Smugmug Infrastructure

PerezDesignGroup

I can't even begin to convey the warmth and happiness I felt when finding out Smugmug uses Apple for storage (PDF). Anything Apple gets a big thumbs up from me

So thanks for putting up a rock solid infrastructure!

/me raises drink to toast

Baldy

PerezDesignGroup wrote:

I can't even begin to convey the warmth and happiness I felt when finding out Smugmug uses Apple for storage (PDF). Anything Apple gets a big thumbs up from me

So thanks for putting up a rock solid infrastructure!

/me raises drink to toast

Xserve RAIDs rock. We actually make two copies of each photo and store them on separate RAIDs. We're at 4 million photos now (8 counting the copies) and they've proven to be flawless.

And our PowerBooks, iPods, iTunes, and Final Cut Pros are awesome as well.

ian408

Baldy wrote:

Xserve RAIDs rock. We actually make two copies of each photo and store them on separate RAIDs. We're at 4 million photos now (8 counting the copies) and they've proven to be flawless.

And our PowerBooks, iPods, iTunes, and Final Cut Pros are awesome as well.

Out of curiosity, how come you didn't go with a more "commercial" storage
system? Something like NetApp or EMC or IBM? Just curious (I spend more time
in storage than I care to these days).

darryl

ian408 wrote:

Out of curiosity, how come you didn't go with a more "commercial" storage
system? Something like NetApp or EMC or IBM? Just curious (I spend more time
in storage than I care to these days).

Uhm, well, Perez did post a link to the Apple Case Study on Smugmug.com

I think it had to do with price, and ease-of-use. :}

We too spend a lot of time thinking about storage, and NetApps are *crazy* expensive.

Apple has a price comparison of various RAID solutions here:

http://www.apple.com/xserve/raid/

Even NetApp's cheaper "Nearline" storage solutions (ATA, not SCSI), which are supposed to be cheaper, still run something like $20/GB (well, that's from some Oct. 2002 press releases.)

onethumb

darryl wrote:

Uhm, well, Perez did post a link to the Apple Case Study on Smugmug.com

I think it had to do with price, and ease-of-use. :}

We too spend a lot of time thinking about storage, and NetApps are *crazy* expensive.

Apple has a price comparison of various RAID solutions here:

http://www.apple.com/xserve/raid/

Even NetApp's cheaper "Nearline" storage solutions (ATA, not SCSI), which are supposed to be cheaper, still run something like $20/GB (well, that's from some Oct. 2002 press releases.)

We would never sacrifice speed or reliability for price, but in this case, Apple provides an amazing deal: speed, reliability, and price that can't be beat.

We would never be able to do what we're doing with any other commercial vendor I'm aware of. They're just too darn expensive.

We're doing some pretty neat stuff with them, too. We shouldn't have any growth problems in the image-storage arena....

The Apple feature pretty much says it all, though with our fast growth, it's getting a little out of date in terms of #s of customers and #s of images and such.

Don