• Those Synology units that landed rather abruptly on my doorstep a week ago are now up and running.  16TB of effective RAID-5 or 6 storage each, updated all the way to DSM 6.2.2.  
  
  Two of the arrays had failed drives and ended up in RAID-5, but I have a couple of spares and may fix that before I start actually using them.
  
  They're not a particularly powerful model - dual core Atom CPUs and 1GB RAM - but for file storage that will mostly be accessed over WiFi that's not a problem.
  
  Only remaining problem is that it will take a week or so to copy all my data across.
  
  
  
• Here's something that might help there: 800 Gigabit Ethernet.  (AnandTech)
  
  That would cut it down from a week to about ten minutes, yes.  I'm not sure what an 800 Gb network card would plug into, though; that needs PCIe 6.0 levels of bandwidth.
  
  Interesting note in the article is that a 16-port 400GbE switch from Cisco costs around $11,000.  That's not a lot for that much bandwidth, really.  That's a core switch for hundreds of servers on 10GbE, which would collectively cost a large multiple of $11,000.
  
  
  
• Micron has introduced QLC flash into the place it least belongs: The datacenter.  Unless they haven't.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Basically, these are targeted at high performance hard disks - the 10K and 15K RPM models that some people are still clinging to.  A drop-in replacement can deliver two orders of magnitude better random read performance.
  
  A random I/O workload that could run on a disk drive at all isn't enough to wear out a modern SSD, not even QLC, so this is probably safe.
  
  
  
• That seems to be about it.  All quiet on the Western Front.  And all the other fronts.
  
  
  

1 "I'm not sure what an 800 Gb network card would plug into, though; that needs PCIe 6.0 levels of bandwidth."
Epyc board(s) with a 5-slot bridge.

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, April 10 2020 11:14 PM (Iwkd4)

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