Apple said ordering 12 petabytes of iTunes cloud storage
updated 01:00 pm EDT, Wed April 6, 2011
Apple said getting 12PB of Isilon cloud storage
An insider at Isilon Systems claimed Wednesday that Apple had made an unusually large request for cloud storage systems. The company has reportedly bought 12 petabytes of space for the sake of video downloads on iTunes. Storage Newsletter's contact believed the move would be enough to make Apple the biggest Isilon customer, eclipsing video-heavy sites like DailyMotion and NBC.
A decision to tap Isilion would line up with Apple's plans to use its North Carolina data center for iTunes in the spring if the systems were stored in-house. The capacity is well in excess of what Apple would need just for basic iTunes library storage, though. At 4GB for a typical two-hour 720p movie, Apple could hold 3,145,728 movies.
The space may instead be for the rumored MobileMe media locker, for which iTunes would play a part. About 12PB of space could give millions of users enough space to upload some of their own content and access it from anywhere they have a broadband Internet connection. Apple has given clues that MobileMe might become cheaper or even free as a bid to compete with Google and preempt the search engine's own music service as well as Android's existing online sync. [via AppleInsider]
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Nov 1999
I guess they'll find out
if their single-volume cloud storage solution works, then, for a cloud storage of that size. Not sure if I will try the new Free Mobile Me in its first few months of operation ...