On Thu, 2011-12-29 at 16:05 -0500, V G wrote: > 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. >=20 > Really? It didn't even come close to sounding like a good idea. Perhaps to you, but to most getting into this stuff it does sound 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 ca= n > > be 6-16 disks (or more). That's alot of SATA ports, meaning an expensiv= e > > SATA RAID card (please, don't even consider the "software" RAID options > > consumer hardware pushes all the time). >=20 > Why do you say software RAID unsuitable for this? Because "software RAID" is always unsuitable. It's horrible for stability, reliability, and even to initially get working. I've gone down that road. I've worked through the problems. I've got things working. I've suffered the issues. I eventually got a hardware RAID card and haven't looked back. > > 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. >=20 > The U of T IT department will handle the maintenance. Curious, if they are handling the maintenance, why aren't the involved in the procurement? Are they at least available to give advice? > > 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? >=20 > They do, but their competence is questionable (from experience). Ouch, that doesn't sound promising!? :( > APPROXIMATELY how much do you think the full server setup would cost? > $100? $1000? $5000? $10000? Just the approximate range. I'm not familiar enough with what kind of hardware you need to support what you're doing (I'm not in IT), but based on similar things I've seen, you're looking at least $10k. The drives and their housing alone will probably use a good amount of that budget (please, don't consider consumer drives, they are not suitable for the usage you have planned). TTYL --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .