3 ms·

confirmed. http://www.npr.org/2013/06/10/190160772/amid-data-controversy-nsa-builds-its-biggest-data-farm http://www.npr.org/2013/06/10/190160772/amid-data-con

confirmed. http://www.npr.org/2013/06/10/190160772/amid-data-controversy-nsa-builds-its-biggest-data-farm http://www.npr.org/2013/06/10/190160772/amid-data-controvers... The estimated power of those computing resources in Utah is so massive it requires use of a little-known unit of storage space: the zettabyte. Cisco quantifies a zettabyte as the amount of data that would fill 250 billion DVDs. "They would have plenty of space with five zettabytes to store at least something on the order of 100 years worth of the worldwide communications, phones and emails and stuff like that," Binney asserts, "and then have plenty of space left over to do any kind of parallel processing to try to break codes." reply

acqq 13y ago
Not confirmed. Apparently, the worldwide hard disk production is around 500 million devices per year (see wikipedia). Tera is 1e12, zetta is 1e21, so they'd need a year's world production of hard disks for one data center? Exabyte storage seems possible, however.
- davepage 13y ago
  Maybe. But the feds have an historical fondness for tapes. http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/storage/tape/ts3500/index.html http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/storage/tape/ts3500/index.html A mere 500 2.7EB complexes and it starts looking like real data.
  - acqq 13y ago
    Thanks for the suggestion. As far as I see, it's up to 50 PB raw data per library, and such a library needs 16 frames (frame is what we call a rack, "1,800 mm H × 782 mm W × 1,212 mm D") so it's cca 3 PB (3e15) per rack. With 2.5K racks on site (100K sqft data center space according to Wikipedia) it's still cca 8 exabytes (8e18) in the whole data center.
    - davepage 13y ago
      It is not unreasonable to assume, however, that a facility such as this would include a custom-designed media management system which could hold cartridges at a higher density than COTS (perhaps with an access latency tradeoff). 1M sq ft of total area, and 100k in the data center may not preclude another 100k sq ft of 'warehouse' containing millions of carts in shoe boxes with GS5s running around in sneakers.

acqq 13y ago

Not confirmed. Apparently, the worldwide hard disk production is around 500 million devices per year (see wikipedia). Tera is 1e12, zetta is 1e21, so they'd need a year's world production of hard disks for one data center? Exabyte storage seems possible, however.

davepage 13y ago
Maybe. But the feds have an historical fondness for tapes. http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/storage/tape/ts3500/index.html http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/storage/tape/ts3500/index.html A mere 500 2.7EB complexes and it starts looking like real data.
- acqq 13y ago
  Thanks for the suggestion. As far as I see, it's up to 50 PB raw data per library, and such a library needs 16 frames (frame is what we call a rack, "1,800 mm H × 782 mm W × 1,212 mm D") so it's cca 3 PB (3e15) per rack. With 2.5K racks on site (100K sqft data center space according to Wikipedia) it's still cca 8 exabytes (8e18) in the whole data center.
  - davepage 13y ago
    It is not unreasonable to assume, however, that a facility such as this would include a custom-designed media management system which could hold cartridges at a higher density than COTS (perhaps with an access latency tradeoff). 1M sq ft of total area, and 100k in the data center may not preclude another 100k sq ft of 'warehouse' containing millions of carts in shoe boxes with GS5s running around in sneakers.