Someone ought to gift these IBM researchers a better camera, because their latest General Parallel File System is a back-slapping 37 times faster than their last effort back in 2007. The rig combines ten IBM System xSeries servers with Violin Memory SSDs that hold 6.5 terabytes of metadata relating to 10 billion separate files. Every single one of those files can be analyzed and managed using policy-guided rules in under three quarters of an hour. That kind of performance might seem like overkill, but it's only just barely in step with what IBM's Doug Balog describes as a "rapidly growing, multi-zettabyte world." No prizes for guessing who their
