...more recent posts
Damn:
AMCC will showcase HPC storage platforms featuring four 3ware 9550SX 12-port RAID controllers and 48 Hitachi 7K500 500GB SATA II disk drives at the heart of a Pogo Linux StorageWare 548 solution that delivers 24TB of SATA II capacity in a 5U enclosure. The system is powered by Opteron dual core CPUs and will sustain over 1.2GB/s of read bandwidth, demonstrating the industry's most compelling combination of speed, capacity, reliability, and price per gigabyte.Storage capacity is really exploding, at least at the server level. Those 3ware SATA RAID cards are really nice. We're using the last generation 9500 12 port, and the 9550 looks significantly sweeter (although what we have is more than enough for our needs, so this is more like a geek fetish thing I guess.)
I think desktop computers should come with RAID built in. At least RAID 1 so that people's data is a little more protected from drive failure. RAID 1 is probably okay to do in software (where the CPU does the work instead of an external processor on a RAID card like the 3ware.) And anything past the mid range on the desktop should really come with 3 drives in a RAID 5 with a card. But not only is no one doing this, you can't even put 3 drives inside a G5 tower! (Well, not without a 3rd party bracket scheme which is not supported by Apple.) I guess I see what they are doing - "if you need that much storage buy an external Apple RAID" - but I don't agree. Everybody needs RAID (now that drives are so cheap, why not? Is your data not worth anything? $200 extra bucks?) and Apple's external unit, while it is beautiful and also a pretty good deal in terms of $/GB, is just too big and too loud. Not everyone needs 14 drives. But really almost everyone needs 3 drives.