As one of the fastest growing digital libraries in the world, Internet Archive decided it needed a more flexible and open storage architecture. The non-profit organization looked to Sun to help with two important technological challenges: storing massive amounts of data and ensuring this data will be preserved in the future. It selected the Sun Modular Datacenter (Sun MD) platform, comprised of open storage technology like Solaris ZFS and Sun Fire systems, as the basis of its datacenter.

"No company can match the storage innovation that is coming out of Sun right now," said Brewster Kahle, founder of Internet Archive that has a library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form that include moving images, live audio, audio and text formats. "Putting Sun's highly dense storage technology into a modular datacenter gives us the performance and efficiency we need at a low price point."

Besides Sun MD and Sun Fire x4500 systems running Solaris 10 and Solaris ZFS, Sun also will be hosting and managing the datacenter on its Santa Clara campus and will provide the power, cooling and networking capabilities.

"We've worked closely with the Internet Archive to ensure the right technology platform is in place to handle and manage growing amounts of the world's most valuable data and that it lives on for future generations," said Dave Douglas, chief sustainability officer and senior vice-president of Cloud Computing, Sun.

Internet Archive wanted to take advantage of the technological developments that are going on with cloud computing, and Sun is currently working with the organization to explore solutions that can meet all of its requirements.

Founded in 1996, Internet Archive offers free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public; and also features "The Wayback Machine" -- a digital time capsule that allows users to see archived versions of Web pages across time. At the end of 2008, the Internet Archive housed over three petabtyes of information, which is roughly equivalent to about 150 times the information contained in the Library of Congress. Going forward, the Archive is expected to grow at approximately 100 terabytes a month.

More Information

The Internet in a Box - feature story on Internet Archive and Sun

Sun Modular Datacenter product page

Internet Archive home page

Sun\'s Open Storage

Sun\'s Cloud Computing [...read more...]

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