If you had to store three petabytes of data and keep it online for the entire Internet community, and you wanted to save space and energy, what would you do? For the Internet Archive, the answer was simple: Put the data in a Sun Modular Datacenter (Sun MD) equipped with Sun’s Open Storage technology.

The new Sun MD was installed in March 2009. It is equipped with  (Thumper) Open Storage Systems that run the Solaris 10 OS, including the Solaris ZFS file system. Sun’s servers with Solaris ZFS storage pools enable the Internet Archive to double the storage capacity of its old system while using up to 50 percent less power than other servers would use.

The Internet Archive is also using Sun’s new Sun MD remote monitoring service. Sun engineers monitor power, heating and cooling, fire, smoke, and water detection, and physical access points, and will dispatch repair technicians if necessary.