Recent Tweets
join our mailing list
* indicates required

About Ambleside

Ambleside Logic is led by Aaron Rosenbaum. Father of 3, Programming since 7, DevOps since 11 (hacking RSTS), exIngres, exCTP, exCohera. Sold two companies to Oracle, one to HP. Research + Strategy for NoSQL/BigData ecosystem implementors, vendors and investors.

« AppleTV + Time Capsule | Main | Crestron hits a home run with new media distribution system »
Sunday
Jan062008

Kaleidescape a bargain...a realistic view of media storage options...

[This post is really old - here is an update for those looking for a deal - 6/27/2011]

KALEIDESCAPE SYSTEM FOR SALE:

5U Server with 3X500GB, 2X750GB (KSERVER-2500)

Dvd Reader (Kreader-2000)

Movie Player (Kplayer-2500)

$4,500 Call 650-375-8700

 

I work with a lot of folks with technology backgrounds.  It's taken as a given that all media will be digitized and local storage is a good thing. Kaleidescape, for many (myself included) represents the best of media servers today but many forsee a day when they can get something workable for less money.  I see the systems as very well thought out and looked at as a system, not a single room playback device, the amount of technology and service delivered right now is simply staggering when it's broken down.

  1. A flexible storage array network. The Kaleidescape system starts at 250GB of storage and goes to at least 45TB.  I've heard of systems working with as many as 30 simultaneous client devices. 
  2. A system monitoring service - Kaleidescape monitors the systems and provides advanced replacement of failing hard drive units. 
  3. The best media browsing front-end around - no one else is even close.
  4. A wonderfully complete meta-data service including adding additional data without additional cost.
  5.  Three different types of client devices: movie, music only and bulk loader.

The most optomistic views promoting a future of Kaleidescape type functionality for "free"  run as follows:

  • AppleTV is a great front-end.
  • Apple - or a hacker - will enable great DVD image playback.
  • By pre-fetching large amounts of DVD image data and deploying cheap playback devices to each display, I won't have a contention problem for network or disk resources.
  • Disk is cheap.
  • Therefore, if I just wait, I can get everything Kaleidescape provides from Apple + a bunch of cheap disk.

I agree if you are going to be okay with Apple's iTunes movie library.  If you would like to leverage your existing library or have a broader base of content requiring storage of original encrypted content, I disagree.

Even if you agree with all the predictions above (or substitute MythTV or Microsoft Vista, etc. for Apple above), I think Kaleidescape provides an enormous amount of value in just the storage angle.

Let's take it as a given that people who have stored 1000 DVDs or 15,000 CD's would rather not lose them and don't have a second electronic copy lying around.  You need it safe.  Let's also take it as a given that we need and want an expandable system - even when disks go from 750GB to 2TB each, we don't want to have to rebuild a disk array.  Therefore we need a flexible storage system.  This is not free. 

Unit                                       Capacity 

                                                  Delivered/Total                                             Cost                                                                 $/TB                                      Monitored/Service Contract

Buffalo Terastation       2TB/2TB                                                          ~$1600                                                             $800                                                      No

No monitoring, double drive failure takes down system, rebuild array to go larger.

Hitatchi SMS100              9TB/9TB                                                         ~$12,000                                                        $1333                                                     No

No monitoring, double drive failure takes down system, rebuild array to go larger.

NetApp FAS2050            10.5TB/99TB                                                  ~$49,000                                                       $4667                                                   Yes

No monitoring, support for extra disks, expandable without forklift upgrades.

Amazon S3                           10.5TB/Unlimited                                  ~$44,856                                                         $3738                                                   Yes

Look at Hitachi cost plus Amazon S3 together...remarkably close on cost/TB vs. NetApp.

Kaleidescape 1U              3TB/Unlimited                                         ~$11,000                                                           $3667                                                    Yes

Kaleidescape 3U           10.5TB/Unlimited                                       ~$35,000                                                       $ 3334                                                   Yes 

[Costs for K-Scape include server but exclude players]

Is Kaleidescape doing everything that NetApp is doing? No way - Kaleidescape cannot handle the total data throughput of the NetApp unit.  But for a monitored, expandable, no-fork-lift upgrade system, it's the lowest cost per TB around.  Is it 4.5X the cheapest storage possible? Yep.  If double drive failures weren't somewhat common and RAID-5 took care of all problems, EMC + NetApp wouldn't have a business.  The combination of the hardware, operating system, front-end software and monitoring service is an amazing value for those who want a media server.

Note: Moores law helps - but only somewhat.  During the next 5 years when we should expect our storage dollar to go 32X farther (25), I expect movie storage requirements to increase by 10X-12X...so this problem should become 2/3 cheaper.

Note: Piracy + acceptance of low quality helps a lot.  A lossy compressed copy of an entire SD DVD can fit into 700MB if you don't really care about motion artifacts, extras, copy protection or the directors original intent.  I'd expect the college freshmen of 2013 to be running around with 500 movie libraries on their phones...A 160GB iPod classic can do that today if they are ripped to the iPod screen size.

PrintView Printer Friendly Version

References (8)

References allow you to track sources for this article, as well as articles that were written in response to this article.
  • Response
    Response: storage networking
    Typically, a storage area network (SAN) is part of the overall network of computing resources for an enterprise. Storage Area Network (SAN) allows a network of systems to access the storage over a dedicated storage
  • Response
    Lovely Site, Keep up the good job. Thanks!
  • Response
    Response: 手錶
    Kaleidescape a bargain...a realistic view of media storage options... - Home - Hillsborough, CA
  • Response
    Kaleidescape a bargain...a realistic view of media storage options... - Home - Hillsborough, CA
  • Response
    Response: summertime
    Kaleidescape a bargain...a realistic view of media storage options... - Home - Hillsborough, CA
  • Response
    Response: D D Photographics
    Kaleidescape a bargain...a realistic view of media storage options... - Home - Hillsborough, CA
  • Response
    Kaleidescape a bargain...a realistic view of media storage options... - Home - Hillsborough, CA
  • Response
    Response: MINI FLASHLIGHT
    Kaleidescape a bargain...a realistic view of media storage options... - Home - Hillsborough, CA

Reader Comments

There are no comments for this journal entry. To create a new comment, use the form below.
Member Account Required
You must have a member account on this website in order to post comments. Log in to your account to enable posting.