~2004 I whiteboxed a db server with 48 raptors (WD800GD) via 3 16-port sata raid controllers (areca ARC-1160 w/1gb dram and bbu modules), I striped all 16 in 3 raid0s and put them in a soft raid4 for ~2.5tb of speedy local attached storage. the datacenter guys thought I was nuts for using consumer stuff in a server but at the time sas prices were out of my reach and I was willing to take the risk.
the server performed great and I eventually made 2 more of them before we were acquired and the pros took over - what's funny is the pros only used dell servers and ended up having to go with some outrageously expensive top-end models to get the iops that my whiteboxes were delivering.
144 raptors in production for 3 years under heavy load and we never lost a single drive. we had the servers sent back to us when they were decommissioned and most of the raptors ended up in peoples' workstations for another couple years and I never heard that any of those drives ever failed.
A “white box” server not built by a typical server manufacturer. It could be a no-name part or a consumer PC acting as a server. Google were known for not buying traditional servers from Company, Dell and the like.
google bought servers from dell, and from rackspace or some other vendor. I helped run a fleet of dells with 15K SCSI drives for google (mysql workload) that was absolutely critical and it took the company a decade to replace the dell machines with "white box" (really, self-designed and externally manufactured) servers.
What Google did different than the rest back in the days was mostly relying on x86-32 with Linux and not so much RISC (SPARC) with Solaris. Sun's market share was huge back in those days.
the server performed great and I eventually made 2 more of them before we were acquired and the pros took over - what's funny is the pros only used dell servers and ended up having to go with some outrageously expensive top-end models to get the iops that my whiteboxes were delivering.
144 raptors in production for 3 years under heavy load and we never lost a single drive. we had the servers sent back to us when they were decommissioned and most of the raptors ended up in peoples' workstations for another couple years and I never heard that any of those drives ever failed.
legendary HDD