“To handle its growing storage needs, South Park this past season began moving away from a direct-attached disk backup and a tape library that often took more than a day to back up data. Instead, the show’s producers are changing over to a faster tape library system and disk systems that later this month will blossom into a full storage area network (SAN),” Lucas Mearian reports for Computerworld. “J.J. Franzen, technology supervisor at South Park Studios in Los Angeles, said the show was simply running out of storage space on its digital linear tape (DLT) library and direct-attached disk storage from Ciprico Inc., in Plymouth, Minn. So in May, a new linear tape open (LTO)-2 tape library from Exabyte Corp. in Boulder, Colo. and three Xserve RAID disk arrays from Apple Computer Inc. were installed.”
“Franzen said South Park can now perform up to four incremental backups a day versus one a day with the old system, and can do one full-backup a week as opposed to doing it once a month. In the event of disaster, South Park would only lose four hours of changes to the show’s content versus an entire day’s data – which would destroy the tight production schedule that leads up the weekly broadcast, Franzen said,” Mearian reports. “Franzen said he chose Apple hardware based on a ‘gut’ feeling that its technology would be good, and so far he has not been disappointed. Franzen said he now expects to add two more Xserve arrays for a total of 15TB of storage… Xserve arrays use 7,200-rpm advanced technology attached (ATA) drives. Each box scales to 7TB and includes 2Gbit/sec Fibre Channel ports for a price tag that starts at $5,999 for 1TB of raw storage.”
Full article here.
Advertisement: Apple Xserve RAID. Hands-down the best value in external RAID storage.
Respect my AUTHORITAYYY!!!!
Obligatory SP reference:
This new Marklar system was quite Marklar according to Dr. Marklar, IT Marklar for the Marklar Institute.
Wait a minute!
$6K for 1 TB of storage? And they’re going to have 15TB TOTAL?!?!?
That’s $90,000.00!!! Holy SHIT is this stuff expensive.
Methinks South Park be bringing in the money big time.
They Killed Delly — YOU BASTARDS!
Timaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!
BLAME Ciprico!
BLAME Ciprico!
“A Gut Feeling?” Is that what drives IT departments? “Franzen said he chose Apple hardware based on a ‘gut’ feeling that its technology would be good.” Despite picking my favorite hardware vendor, his reasoning isn’t much more sound than your average IT guy who says “I have a gut feeling everyone else uses Windows, so I’ll recommend Windows.” Ieeee
All together now!
Shut your fscking face uncle fscka
You’re the one that fscked your uncle, uncle fscka
You dont eat or sleep or mow the lawn,
You just fsck your uncle all day long…
Come on, Ike.
KICK the baby!
<Each box scales to 7TB>
Now that’s a LOT of funny stuff.
Army General: [shouting] You told us that Windows 98 would be faster, and more efficient with better access to the internet!
Bill Gates: It IS faster! Over five million…
[General shoots Bill Gates and everyone cheers]
Cartman: [singing] Well, Ciprico is a big, fat bitch, it’s the biggest bitch in the whole wide world. It’s a stupid bitch, if there ever was a bitch, it’s a bitch to all the boys and girls.
Wow, they were playing fast and loose with data back-ups over there in South Park. I’m surprised they didn’t have something more professional for a network before now.
“Franzen said he chose Apple hardware based on a ‘gut’ feeling that its technology would be good […]”
So we finally know who the inspiration for Timmmmayyyyy! is.
No, kitty, this is my pot pie!!
MEOW
“I’m surprised they didn’t have something more professional for a network before now.”
Comedy Central is a network?
gooooobbbblleesssss!!!!!!!!!!
If they’re investing that much cash, it looks like this isn’t the last season, and they plan to be around a few more years.
Everyone stay tuned…uumkaay?
You know what this article needs? More comments with South Park quotes in them.
Serenity –
$6k for 1 TB is two drives and the cost of the chassis. 14 – 500 GB drives in the same chassis costs about $12k, which formats out to about 6 TB using RAID 5. We have several of them, they are solid systems.
MDN Magic Word “data” – perfect
I hate you Kyle
“You know what this article needs? More comments with South Park quotes in them.”
So you say and then you disappoint. But don’t worry, there are no stupid answers, just stupid people.
You know what this blog has enough of?
Stupid iHoles with overly-clever self-indulgent names like Bilbo Faggins.
“Time to go to work, work all night,search for underpants hey!”
Underpants Gnomes
Screw you guys, I’m going home.