Reg snaps moment when Facebook turned air Blu: 1PB box for unloved pics

Facebook has developed an archive storage system that uses Blu-ray discs to stuff a petabyte into a single cabinet. The as-yet-unnamed 42U box was revealed at the Open Compute Summit in San Jose, California, on Tuesday. Facebook's chief of infrastructure engineering Jay Parikh said the social networking giant plans to publish …

[~mico]

A more appropriate name...

Given it's developed for Facebook, and is used for backup, I would call it FaceLift.

[~mico]

If used primarily for offline storage, however...

Then, FaceOff.

[Grumpy Fellow]

Missing the tactile joy

I'm not into tape nowadays, but in the 80s and 90s there was nothing more satisfying from a tactile standpoint than threading a nine track tape onto a tape drive with mechanical tensioning, starting the tape on the takeup reel with a couple of spins, then hitting the "Load" button and seeing it balance the loops and find the start of the tape. The most exciting tape of the year was the one that brought back the latest goodies from DECUS of course. A nerd could feel cool walking down the hall in sneakers while spinning the tape reel in hand and catching it after exactly one revolution. Brings tears to my eyes. Jay doesn't know what he is missing.

[Admiral Grace Hopper]

Re: Missing the tactile joy

A tactile joy indeed, and handling tape reels always had its own soundtrack.

[Herby]

The 2014 version

Of the IBM data cell.

Of course it will probably be more successful. The IBM data cell was terrible, and with the failures, nobody wanted it AT ALL.

Data everywhere!

Please note: Peta="People Eating Tasty Animals"!

[dssf]

Fortunately, and gratifyingly

It was "than use chopsticks", not "then use chopsticks", hehehehe..

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Fortunately, and gratifyingly

Nah, that'd just make it a stab in the dark.

[Natalie Gritpants]

Keep clear of this in the data center

Looks like that front vertical section goes in and out and would probably go right across the alleyway. And it all goes into one bluray drive, hope that's a ruggedized one that can handle the load cycles.

[Christoph]

But the data is already stored

How long would it take to retrieve the data from the NSA's copy?

[hippiegunnut]

Burying old data: Faceplant?

[RichyRich]

1PB !!?

Utterly amazing - 1PB ! - amazing piece of kit

Everyone will have one of these in their garage one day....

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: 1PB !!?

Not if the MPAA find out

[PracticalApplications]

Re: 1PB !!?

1PB in 42U is nothing spectacular. The article missed the main point of the solution.

It's 1PB with almost zero POWER!!!

One can quite easily stuff 3+PB into a 42U cabinet with COTS solution, but it takes 2+kW of Power to do that. Facebook faces (sic!) a problem that most companies won't: WORN (write once, read never)... i.e. the multitudes of drooling slobs taking selfies that auto-upload to their favourite social drama website.

XOXOXO to the fans

[Nasty Nick]

50 years life - really?

What is the basis for that claim? Given the variable track record of long term recordable CD storage, isn't that rather hopeful?

[Paul Crawford]

Deleted profiles?

So if you delete your profile, and even if the EU rules that it has to be removed, what happens to the read-only disks?

Will they remove and destroy them?

Oh stupid me! Why did I think they might do something for the user (er, product)?

[Gerardo McFitzpatrick-O'Toole]

Re: Deleted profiles?

I suspect they would do something like encrypt every fragment of data with a different key, then delete the relevant key if they were forced to.

[russtystorage]

1 PB, as if that is somehow impressive? Also "Zero power." really, ever heard of tape? Google and Amazon both use tape for several reasons, it works. Nearly every company developing Optical technologies for the enterprise has exited the market. There are consumer optical technologies, such as DVD / Blu-Ray, but they do not have enterprise reliability or price / performance characterstics.

Tape has outgrown its effectiveness as a primary backup / retention media. However, for long term retention, with high density and proven reliability, it is hard to beat. Look up specs for SpectraLogic, Oracle/STK, HP, IBM or other tape libraries. It is quite possible to get 25 PB in one, 40U rack with current tape technologies. Optical has never had better density, price / performance levels than competing magnetic technologies. Perhaps someday, but 2014 is not that year.