Is it really possible to build enterprise-class storage using cheap commodity products?
Some folks at HP certainly think so. They call their design FAB, short for a Federated Array of Bricks. Ignatz, meet Krazy Kat. Of course, HP is only the world’s largest data storage company, so what would they know? And what is a brick? A server with disks. Instead of $10/GB, perhaps $1/GB? I’d love to see Storage Markets ask when this will come to market. Since HP doesn’t actually build big storage arrays – they OEM from Hitachi – they could do this. If they really want to take the data center away from IBM they have to do this. Let me count the ways. . . . Google has *almost* created enterprise-class storage from commodities. Microsoft has Boxwood. Amazon has, but they aren’t telling. Now HP has people saying “we can build enterprise class storage from commodity components.” And they’ve done it. They said it, and a lot more, in this paper, FAB: enterprise storage systems on a shoestring (pdf), by Svend Frølund, Arif Merchant, Yasushi Saito, Susan Spence and Alistair Veitch. FAB: the
