On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 2:30 PM, Herbert Graf wrote: > > Unfortunately been there, done that, have the t-shirt. > > While it SOUNDS like a good idea, the issue is stability, and > reliability. Really? It didn't even come close to sounding like a good idea. > 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). Why do you say software RAID unsuitable for this? > That's just the beginning, getting a case and power supply for this is > non trivial. Yeah, most likely going to buy a Dell or IBM server. I still need to know what to look for (like RAID cards, storage expansion options, etc.). > 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. The U of T IT department will handle the maintenance. > 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. Ah. That makes sense. > 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? They do, but their competence is questionable (from experience). APPROXIMATELY how much do you think the full server setup would cost? $100? $1000? $5000? $10000? Just the approximate range. --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .