From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Oct 28 11:54:11 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id LAA07381 for freebsd-hackers-outgoing; Wed, 28 Oct 1998 11:54:11 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from quark.ChrisBowman.com (crbowman.erols.com [209.122.47.155]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id LAA07376 for ; Wed, 28 Oct 1998 11:54:07 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from crb@ChrisBowman.com) Received: from fermion (fermion [10.0.1.2]) by quark.ChrisBowman.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id PAA02748; Wed, 28 Oct 1998 15:57:07 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from crb@ChrisBowman.com) Message-Id: <199810282057.PAA02748@quark.ChrisBowman.com> X-Sender: crb@quark X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0.1 Date: Wed, 28 Oct 1998 14:52:43 -0500 To: "Hallam Oaks" From: "Christopher R. Bowman" Subject: Re: Multi-terabyte disk farm Cc: "hackers@FreeBSD.ORG" In-Reply-To: <199810281034.VAA01075@mail.aussie.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG At 09:27 PM 10/28/98 +1100, Hallam Oaks wrote: >Thanks for all the advice. At the moment we're looking at a solution >involving Kingston enclosures and hot-swap trays, hooked up to 56 IBM >UltraStore 18.2gb HDD's. We'll be running these off two servers using >double-ended SCSI controllers in much the same way as the tertiary disk >project does. This gives us 1tb in a single rack ; we add new racks each >time we need a new terabyte. > >We're taking a punt on drive prices going down and capacities going up >as we stock the farm over a period of two years to its final capacity >of 8tb. > >We won't be using raid because (a) we don't care about speed, and (b) we >don't care if a drive dies and takes its data along with it. All data will >be backed up on AIT tape (shelved). This is a usable solution to us since >the type of data being stored is very static. It comes in one end, sits >there for two years, then is deleted. It doesn't change in the meantime, >and in fact it's likely that any drive with >6mo data on it will be spun >down. > >If anyone's interested, and we go ahead with it, I'll let -hackers know >how much the thing ended up costing and how well it worked. > >-- Chris You might want to take just one more data point on this. Yesterday, IBM announced that they will now be making the Ultrastar 36XP a 36 GB 7200 rpm 7.5ms 4Mb cache disk drive along the lines of their other drives. This drive is available in Ultra2, SSA and FCAL interfaces. This would bring you down to 28 drives and at "IBM estimated the list price of $1,575" (http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,27995,00.html?st.ne.2.head) and run you about $44100 for just the drives to give you 1TB of storage. -------- Christopher R. Bowman crb@ChrisBowman.com http://www.ChrisBowman.com/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message