On Thu, 2011-12-29 at 14:04 -0500, Joshua Shriver wrote:
> Just buy a barebones system for $299 throw Ubuntu linux on it and
> install the appropriate daemons.
> Make sure it has gigabit ethernet, voila!

Unfortunately been there, done that, have the t-shirt.

While it SOUNDS like a good idea, the issue is stability, and
reliability.

First, jsut the logistics: to support 8TB in RAID, that means probably
16TB of disk space. Depending one what kind of speed is needed, that can
be 6-16 disks (or more). That's alot of SATA ports, meaning an expensive
SATA RAID card (please, don't even consider the "software" RAID options
consumer hardware pushes all the time).

That's just the beginning, getting a case and power supply for this is
non trivial.

After you've put together this beast, keeping it up will be a big job
(budget an hour or 2 a day). It will fail, with so many drives in such a
small space, it will probably fail often.

In the end, unless you've got tons of time to waste and your users don't
mind the down time, using a commercial solution will be FAR better.
There are lots of options out there. Considering the amount of drive
space required, chances are you'll need 2 units, the "server", and a
storage tower.

It would be really useful to the op to have someone local familiar in
this sort of stuff guide them, does the University in question not have
an IT department?

TTYL

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