racking 2 PiB (or 2048TiB) of nearline grade storage will require about 1000 3.5" 3TB drives, allowing for a reasonable raid level and suitable number of hotspares. If its frequently updated transactional database storage, I'd want to use raid10. Using somethign like the Supermicro 847 chassis, you can get 36 drives plus a server in 4U, and draw about 700 watts actual in use.... I estimate you'll want about 28 of these servers, which will take two full racks and draw about 20KW, or 180 amps off 120V household circuits (realistically, you'll need 208V for this many servers). You'll also need about 10-15KW worth of air conditioning equipment to deal with the generated 68000 BTUs of heat. HVAC will push your power usage up to the 30-40kW range, or 2500 KWH/month, at $0.20/KWH typical residential power usage, you're looking at a $5000/month power bill, give or take.
those 28 SuperMicro servers will cost about $200,000 for the 1000 3TB enterprise nearline disks, plus another $200,000 or so for reasonably well configured servers. 20KVA of redundant UPS and 70000 BTU worth of computer room A/C will add a good chunk more $$$$ to this.
Hi John,
Yes, our (meaning yours and mine) calculations are different and I am probably wrong.
I think I am drawn to the BackBlaze POD for reasons like this. 135TiB in a single enclosure and that is not even using 4TB drives.
2PiB is an estimate for the next 2 years, currently there is a little bit over 480TiB according to adding up various math calculations (databases, du, app data, static files, etc)
I see your calculations about power and yes, currently power for just the UPS, Computers, fans and stuff runs me about $400 a month and I only have a few boxes handling the demo of the product. This will be my first summer in my new location in Cupertino and I know I will need to act on cooling really soon.
Are you using Comcast in Santa Cruz?
-Jason