[mythtv-users] BackBlaze hard drive study

[Stephen P. Villano]

On 1/21/14, 10:55 PM, Gary Buhrmaster wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 22, 2014 at 3:27 AM, Jay Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: "Gary Buhrmaster" <gary.buhrmaster at gmail.com>
>>> Thumper's (and their follow-on's, Thor's), with the right rack, and
>>> the right cable management, were 100% disk (and fan, and PS)
>>> maintainable while staying in service. If you never used them,
>>> you probably have no appreciation of how well they were designed
>>> for online maintenance, and were (essentially) designed for
>>> using ZFS (although some people used them differently).
>> So, can I buy them cheap used, and use them as storage servers? :-)
> Perhaps.  But they were LOUD.  As in capitals do not do them
> justice.
>
> Note that they are also deep.  And the racks you needed to
> use had to either be attached vertically to the overhead, or
> had to have pull out supports on bottom to handle the balance
> when you pulled one out of the rack for service (they are also
> heavy).  Yes, they had an entire process for safe service.
> And they were power hungry.
>
> In many ways they were great.  But, Oracle killed the standalone
> product (Oracle wanted to only sell solutions, which meant
> value add, which meant profit).
> _______________________________________________
>
Ah, but the upside to one or two of these is, one need not heat one's
mansion. To balance temperature, one need only open windows in the winter.

As for noise, they're not *that* noisy to me. I've lost 45db of hearing.  :/

More seriously though, I saw a set in a datacenter once, when I asked
what it was, I was... Just *WOW*!
Not sure my home electrical system could handle that kind of additional
load. Not the primary energy requirement, the inrush and spin-up would
overload things rather badly. As I recall, the things could pull up to
55 amps inrush. I only have a 200 amp service.

As for noise, I've lost 45db of hearing anyway. They're not *that* loud
to me, these days.  :/