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What will be the HD limits of a 3U server

Mr.Poindexter

Mr.Poindexter

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I was wondering about drive sizes and had a couple thoughts.

First off, we saw that the 5U servers maxed out at 750GB due to the hardware limitations of the PATA/EIDE interface. SATA drives have a limitation that we won't have to worry about for video servers.

That said, is there going to be a hardware limitation that is known on the 3U servers? I know that the 4TB drives are not coming out so fast since only the newest computers would even be able to address them. Is the 3U server able to? If not, can its firmware be updated to address them? Is there a hard drive size limit that we know about or will it be when the industry migrates to another connection system that isn't backward compatible?

I did have one thought. If for example we had 4TB drives, a fully loaded 3U server would have 48TB of data, which would take approximately 48 DAYS to offload the content via replication if one migrates to a new server from a fully loaded 3U server w/4TB drives. The time I upgraded from my 5U server to the 3U, 1TB per day was about as fast as I was able to transfer data. Will a 3U server be able to transfer data out of it at a faster rate? I know GigE should be able to handle closer to 7.5TB/day, so that won't likely be the bottleneck.

I was just thinking of how incredibly long it might take when/if I ever move to a larger server in the future. Then again, there is also the realistic limit to content that one would amass in their lifetime. A 3U server with all 4TB drives would hold 1200 BluRays or 7,200 DVDs or 79,200 CDs.
 
Interesting thoughts.

I certainly hope 4TB drives will be compatible with 1U/3U servers. Drives of this size will make storage of BluRay collections much more viable especially on the 1U server.

I expect to require in excess of 24TB of storage in the not too distant future. I am starting to purchase TV series on BluRay and at present I am selectively importing. I don't regard my collection as a lifetime collection. I hope generations to follow will view and add to the collection.

If a large collection needs replicating perhaps returning the disks to K might be a future option. The replication might be accomplished a lot quicker on dedicated equipment.

If the first K system had a maximum capacity of 750MB and the present 24TB I wonder where the K experience will be in 10 years time?
 
JDS said:
..If a large collection needs replicating perhaps returning the disks to K might be a future option. The replication might be accomplished a lot quicker on dedicated equipment...
Click to expand...

I thought K didn't offer this service any more?

In any event, I'd be surprised if they had equipment that could replicate faster than the equipment we already have in our homes.
 
The limitation will either be the record speed of the target server or the read speed of the source server. No "faster equipment" is going to change the raw speeds of the drives.

The first K system had a maximum capacity of 2.75TB (11 data drives @ 250MB each). If we run the hard drive capacity increase at doubling every 24 months, then in 10 years time we would be at 768 TB. That said, I know that all this increase in storage comes because there is demand, or has been in the past. I don't know what in creation that would require people to demand 64TB of storage on a single drive.

While Moore's Law has worked well in the past, it cannot continue forever. There is always talk of a limitation and science finds a way to get around it, but if one looks at power consumption, it keeps rising as well. My latest PC build is going to require a 1200W power supply. Think about that for a minute. 1.2Kw for power for a PC (using quad SLI). I remember when a PC would use a 250W power supply on the top end. The industry cannot push systems over the 15A service power requirements very easily because of the need to increase electrical infrastructure in homes which does not happen at the same speed as computer advancements. 120v * 15A = 1800W at the plug. With an 80% efficiency power supply, we are at 1440W and even then it would require 100% at the wall socket for 15A service. Even if one were to go to 20A, I think that would be a maximum power consumption limit for home/office computers. If the CPUs hit their limit and the video cards hit their limit due to economics and electrical power, then the drive for more storage is going to lose a lot of the push.
 
Solid state drives are much more expensive per GB of storage and don't hold anywhere near the volume. Even in the future, it is doubtful that they will surpass HDD on a capacity basis unless people just decide that less storage is still enough and push to SSD because they are faster, quieter, consume less power and generate less heat but are willing to pay the premium price and lose a some storage that most people will never need. I just picked up a 128GB drive and that is easily enough for any work computer I have in the office. The only reason I would ever need more than that is to handle large amounts of video, audio or photos.

