip on the power cord and knock the whole stack over? It seems to me that there is some benefit derived from drives that are securely in place.
I think that the real invention here is not the drive array itself, but the connector that is used. This would be a great way to dock things like handheld devices, cell phones, and cameras. It would also be great for portable media. It seems like it could be called "electrical connections for dummies." I can't understand how a person could have trouble with a USB plug, but people still do. I think anyone could handle putting the camera down on the big blue pad!
Re:Mr. Obvious says... by Number44 · 2004-12-17 05:01 · Score: 4, Insightful

Wait one damn minute here.

As they say in the army: "If it's stupid but it works, it's not stupid."

We spend billions on research, and only a fraction of the technologies that we invent (yes I am an IBM employee) turn into real products, but that's the whole idea.

Think of copper interconnects. Think of the 'pixie dust'. Think of the Power5 architecture. All of these things are working their way into YOUR badass PC of the future. These weren't the only things we came up with, but our process DID create them.

We must look really far forward and not sit on our laurels, that's a great way to lose the game against our competitors.
x^3 x^2 right? Worng in this case by bigbensheldo · 2004-12-17 05:02 · Score: 2, Insightful

Now I understand what the point of this is, that if you have some room with dimensions W*L*H you can definitely fit more space into it if you fill the entire room with cubes, as opposed to just covering the walls with racks.
But as a people are mentioning, what about maintenance. You have a big stack of cubes, with something wrong in the middle, you have to dissassemble a bunch to get at it. And even if the data is mirrored on another brick, what happens when you have to remove that brick to get at the dead one.
Seems to me the most efficient manner is a two dimensional spread, i.e. cover one wall with cubes to a depth of only one cube. But then in that case, you migh as well go with a traditional rack server.
Cubes are stupid especially because (think about this) even if you have a wall of cubes stacked up, if you remove one, you may have to remove all of them on top of eachother (how are these things affixed?) Wouldn't it be smarter to have it be hexagonal? Removing one wouldn't collapse a column. There are more networking connections too.
Seems like a gimmick to me. Play tetris with your SAN!
Power and water cooling connections by enosys · 2004-12-17 05:12 · Score: 2, Insightful

I don't see what's the point of sending data through the air when you have to make connections to the bricks anyways. Each brick has to have a power connection and that isn't through the air. They could easily just add a high speed serial interface to that connector.
They also talk about water cooling this system. Those connections are even harder to deal with. Hoses are always going to be thicker and more difficult to handle and there's the possibility of leaks, especially when connecting and disconnecting hoses.
Re:No mention of... by rcw-work · 2004-12-17 05:22 · Score: 2, Insightful

Well I wonder if it is like current raid where you have to stack them back in the same order in your "Rubics cube" looking stack
What kind of RAID setup do you have that doesn't write a GUID of what the disk is, as well as what all of the other disks in the set are, to each disk in the array?
Re:Seems like a solution looking for a problem. by Cecil · 2004-12-17 05:27 · Score: 2, Insightful

Seems like a solution looking for a problem

You know what? Once, computers were a solution looking for a problem too. Most people just can't think more than about 5 minutes ahead, it seems. Real invention, real innovation, real research and development, they're lost arts these days.

--
Random and weird software I've written.
Not sufficient by GunFodder · 2004-12-17 05:53 · Score: 2, Insightful

Nowadays many data sources must run 24/7 because they serve data worldwide. It really shouldn't be necessary to shut down the data source to replace a disk. RAID on SCSI can already support hotswapping. The only nuance here is to make sure the physical design of the array allows the operator to replace any cube without removing others.