{"id":1483,"date":"2013-03-27T09:50:59","date_gmt":"2013-03-27T13:50:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.nccomputertech.com\/?p=1483"},"modified":"2013-03-27T09:50:59","modified_gmt":"2013-03-27T13:50:59","slug":"what-is-false-disk-failure-and-why-is-it-a-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/2013\/03\/27\/what-is-false-disk-failure-and-why-is-it-a-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"What is false disk failure, and why is it a problem?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve spent a lot of time with mega datacenters (MDCs) around the world trying to understand their problems \u2013 and I really don\u2019t care what area those problems are as long as they\u2019re important to the datacenter. What is the #1 Real Problem for many large scale mega datacenters? It\u2019s something you\u2019ve probably never heard about, and probably have not even thought about. It\u2019s called false disk failure. Some mega datacenters have crafted their own solutions \u2013 but most have not.
\nWhy is this important, you ask? Many large datacenters today have 1 million to 4 million hard disk drives (HDDs) in active operation. In anyone\u2019s book that\u2019s a lot. It\u2019s also a very interesting statistical sample size of HDDs. MDCs get great pricing on HDDs. Probably better than OEMs get, and certainly better than the $79 for buying 1 HDD at your local Fry\u2019s store. So you would imagine if a disk fails \u2013 no one cares \u2013 they\u2019re cheap and easy to replace. But the burden of a failed disk is much more than the raw cost of the disk:
\nDisk rebuild and\/or data replicate of 2TB or 3TB drive
\nPerformance overhead of a RAID rebuild makes it difficult to justify, and can take days
\nDisk capacity must be added somewhere to compensate: ~$40-$50
\nRedistribute replicated data across many servers
\nInfrastructure overhead to rebalance workloads to other distributed servers
\nPerson to service disk: remove and replace
\nAnd then ensure the HDD data cannot be accessed \u2013 wipe it or shred it
\nLet\u2019s put some scale to this problem, and you\u2019ll begin to understand the issue. One modest size MDC has been very generous in sharing its real numbers. (When I say modest, they are ~1\/4 to 1\/2 the size of many other MDCs, but they are still huge \u2013 more than 200k servers). Other MDCs I have checked with say \u2013 yep, that\u2019s about right. And one engineer I know at an HDD manufacturer said \u2013 \u201cwow \u2013 I expected worse than that. That\u2019s pretty good.\u201d To be clear \u2013 these are very good HDDs they are using, it\u2019s just that the numbers add up.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Full Story: What is false disk failure, and why is it a problem? – TechSpot<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve spent a lot of time with mega datacenters (MDCs) around the world trying to understand their problems \u2013 and 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