• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • About
    • Stephen Foskett
      • My Publications
        • Urban Forms in Suburbia: The Rise of the Edge City
      • Storage Magazine Columns
      • Whitepapers
      • Multimedia
      • Speaking Engagements
    • Services
    • Disclosures
  • Categories
    • Apple
    • Ask a Pack Rat
    • Computer History
    • Deals
    • Enterprise storage
    • Events
    • Personal
    • Photography
    • Terabyte home
    • Virtual Storage
  • Guides
    • The iPhone Exchange ActiveSync Guide
      • The iPhone Exchange ActiveSync Troubleshooting Guide
    • The iPad Exchange ActiveSync Guide
      • iPad Exchange ActiveSync Troubleshooting Guide
    • Toolbox
      • Power Over Ethernet Calculator
      • EMC Symmetrix WWN Calculator
      • EMC Symmetrix TimeFinder DOS Batch File
    • Linux Logical Volume Manager Walkthrough
  • Calendar

Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

Understanding the accumulation of data

You are here: Home / Everything / Apple / What Datacenter Equipment Is Apple Using?

What Datacenter Equipment Is Apple Using?

June 6, 2011 By Stephen 17 Comments

During the WWDC “Stevenote” we got a rare glimpse into the mysterious Apple North Carolina data center. Two shots have been seen online so far: One showing showing swoopy Teradata racks and another open, exposing HP rack servers and what looks like a NetApp array. Since Apple spent billions building out this datacenter, and has kept their product choices very quiet, it’s amusing to try to suss out what they are using from their own promo video.

These look to be Teradata Extreme Data Appliance racks
  1. In the first photo, we have rows of swoopy racks – at least 30 are pictured. These appear to be Teradata Extreme Data Appliance racks. The gray color and funky doors give them away.
  2. This photo features rack servers and NetApp storage
  3. The second photo includes a 1U rack server with six 2.5″ drives featuring “HP purple” drive eject buttons. There are over 100 in this photo, receding to infinity. Looks like HP ProLiant DL360 G7 servers to me.
  4. We also have a 2U rack server with 16 2.5″ drive bays. I count over 20 of these. They don’t quite look like HP to me, but could be high-density HP DL380 G7 servers.
  5. What looks like a NetApp FAS6200 to me is at the lower right. It looks to be 6U high, compared to the shelves.
  6. We also have a number of disk shelves for the NetApp. I’m guessing NetApp DS2246 shelves.
  7. This still from Apple's official video shows more NetApp storage and HP servers
  8. In this third shot, we see more HP 1U servers, possibly ProLiant DL360 G7’s as noted above.
  9. We have another NetApp filer “head” similar to the one in the second shot.
  10. Some sort of 6U beige rackmount device is found in the bottom of two racks
  11. We have many more NetApp disk shelves or 1U servers above

Note that these racks contain many 1U Chatsworth “HotLok” filler panels. They’re not very efficiently racked, but perhaps this was due to flexibility or power requirements…

Stephen’s Stance

Whatever Apple bought for this datacenter, they bought a lot of it. Just the hint that they purchased Isilon bumped parent company EMC’s stock a few months back. I imagine Teradata and NetApp might see similar bumps from these images!

It’s also interesting to speculate on the political implications of Apple’s datacenter buys. Would they still buy HP equipment, now that Palm and WebOS are re-emerging as iOS-killer contenders? Would Jobs’ friendship with Larry Ellison indicate a proclivity to buy Oracle or Pillar Data? Maybe the Apple/Cisco Détente would suggest UCS or even EMC? And what about that rumored Isilon buy. Was that displaced by Teradata and NetApp?

Images from MacRumors.com

Note: This has been one of my most-popular posts, and has been referenced a lot by major news organizations. Here’s a list of those who linked and mentioned me. Thanks!

  • The web’s watchful eye fixes on Apple’s cloud gear
  • Steve Jobs Provides A Look Inside the iDataCenter
  • WWDC: Has Apple turned to Oracle for iCloud?
  • What Kind Of Gear Is Apple Using In Its Huge New Data Center? (AAPL)
  • How Green Is Apple’s iCloud?

You might also want to read these other posts...

  • Electric Car Over the Internet: My Experience Buying From…
  • How To Connect Everything From Everywhere with ZeroTier
  • Liberate Wi-Fi Smart Bulbs and Switches with Tasmota!
  • Powering Rabbits: The Mean Well LRS-350-12 Power Supply
  • Tortoise or Hare? Nvidia Jetson TK1

Filed Under: Apple, Enterprise storage, Personal Tagged With: Apple, DL360, DS2246, EMC, FAS6200, HP, Isilon, NetApp, ProLiant, Teradata, WWDC

Primary Sidebar

A man provided with paper, pencil, and rubber, and subject to strict discipline, is in effect a universal machine.

Alan Turing

Subscribe via Email

Subscribe via email and you will receive my latest blog posts in your inbox. No ads or spam, just the same great content you find on my site!
 New posts (daily)
 Where's Stephen? (weekly)

Download My Book


Download my free e-book:
Essential Enterprise Storage Concepts!

Recent Posts

How To Install ZeroTier on TrueNAS 12

February 3, 2022

Scam Alert: Fake DMCA Takedown for Link Insertion

January 24, 2022

How To Connect Everything From Everywhere with ZeroTier

January 14, 2022

Electric Car Over the Internet: My Experience Buying From Vroom

November 28, 2020

Powering Rabbits: The Mean Well LRS-350-12 Power Supply

October 18, 2020

Tortoise or Hare? Nvidia Jetson TK1

September 22, 2020

Running Rabbits: More About My Cloud NUCs

September 21, 2020

Introducing Rabbit: I Bought a Cloud!

September 10, 2020

Remove ROM To Use LSI SAS Cards in HPE Servers

August 23, 2020

Test Your Wi-Fi with iPerf for iOS

July 9, 2020

Symbolic Links

    Featured Posts

    A Complete List of VMware VAAI Primitives

    November 10, 2011

    Why Big Disk Drives Require Data Integrity Checking

    December 19, 2014

    EMC Redefine Possible (TL;DR Edition)

    July 9, 2014

    How Will Cisco Recover From The Consumer Strategy Blunder?

    January 2, 2013

    Sony QX100 Lens Camera: Ruined by a Flaky iOS App

    October 7, 2013

    The Rack Endgame: Open Compute Project

    September 17, 2014

    It’s Fine To Mount Hard Drives On Their Side Or Even Upside-Down

    August 13, 2016

    What More Could Alan Turing Have Accomplished?

    October 7, 2012

    How to Get Me to Write about Your Company or Product

    March 15, 2012

    On the Death of Innovation, or “These Kids These Days!”

    May 21, 2012

    Footer

    Legalese

    Copyright © 2022 · Log in