Even a ridiculously large game like World of Warcraft only takes up about 10GB last time I played it. Can you imagine having so many large installs on a system that one would require more than 1TB? Or traditional Word/Excel files?

SSD will likely start to take over on boot drives on home and office PC's, will certainly take over the entire laptop industry but will not really take over the large volume storage market. Still, that will cut deeply into the market share of hard drives and anything that cuts into consumption will eventually affect production in some way and that will finally work its way down to either higher costs and/or longer delays on new products.

Of course, this is just my opinion and I have been told that my $0.02 is actually worth only about €0.014
 
Id rather have your $0.02. What you say makes a ton of sense. Perhaps they will find ways to reduce/ economize power consumption more.
 
So, what *is* the status of 4TB drives for the 3U server. After getting the M700, my consumption ballooned, just importing all the blu-rays I had sitting around. Now I'm at 80% on a fully loaded 3U.
 
I imagine a lot of owners are waiting for 4TB drives to become available...I certainly am. I will be pleasantly surprised if they arrive by next summer but hope they will be available by the year end. Just speculation on my behalf.
 
Bearing in mind that Kaleidescape haven't found a 3TB drive yet that meets their specs, safe to say that the 4TB drive is a long way off...
 
They still don't have any 4TB drives on the market, or at least none listed on pricewatch.com so I suspect we are indeed a long way off.

I know people are holding out for the 4TB drives, but a 3TB drive is a substantial upgrade. It might not make sense to swap out a whole drive set for 50% more storage, but it certainly would be a great deal for new servers.

The old 5U servers has 250, 300, 400, 500, 750GB drives.
The 1U/3U servers had 750GB, 1TB, 2TB drives. They just skipped the 1.5 TB drives.
The CinemaOne went from 500GB to 1TB and skipped the 640GB and 750GB drives.

I suspect we will not see them skip the 3TB drives but eventually add them to the mix considering that we may be in for a wait on the 4TB drives. The flooding over in Thailand might end up causing some delays as well if any of the components come from there.
 
Well, hopefully the last 20% will last until the 3TB come. My rate of imports did slow once the initial library was and "must-have" BR movies were loaded.

So, sya I bought another 3U server. Do the two servers communicte with one another to balance out the collection across the two servers (i.e. 50-50)? Or additonal imports just keep adding to the first server until it fills, before directing subsequent imports to the new server?
 
I discussed getting another server with my installer a while ago...... New imports would be stored on the server with the most available storage. Equalisation across the servers would not take place using the already imported content.

Seagate have recently released 4TB external drives, internal then enterprise will most probably arrive in the New Year.
 
That's interesting. OK, so imports always target the server with the most available capacity. After filling the new machine up to 80% (assuming identical server capacities), imports probably start trading back and forth between the old and new servers until both are too full to satisfy the import request. Makes sense.
 
I posed the same question very recently to Kaleidescape- "are there any current hardware or software restrictions preventing the use of drives larger than 2 TB? Specifically, can the Kaleidescape system utilize 3 and 4 TB drives when they become available?"

I have it from a pretty reliable source that current hardware and software will accommodate 3 or 4 TB drives without a problem. However, I have it from a less reliable source that they are choosing to pass on the 3 TB drives and wait for enterprise level 4 TB drives to become available.

As someone who is waiting for discs larger than 2 TB in order to upgrade my servers, I hope that my last source is wrong and three TB drives are on the way.
 
Personally, I'm willing to patiently wait for 4TB, assuming that's the plan. Given the recent moves to support BR, I need that storage capability if I want to stay with two 3u's.


Jim
 
Ive had three 1TB drives fail in the past 3-4 months and due to that Ive been thinking it might be time to upgrade those drives (they are old, probably early 1tB drives).... Sure the upgrade to 2TB would be nice but it would be even nice if it were to 3TB :) 4TB? that would be nicest but I think thats a long way off...
 
Here's to hoping the 4Tb drives are not too far off. It's killer trying not to import my whole collection. Early in the new year would be fine with me ;)
 
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