For all the talk about being “doomed” because of a stupid Princeton study, Facebook is more than just a social network. Proof in point, the company has developed a prototype system that can store a petabyte worth of information on a single Blu-ray disc storage cabinet.
Last year at the Open Compute Summit, Facebook VP of Engineering Jay Parikh says the company was considering the use of Blu-ray disks as a means to improve durability and cut down on the long-term costs. Currently Facebook is focused on “cold storage” efforts which reduce the costs associated with cooling massive data centers.
The prototype is capable of storing 10,000 disks (1 petabyte) in a single cabinet and the company plans to scale those cabinets to 5 petabytes in the very near future.
If the prototype moves into full production, Facebook would cut 50 percent of its storage costs and 80 percent of its energy use when compared to hard-disk-based cold storage systems.
The storage system, Facebook claims, will allow for 50 years worth of data durability.
Within the next few months, Facebook plans to have 150 petabytes of data in cold storage.
Say what you want about Facebook and it’s doomsday type demise (we still don’t buy it here at Social News Daily), but the company continues to innovate and acquire at a rapid pace.
[Photo Credit: Wired]
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