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Did anyone ever figure out what Amazon Glacier uses? They only publicly talk about using custom software to "optimize the sequence of inputs and outputs"...[1]

Did anyone ever figure out what Amazon Glacier uses? They only publicly talk about using custom software to "optimize the sequence of inputs and outputs"...[1] [1] https://aws.amazon.com/glacier/faqs/ https://aws.amazon.com/glacier/faqs/

cobookman 7y ago
Note cloud vendors get the benefit of mixing high IOPs workloads with low IOPs workloads. Say a cloud vendor needs a bunch of HDD for a database workload with high IOPs. Using modern disks (4+ TiB) this leaves a lot of stranded disk storage that can only be used for low IOPs workloads. Archive storage uniquely meets the criteria of lots of storage, yet low IOPs. Disclaimer work for Google but have no knowledge of how AWS glacier works.
- ggm 7y ago
  I could believe that we have a lot of unused space which is amenable to a different overlay use, but the potential for mis-design is huge here. If I pay high IOPs cost and you have to replace my high IOPS data backend on my paypoint, migrating the low paypoint secondary customer is non-trivial if not designed in day one (I am sure you did: cheap players might not understand the risk exposure here) The telco equivalent was ISDN, where a single linecard with two sub-rate ports might be sold to a bank, and a domestic user. The bank could (and would) demand card reset 24/7 to restore service to their ATM, the domestic user simply lost carrier, and game state.
colanderman 7y ago
Rumor has it Blu-Ray (specifically BDXL): https://storagemojo.com/2014/04/25/amazons-glacier-secret-bdxl/ https://storagemojo.com/2014/04/25/amazons-glacier-secret-bd... Though a comment on that page mentions this HN comment claiming custom low-speed HDDs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4416065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4416065
- sshagent 7y ago
  I certainly recall a Facebook video showcasing their bluray archival system. I was seriously impressed by the whole setup. And here we are archiving to LTO like primitives :)
  - jolmg 7y ago
    Even with BDXL, which seems to be able to store up to 128GB per disc, you'd have to stack 100 of them to store the 12TB that an LTO-8 tape cartridge can store raw/natively. Tape cartridges also seem to be more physically durable than optical discs. This doesn't mean that they seem simply superior, though. I imagine optical discs have way better seek times, for example, even if read/write speeds are better with tape.
milesward 7y ago
:) I know :)
etaioinshrdlu 7y ago
Rumor (from this site) consensus seems to be custom low RPM hard drives optimized for long life.

cobookman 7y ago

Note cloud vendors get the benefit of mixing high IOPs workloads with low IOPs workloads. Say a cloud vendor needs a bunch of HDD for a database workload with high IOPs. Using modern disks (4+ TiB) this leaves a lot of stranded disk storage that can only be used for low IOPs workloads. Archive storage uniquely meets the criteria of lots of storage, yet low IOPs. Disclaimer work for Google but have no knowledge of how AWS glacier works.

ggm 7y ago
I could believe that we have a lot of unused space which is amenable to a different overlay use, but the potential for mis-design is huge here. If I pay high IOPs cost and you have to replace my high IOPS data backend on my paypoint, migrating the low paypoint secondary customer is non-trivial if not designed in day one (I am sure you did: cheap players might not understand the risk exposure here) The telco equivalent was ISDN, where a single linecard with two sub-rate ports might be sold to a bank, and a domestic user. The bank could (and would) demand card reset 24/7 to restore service to their ATM, the domestic user simply lost carrier, and game state.

colanderman 7y ago

Rumor has it Blu-Ray (specifically BDXL): https://storagemojo.com/2014/04/25/amazons-glacier-secret-bdxl/ https://storagemojo.com/2014/04/25/amazons-glacier-secret-bd... Though a comment on that page mentions this HN comment claiming custom low-speed HDDs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4416065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4416065

sshagent 7y ago
I certainly recall a Facebook video showcasing their bluray archival system. I was seriously impressed by the whole setup. And here we are archiving to LTO like primitives :)
- jolmg 7y ago
  Even with BDXL, which seems to be able to store up to 128GB per disc, you'd have to stack 100 of them to store the 12TB that an LTO-8 tape cartridge can store raw/natively. Tape cartridges also seem to be more physically durable than optical discs. This doesn't mean that they seem simply superior, though. I imagine optical discs have way better seek times, for example, even if read/write speeds are better with tape.

milesward 7y ago

:) I know :)

etaioinshrdlu 7y ago

Rumor (from this site) consensus seems to be custom low RPM hard drives optimized for long life.