Are thumpers still interesting in 2011 ? (raidz3 on x4500 @ 3.0gbps ...)

[Ivan Voras]

On 04/07/2011 17:38, George Sanders wrote:
>
>
> If I understand correctly, the interesting thing about a Sun x4500 (a "thumper")
> is that every one of the 48 disks has a direct path to the system board,
> allowing for full, independent throughput from every single drive.
>
> The downside, in 2011, is that it is a SATA2 system @ 3.0gbps.
>
> So, is this still an interesting system ?  Is it still difficult to put together
> a system with 48 independent paths to the board, like the Thumper ?

It's a bit outdated, but here are the plans for a do-it-yourself 
slightly scaled down Thumper-like server:

http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01/petabytes-on-a-budget-how-to-build-cheap-cloud-storage/