StorageTek Announces Linux Based Storage Solution

njcoder writes "TechWorld has a report on StorageTek's new content-based disk and tape storage product. 'The software runs on a cut-down Linux kernel on dual Xeon nodes in a meshed network. The content-addressable store (CAS) makes the system more efficient than standard CIFS and NFS access, but supports all three.' The disk based storage uses SATA drives."

Comments

Wow, that's expensive.. lemme do ~10 times better.

[freality]

"A 4TB starter IntelliStore costs around $75,000 (£42,000) with each additional terabyte costing $9,000 (£5,000) A set of additional compliance functions adds $15,000 to the cost (£8,400)."

Better:

- Storage: SuperMicro 15-bay disk array with 2 RAID-core controllers (2 RAIDs), SCSI-attached, for a total raw space of 12 disks (-1 for each RAID, -1 for OS). 2 fast processors and a bunch of RAM. Mount all data under /mnt filesystem.
Size: 12*400GB=4.8TB
Approximate cost: $5-10K depending on disks, processors and RAM.

- File-server: mathopd static web-server pointing at /mnt filesystem. 10-20k transactions per second for small files. Fast transfer of large files.

- Database: Nutch open-source search engine capable of indexing 40M pages per 1GB/RAM. Like the article says "millions of objects" now, "billions in the future". Point nutch at mathopd and watch your "content-based" storage come online. You can even get an RSS feed of newly added items.

- Offline: Dell PowerVault 8 tape changer, SCSI attached + mtx for automatic tape changing. + 5k

Now, a web search engine isn't a database, at least not off the shelf. But with this configuration you can afford a l33t programmer for half a year and still come in under the price of the StorageTek solution. Plus, once you've customized it, your capacity upgrades are much cheaper. And I bet it's faster. Dunno though, I bet you can't evaluate most of the relevant system parts from StorageTek before you make a buy decision (unlike the system above). ;)