Facebook today introduced Bryce Canyon, a new storage unit that adds density by inserting 72 disks vertically into a 4U enclosure, boosting Facebook’s storage capacity. (Photo: Facebook)
Blu-Ray Optical Archives Scale Up, Manned by Robots
An offbeat idea hatched in a lab at Facebook has now evolved into a new class of optical cold storage. Both Sony and Panasonic have developed data archiving systems using robots to retrieve data stored on high-capacity Blu-Ray discs.
Facebook Takes Open Compute Hardware to the Next Level
Facebook is building a new generation Open Compute hardware, part of its vision for powerful data centers that will use artificial intelligence and virtual reality to deliver experiences over the Internet. Here’s how they’re doing it.
Freeze Ray: Blu-Ray Cold Storage for Your Data Center
Facebook is teaming with Panasonic on Freeze Ray, a commercial version of Blu-Ray cold storage, designed to provide a new alternative for companies seeking to store massive amounts of data in long-term storage archives.
How Floods in Thailand Made AWS Rethink Its Supply Chain
A hard disk drive shortage following flooding in Thailand in 2011 prompted Amazon Web Services to rethink its supply chain. We recap the discussion from re:Invent, including the launch of Snowball, a 50 TV storage appliance to speed data transfer to the AWS cloud.
Inside Facebook’s Blu-Ray Cold Storage Data Center
The Blu-Ray disks you use to watch movies can now store your Facebook photos and status updates. We take a look inside Facebook’s cold storage data center.
Data Center Frontier is edited by Rich Miller, the data center industry’s most experienced journalist. For more than 20 years, Rich has profiled the key role played by data centers in the Internet revolution.