Will "IceCube" keep storage cool?
Will "IceCube" keep storage cool?
Jan 05, 2005: The idea of water coursing through their storage array may fill storage managers with dread, but scientists at IBM's Almaden research centre near Silicon Valley are currently developing a highly modular storage system that does just that.
The Collective Intelligent Bricks (CIB) hardware (also known as IceCube) is an attempt by IBM researchers to build a highly available system using unreliable components. The key to such success is to build large assemblies of simple components and distribute functions in such a way that the failure of even a significant fraction of the components does not destroy the functionality of the overall system.
"The CIB architecture follows these simple principles. It consists of a large, three-dimensional array (the "Cube") of "bricks" that collectively provide a very high resilience against failure. In a storage server application, each brick contains multiple disks, a processor and network communications hardware. An extremely high-bandwidth, three-dimensional mesh connects the bricks, making the location of data within the cube nearly irrelevant," a spokesperson for the IBM research centre commented.
"This allows software to scatter and replicate data over many independent bricks. The scheme provides high assurance against data loss, as well as high performance for large data sets, because subsets of the data can be retrieved in parallel."
While IBM acknowledge that convincing users that it is safe to have water in such close proximity to their data will be no easy feat, the three-dimensional arrangement in which the bricks will be stacked means that it will be necessary to pump water through tubes that travel through each of the bricks in the stack, though it may be possible in future versions to pump cool air through the system rather than water.
A working prototype using water to cool the system is already in operation at the lab, and according to IBM, the potential the system offers in terms of greatly increasing the capacity of storage an individual can manage is very apparent.
"With the CIB hardware architecture, human involvement is minimised - software determines the location, dispersion and retrieval of data. If bricks fail, they are left in place, and software rebuilds the data in other bricks. Human involvement should be limited to adding more bricks to the cube as more storage is required, managing hosts and upgrading firmware. In a few years, one storage administrator should be able to manage a petabyte of storage, which is 100 times more than is typical today."
Another desirable by-product of CIB hardware's three-dimensional architecture is very high density, requiring one-tenth of the floorspace of conventional systems that have the same capacity. In addition, total system power consumption is reduced.
We need to learn how to architect systems that reconcile the conflicting requirements of high availability versus engineering pressures of time, cost and shortage of skilled manpower.
IBM is not ready to comment on how long it will take for this system to come onto the market, but it is likely that some of the concepts of the CIB system will appear in IBM products in the near future.
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