Re: [gentoo-server] Re: [OT] Mirroring/backing-up a large

[kashani]

A. Khattri wrote:
> On Wed, 19 Apr 2006, kashani wrote:
>
>> I'm not sold on the Google approach.
>>
>> 	Assuming someone was to build nine data servers we're talking roughly
>> $3k per server (dual CPU, 4GB ram, raid 5 sata) or $30k with shipping
>> and tax.
>
> Actually Google use the cheapest hardware they can find, buy in bulk, and
> they assume stuff will fail so they plan accordingly. I very much doubt
> they spend $3K per server...
>

Anyone trying to build the same with a purchase of less than 100 servers 
is not going to spend much less.

2 x 2GB RAM = $1000
2 x CPU = $500 or so
Raid Card = $300
Drives = $100 each
1u chassis/MB/etc = $500

IIRC they drop the drives and shove everything into RAM. Which is fine 
when you have a limited data set and enough machines to shove it into 
RAM. Originally Google did have a limited data set. It was only after 
the infrastructure reached a critical size that they began Google mail 
and other large storage things. And had fours years to work out the 
operational kinks.

I think it unlikely that someone with a single storage set has enough 
money or time to pay for a few Phds to write a custom filesystem, a few 
hundred servers (10TB/4GB), and the datacenter monkey necessary to 
replace gear constantly... oddly Google has both of these in spades. And 
if you read the whitepaper the smallest Google data cluster is nineteen 
servers, aka $40-60k for schleps like us, aka the cost of a SAN that 
that uses less power and burns less switch ports.

This infatuation with the Google stuff that very few people (ie none of 
us) have the in house infrastructure to handle or the available cash is 
useless. Unless someone has actually built their own mini Google and 
wants to tell us all about it with nice numbers like total cost, source 
code, transactions per second, cost per GB of user data, throughput, and 
other data points.

kashani
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