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I'd be interested to find out more of hardware details of these devices. 100+ TB of storage in a 4U is pretty respectable. From the images in the article, it

I'd be interested to find out more of hardware details of these devices. 100+ TB of storage in a 4U is pretty respectable. From the images in the article, it looks like the drives are not hot-swappable, so I'd guess Netflix is able to remotely track loss of redundancy and will just send out an entire replacement unit when needed. For comparison, Supermicro makes one of the highest-density storage servers that I'm aware of[1]. 72 3.5" drives in 36 drive bays, so up to 288tB of raw storage, if you're brave enough to use 4tB drives. [1] http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/4U/6047/SSG-6047R-E1R72L2K.cfm http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/4U/6047/SSG-6047R-...

pfg 12y ago
There's some info on the hardware on Netflix Open Connect site [1]. They mention it's heavily influenced by Backblazes Storage Pod[2]. [1]: https://www.netflix.com/openconnect/hardware https://www.netflix.com/openconnect/hardware [2]: http://blog.backblaze.com/2014/03/19/backblaze-storage-pod-4 http://blog.backblaze.com/2014/03/19/backblaze-storage-pod-4
jedberg 12y ago
> It looks like the drives are not hot-swappable, That's correct. > so I'd guess Netflix is able to remotely track loss of redundancy and will just send out an entire replacement unit when needed. Exactly. If a drive dies, the capacity of that box is just reduced. Once enough drives die, the box gets an RMA.
- bashinator 12y ago
  > Exactly. If a drive dies, the capacity of that box is just reduced. So not even redundancy? Just cope with losing whatever media happened to be on the dead drive?
  - wmf 12y ago
    They can always download another copy onto a working drive.
  - MBCook 12y ago
    The box is effectively one giant cache. If you lose a drive you can get the movie back from the main distribution network. The article also mentions the box stores multiple copies of done things for increased throughput on popular titles.

pfg 12y ago

There's some info on the hardware on Netflix Open Connect site [1]. They mention it's heavily influenced by Backblazes Storage Pod[2]. [1]: https://www.netflix.com/openconnect/hardware https://www.netflix.com/openconnect/hardware [2]: http://blog.backblaze.com/2014/03/19/backblaze-storage-pod-4 http://blog.backblaze.com/2014/03/19/backblaze-storage-pod-4

jedberg 12y ago

> It looks like the drives are not hot-swappable, That's correct. > so I'd guess Netflix is able to remotely track loss of redundancy and will just send out an entire replacement unit when needed. Exactly. If a drive dies, the capacity of that box is just reduced. Once enough drives die, the box gets an RMA.

bashinator 12y ago
> Exactly. If a drive dies, the capacity of that box is just reduced. So not even redundancy? Just cope with losing whatever media happened to be on the dead drive?
- wmf 12y ago
  They can always download another copy onto a working drive.
- MBCook 12y ago
  The box is effectively one giant cache. If you lose a drive you can get the movie back from the main distribution network. The article also mentions the box stores multiple copies of done things for increased throughput on popular titles.