PetaBox: Big Storage in Small Boxes

An anonymous reader writes "LinuxDevices.com is reporting that a Linux-based system comprising more than a petabyte of storage as been delivered to the Internet Archive, the non-profit organization that creates periodic snapshots of the Internet. The PetaBox products, made by Capricorn Technologies, are based on Via mini-ITX motherboards running Debian or Fedora Linux. The IA's PetaBox installation consists of about 16 racks housing 600 systems with 2,500 spinning drives, for a total capacity of roughly 1.5 petabytes, according to the article. Now to strap one of those puppies to my iPod!" The Internet Archive continues to astound.

Comments

Good to see.

[Anonymous Coward]

For all the jokes out there about people 'downloading the internet' it's good to know someone is actually doing it.

Re:Good to see.

[Anonymous Coward]

But does it run Lin... um.

How about a Beo.. oh damn

Re:Good to see.

[Council]

In one of the weirder perspective exercises I've ever conceived:

5 petabytes of storage is enough for a brief five-minute DVD-quality sex scene for each person of legal age in the US (two to a scene). 100 petabytes would be five minutes of porn of every pair of people in the world.

I actually wonder about this a little; how many women have posed nude on the internet? There seem to be an awful lot; I haven't been able to see them all (though I will continue to try). Where do they mostly come from, I wonder.

You hear about the Petabox?

[Dancin_Santa]

Michael Jackson was heard breathing a sigh of relief. He thought it was where they sent Petafiles.

R. Kelly was scrambling to find the company's phone number.

copyright

[DualG5GUNZ]

Not to sound like an advocate or anything... But how is it that the Internet Archives project resists claims of copyright infringement and the likes when they have copies of entire websites in their records?

'small box'

[MonoSynth]

So the inventor of the microprocessor dies and suddenly the definition of 'small box' for computer components is again reduced too 'fits in a big room'....

A Great Historical Tool

[simrook]

The Internet represents a great historical tool. Case and point is what happened on 9/11. Being able to go back and see the progression, paranoia, patrotism, and early iraq/afgahanistan/binladen/hussien posts and opinions on various new sites is amazing. cnn, fox, the ny times, all are archived several times on 9/11 on archive.org.

I for one think that archive.org should turn into some UN effort, with a mission to chronical and store daily/timely snapshots of the internet and the culture at the time, preserving it for future generations. What a tool for future historians!

The ability to look at a large representation of socity at one single critical moment in time, and being able to have first hand sources for all that information is something that can truely change the way history is recorded (and not in the bad newspeak ingsoc way either). Infact, a wholeistic archive of what happens day-to-day, in an easily accessible format, might well help written history to be more representative of actual history (instead of, say the history Bush wants us to believe; that the Iraq war was for human right and not wmd's). I love Foucault.

The internet archive rocks... really hope this project continues full blast.

- Peace