Message-ID: <3D9D6C84.F1736E15@llgc.org.uk>
Date: Fri, 04 Oct 2002 11:25:08 +0100
From: Illtud Daniel <illtud.daniel@llgc.org.uk>
Organization: Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Effrem Norwood <enorwood@effrem.com>
CC: Kanoalani Withington <kanoa@cfht.hawaii.edu>,
       Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk <roy@karlsbakk.net>, jbradford@dial.pipex.com,
       jakob@unthought.net, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
       linux-raid@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: RAID backup
References: <CFEAJJEGMGECBCJFLGDBCENHCEAA.enorwood@effrem.com>
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Effrem Norwood wrote:

> In addition, HSM software costs
> something (even if you write it yourself) on top of the tape infrastructure.
> One customer of ours was quoted 40K per TB of HSM *software* alone.

I've got 25TB uncompressed of HSM here, and it's cost us (ex VAT)
roughly:

?10k for the first 1.6TB (on NT, DLT library)
?18k for the next  6.0TB (on NT, LTO library)
?45k for the next 18.0TB (on Solaris, LTO Library)

...for the software licencing alone. Plus about 10% pa. in support
costs.
You're looking at about 50-60% of the library cost for the HSM software
to manage it (tapes are another thing). Is HSM really that difficult?

It really is a racket, but it's not so much compared with the
cost of re-producing the data (mainly digitized collections).
I'd be happier about it if they were more reliable (libs and s/w).
Disk arrays, on the other hand, would cost us a fortune in
upgrading the cooling - we've had to do this once just because of
the 3-4 TB of online storage we've got, and adding huge exchangers
(and associated pipes) isn't something I want to do much of.

Oh, and having spent much of last night and this morning dealing
with multiple SCSI disk failures, and having seen about 5% of
ours fail in a year, I'm rapidly seeing the light on IDE.

-- 
Illtud Daniel                                 illtud.daniel@llgc.org.uk
Uwch Ddadansoddwr Systemau                       Senior Systems Analyst
Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru                  National Library of Wales
Yn siarad drosof fy hun, nid LlGC   -  Speaking personally, not for NLW
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