Behind the Scenes: Linus Tech Tips and the Million-Dollar Server

The Million Dollar Server

Last year at about this time, we were on a call with Linus Sebastian of Linus Tech Tips, trading ideas on ways to keep the fun video collaboration we had established going. Suddenly, Linus blurted out, almost jokingly: “What about a petabyte of flash?”

After a moment of silence, I thought to myself, “Well, let’s see if we can make that happen!” And thus began the quest to build a million-dollar server (more than $1.2 million, to be exact), with the unboxing and assembly to be featured on Linus’s highly popular YouTube channel.

Having first put our CM6 Series PCIe® 4.0 U.3 SSDs through their paces then using them to build the ultimate home NAS, Linus knew that these drives were more than up to such a massive task.  The rest of the petabyte of flash cluster was a joint technology effort featuring equipment generously provided by a few key hardware and software companies. The system architecture was carefully specified by KIOXIA’s applications lab team and required extensive collaboration with AMD, NVIDIA, WEKA and Supermicro. Trust me, it’s been an exciting project for us all.

To ensure that the system delivered maximum performance and full access to the petabyte of flash, our applications lab team spent months integrating, testing and troubleshooting the configuration. The $1M Linus Tech Tips project wouldn’t have been possible without the tireless effort put in by our very own Tyler Nelson and Adil Rahman. Thanks, guys!

Wondering what a million-dollar server with a petabyte worth of flash looks like? Linus shows you here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Hxr9k5Vdc4.

Stay tuned for more – the LTT series continues later this year!


Notes:

PCI Express and PCIe are registered trademarks of PCI-SIG.

AMD is a trademark of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.

NVIDIA is a trademark and/or registered trademark of NVIDIA Corporation in the US and/or other countries.

The WEKA brand mark is a trademark of WekaIO, Inc. and its affiliates in the US and/or other countries.

Supermicro is a trademark of Super Micro Computer, Inc.

All company names, product names and service names may be trademarks of their respective companies.

Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of KIOXIA America, Inc.

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