From owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Sep 15 22:52:33 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9D49E16A4CE for ; Wed, 15 Sep 2004 22:52:33 +0000 (GMT) Received: from skippyii.compar.com (test.compar.com [216.208.38.130]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E7A0743D2F for ; Wed, 15 Sep 2004 22:52:32 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from matt@gsicomp.on.ca) Received: from hermes (CPE00062566c7bb-CM000039c69a66.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com [69.193.82.185])i8FMvts9056644; Wed, 15 Sep 2004 18:57:57 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from matt@gsicomp.on.ca) Message-ID: <011d01c49b76$4666e090$1200a8c0@gsicomp.on.ca> From: "Matt Emmerton" To: References: <41483C97.2030303@fer.hr> <20040915152639.GB68395@webcom.it><20040915154338.GA55823@freebie.xs4all.nl><20040915170322.GA75590@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophile.co.uk> <20040915203403.GA26454@psconsult.nl> Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 18:49:32 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1437 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1441 cc: Wilko Bulte cc: Sam cc: Paul Schenkeveld cc: Andrea Campi Subject: re: never say never [was Re: ZFS] X-BeenThere: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Non technical items related to the community List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 22:52:33 -0000 [ moving to -chat since we're on a tangent here ] > On Wed, Sep 15, 2004 at 06:03:22PM +0100, Matthew Seaman wrote: > > On Wed, Sep 15, 2004 at 05:43:38PM +0200, Wilko Bulte wrote: > > > On Wed, Sep 15, 2004 at 05:26:39PM +0200, Andrea Campi wrote.. > > > > On Wed, Sep 15, 2004 at 10:59:36AM -0500, Sam wrote: > > > > > Call me crazy, but does anyone else see this as hooey? 2^64 512B > > > > > sectors is 8192 zettabytes (zetta, exa, peta, tera, ...). > > > > [...] > > > > > Crappy marketing articles. > > > > > > > > This one's good though. fortune(6) worthy, I mean: > > > > > > > > Populating 128-bit file systems would exceed the quantum limits of > > > > earth-based storage. You couldn't fill a 128-bit storage pool without > > > > boiling the oceans. > > > > > > Hmmmm... that explains the global warming then... > > > > I once calculated that there were sufficient IPv6 addresses (another > > 128 bit quantity) to provide a distinct address for every cluster of > > about 10^12 atoms within planet Earth. 10^12 atoms sounds like quite > > a lot, but it is much smaller than a typical bacterium and a hell of a > > lot smaller than any transistor ever manufactured: even if you > > converted the entire planet into a data storage system, you wouldn't > > have enough matter to build a filesystem that big, let alone power > > supplies, cabling, support structures etc. > > Be ware... > > Jules Verne was called crazy when he saw men would walk on the moon > sometime. > > Leonardo da Vinci was laughed at when he envisioned people flying like > birds. > > We people had things wrong in the past when we held things for impossible. > > We may not be around to witness storing over 2^128 bytes of information > but your words sound like NEVER and I think that's a scary word. I agree totally. I work in a large database shop, and recently we decided that we wanted to build a smaller version of one of our large test systems -- a 64-way machine a 20TB database. (Sorry, not running FreeBSD. If only they'd pay me to make it happen.) Rather than rebuild a half-size (10 TB) database from scratch on the smaller system (which would take at least a week with somewhat constant attention), we opted for the simple approach which took less than a day. What is the simple approach, you ask? We installed 8 Gbit ethernet adapters on each machine, hooked them together to create suitably large private network, and just did dd copies of the raw devices over the network. Now, who would have ever thought that this would be possible 5 years ago? 10 years ago? 15 years ago? Never say never. -- Matt Emmerton