Slashdot Mirror


Internet Archive Gets 4.5PB Data Center Upgrade

Lucas123 writes "The Internet Archive, the non-profit organization that scrapes the Web every two months in order to archive web page images, just cut the ribbon on a new 4.5 petabyte data center housed in a metal shipping container that sits outside. The data center supports the Wayback Machine, the Web site that offers the public a view of the 151 billion Web page images collected since 1997. The new data center houses 63 Sun Fire servers, each with 48 1TB hard drives running in parallel to support both the web crawling application and the 200,000 visitors to the site each day."

10 of 235 comments (clear)

  1. Story is meaningless without LOC measurement by Dr_Banzai · · Score: 5, Funny

    I have no idea how much 4.5 PB is until it's given in units of Libraries of Congress.

  2. Storage Envy by jacksinn · · Score: 5, Funny

    Does lusting after all their space make me a peta-phile?

    --
    Life==Jeopardy. All the answers are right in front us - the hard part is coming up with the correct question.
  3. Own the internet! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    so all one need to do to "own the internet" is to drive a big rig and ... lift the container off their parking lot?

    1. Re:Own the internet! by peragrin · · Score: 5, Funny

      well if you plug in a laser printer you can print off a hard copy for your boss.

      --
      i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
  4. Slight problem? by girlintraining · · Score: 5, Funny

    I can now theoretically steal "the internet" with a flatbed truck and a lift. There's something to be said for conventional data centers: They're rather hard to load onto a truck and drive off with.

    --
    #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
  5. Re:Where do they store 4.5TB off site by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 5, Funny

    one would assume that something like this does regular off-site back-ups, which must add up to a hell of a-lot, could someone with experiance in such matters shed a little insight into the logistics of backing up such a vast system

    floppy disks.
    lots of floppy disks.

    --
    liqbase :: faster than paper
  6. Re:Where do they store 4.5TB off site by commodore64_love · · Score: 5, Funny

    They'd better have it backed-up. Last time the Alexandria library burned-down, we lost about one thousands years of collected information from ancient Greece and Rome. Ooopsie.

    --
    "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
  7. Re:You can ship it over OC-192... by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 5, Funny

    You can ship 4.5 petabytes over a single OC-192 link in about 71 days.

    yeah, but just at the 70th day, someone will pick up the phone and the whole thing will have to be resent.

    --

    --
    "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
  8. Re:Where do they store 4.5TB off site by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Can you say, Parallelism?

    Parallelogram.... crap
    Parallellellell... dammit
    Parapalouza... >

    Why did you have to point that out to everyone? :(

  9. Re:Where do they store 4.5TB off site by zach297 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'd suggest also using stone slabs. Water can do serious damage to paper, and don't get me started on fire hazards. Good old Stone Slabs resist both of those really well. I'm not sure what the write speed is, however, so you'll probably need to hire many stonecutters to work in parallel.

    A math problem. My favorite. I don't know much about stone cutters but lets assume they can write one bit every 2 seconds. Thats 1 byte in 16 seconds. The internet archive is (4.5 x 1,125,899,906,842,624) 5,066,549,580,791,808 (5 quadrillion) bytes. That works out to 81,064,793,292,668,928 (81 quadrillion) seconds or about 2,570,547,732 (2.5 billion) years. That is far to long for their stringent 2 month backup cycle. They would need 15,423,286,395 (15.4 billion) stone cutters to keep schedule assuming they had unlimited stone. Last time I checked there were only between 6 and 7 billion people with only a small fraction of them being stone cutters. That leaves but one solution. Force the web developers to become stone cutters. This would not only increase the work force but also reduce the amount needed to backup because fewer people will be making more web pages to backup.