From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri Oct 23 16:35:15 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id QAA23016 for freebsd-hackers-outgoing; Fri, 23 Oct 1998 16:35:15 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from hda.hda.com (hda-bicnet.bicnet.net [208.220.66.37]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id QAA23007 for ; Fri, 23 Oct 1998 16:35:10 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dufault@hda.hda.com) Received: (from dufault@localhost) by hda.hda.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id TAA12216; Fri, 23 Oct 1998 19:26:57 -0400 (EDT) From: Peter Dufault Message-Id: <199810232326.TAA12216@hda.hda.com> Subject: Re: Multi-terabyte disk farm In-Reply-To: <199810222304.QAA01620@dingo.cdrom.com> from Mike Smith at "Oct 22, 98 04:04:59 pm" To: mike@smith.net.au (Mike Smith) Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 19:26:56 -0400 (EDT) Cc: mlnn4@oaks.com.au, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL25 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > > > > Prior to my arrival two weeks ago, they had been planning to use a > > StorageTek Timberwolf library. This box has two DLT drives, a robot arm, > > and about 8 terabytes worth of tape slots. (...) > I would be inclined to go with RAID-4 or -5... Be careful. If they are considering this now, knowing the price, the chances are that they will need whatever this scales to in a few years. That is, the needs will grow and not remain constant, and your counting on the cost per disk to come down may wind up solving today's problem tomorrow. You could approach this as a FreeBSD front end to the Timberwolf and a learning experience. A handy dandy big disk cache and network interface might be an easier and low risk project and let you know the ins and outs of the application. Peter -- Peter Dufault (dufault@hda.com) Realtime development, Machine control, HD Associates, Inc. Safety critical systems, Agency approval To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message