Interchangeable Data Storage Bricks?

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."

Comments

No mention of...

[TechnoLust]

"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."

Well, except for where it was specifically mentioned in the article.

The bricks can use cheaper, less reliable components because the failure of a single brick or even several bricks will not shut down or corrupt data in the other bricks, because the data is mirrored in other sections of the array or in backup systems, he said. As a result, defective bricks can stay in place until they are replaced as part of scheduled maintenance, Gardner said.

It's getting bad when the person submitting the story doesn't even RTFA.

Very Tough Error Isolation

[Number44]

Caveat: I'm an employee of IBM's Storage Systems/Technology group, but I'm not working on that particular project. I am only discussing things that were in the previous press releases about this product so you won't get anything confidential out of this post.

The original intent, when this was previewed a year or so ago, was that dead bricks would just stay in there and not require disassembly. See http://www.almaden.ibm.com/StorageSystems/autonomi c_storage/CIB_Hardware/
for some more discussion.

The concern I have (my role in storage systems is error isolation and recovery) is that when you are running all these individual cubes, each one is trying to isolate what might have happened to its peers (or to itself) and when an error starts to propagate from one cube to the next, which it will invariably do sometime, you could end up with multiple cubes saying "IT'S THAT GUY!" and shooting him (ie, cutting him off) when in fact it was yet ANOTHER cube that started the whole thing by corrupting a message and is innocently sitting there not showing any failures.

So assuming that situation occurs, you have 1 failed and 1 not-failed cube which need to be fixed, and shutting off the failed one requires removal, which isn't part of the service model for the product. Needless to say, I'm going to be REALLY impressed when they get this working. My peers at IBM are awesome when it comes to storage, so I'm actually not being sarcastic when I say that.