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Many lessons can be learned from the Petabox project over at the Internet Archive project. An increasing need for mobile, large scale, inexpensive storage facilities exists. Expanding on the need for these storage facilities is also the need for mobile, large scale, inexpensive computing, power, and operations facilities. Facilities like this exist for the military, oil, and mining industries, but are extremely expensive. The Petabox has a TCO over three years of approximately $2.1MM. This is amazing. A convoy of six vehicles – storage, computing, operations, two power trailers, and a fuel tanker -- could operate a huge mobile data collection facility. Each container could be outfitted with independent communications equipment. External and protected patch panels would interconnect all of the containers in addition to power connections. These are the building blocks for large mobile computing facilities. With ever increasing concerns of terrorism, these types of facilities will be employed by industry as a risk avoidance and mitigation strategy in urban areas. |
