REVIEW: Big Storage On The Cheap

[Splash]

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  San Francisco-based Capricorn Technologies has crafted, and released under an open-source license, blueprints that effectively let someone build multi-terabyte and multi-petabyte storage systems fairly inexpensively...
  
  That means that a Capricorn 1-terabyte system (which consists of 1,000 gigabytes) would sell for about $2,000, while a 1-petabyte system (1,000 terabytes) would cost about $2 million...

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-5808754.html

http://www.capricorn-tech.com/



Prediction: A liquid-cooled LED-illuminated multi-petabyte gaming system in every home by 2009

 

[Mercutio]

So... a C3 integrated system with up to 1GB RAM (probably 128MB in the base config) and 4x500GB PATA drives. No hardware RAID but MAYBE GBoC.
The 1U case is interesting, I guess. All the ports are on the front of the enclosure. Is that normal for 1U setups? I've never really dealt with the little guys.

That's certainly not a bad baseline. Hardware cost is probably in the realm of $1400 apiece, so there's certainly a tidy profit to be had.

But, uh, what did they open-source? I don't see any kind of managment or NAS software. Just the hardware specs? *I* can sell a 2TB hunk of storage for $2000 without any software. What value does that add?

 

[ddrueding]

I think they're advantage is density. Most 1U servers with this kind of capacity are full-depth (with connections in back and drives in front). Not only are all the connectors in the front, but you can put 2 ber U of rackspace (one front and one back) with a chimney in the middle to deal with heat. This will save quite a bit in datacenters.