Thanks to all of you who answered. Crowdsourcing does work if you
pick the right crowd. We have been looking at the S3 possibility but
I agree this would have to be a second copy. The policy and
institutional support comments from my tokayo
see http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tocayo
seem especially appropriate. I am going to include a link on our
staff blog to this thread as a resource.
Thanks again,
Edward Iglesias
On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 8:59 PM, Edward M. Corrado<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Joe Atzberger wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 4:25 PM, Edward M. Corrado
>> <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
>>
>>
>>>
>>> Nate Vack wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 1:57 PM, Ryan Ordway<[log in to unmask]>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> $213,360 over 3 years
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> If you're ONLY looking at storage costs, SATA drives in enterprise RAID
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> systems range from about $1.00/GB to about $1.25/GB for online storage.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Yeah -- but if you're looking only at storage costs, you'll have an
>>>> inaccurate estimate of your costs. You've got power, cooling, sysadmin
>>>> time, and replacements for failed disks. If you want an
>>>> apples-to-apples comparison, you'll want an offsite mirror, as well.
>>>>
>>>> I'm not saying S3 is always cost-effective -- but in our experience,
>>>> the costs of the disks themselves is dwarfed by the costs of the
>>>> related infrastructure.
>>>>
>>>> I agree that the cost of storage is only one factor. I have to wonder
>>>>
>>>
>>> though, how much more staff time do you need for local storage than cloud
>>> storage? I don't know the answer but I'm not sure it is much more than
>>> setting up S3 storage, especially if you have a good partnership with
>>> your
>>> storage vendor.
>>>
>>
>>
>> Support relationships, especially regarding storage are very costly. When
>> I
>> worked at a midsize datacenter, we implemented a backup solution with
>> STORServer and tivoli. Both hardware and software were considerably
>> costly. Initial and ongoing support, while indispensable was basically as
>> much as the cost of the hardware every few years.
>>
>
> They can be depending on what you are doing and what choices on software you
> make, but for long term preservation purposes they don't have to be nearly
> as expensive as what Ryan calculated S3 to cost. If you shop around you can
> get a quality 36GB array with 3 yr warranty for say $30,000 that is almost
> $180,000 less than S3 (probably much less, I'm be less than generous with my
> Sun discounts and only briefly looked at there prices). Even if we use the
> double your cost for support, it is still over $50,000 a year less for 3
> years. Yes, we might need some expertise, but running a 36TB preservation
> storage array is not a $50,000 a year job and besides, what is wrong with
> growing local expertise?
>
> ...
>>>
>>> Yes, maybe you save on staff time patching software on your storage
>>> array,
>>> but that is not a significant amount of time - esp. since you are still
>>> going to have some local storage, and there isn't much difference in
>>> staff
>>> time in doing 2 TB vs. 20 TB.
>>>
>>
>>
>> There's a real difference. I can get 2 TB in a single HDD, for example
>> this
>> one for $200 at NewEgg:
>> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148413
>> <http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148413>
>>
>> Any high school kid can install that. 20 TB requires some kind of
>> additional structure and additional expertise.
>>
>
> Well building a 20 TB storage device and getting it to work can actually be
> very cheap and doesn't require a PhD (just a local GNU/Linux geek who likes
> to play with hardware) if you are OK with a home grown solution. I wouldn't
> be satisfied with that, but I don't see how a commercial offering that adds
> up to $150,000 worth of expertise and infrastructure.
>
>> You may some time on the initial configuration, but you still need to
>>
>>>
>>> configure cloud storage. Is cloud storage that much easier/less time
>>> consuming to configure than an iSCSI device? Replacement for disks would
>>> be
>>> covered under your warranty or support contract (at least I would hope
>>> you
>>> would have one).
>>>
>>
>>
>> Warranties expire and force you into ill-timed, hardly-afforded and
>> dangerous-to-your-data upgrades. Sorta like some ILS systems with which
>> we
>> are all familiar.
>
> Yes some application upgrades can cause issues, but how is that different if
> your application and/or storage is in a cloud?
>
>> The cloud doesn't necessarily stay the same, but the part
>> you care about (data in, data out) does.
>>
>
> How do you know they won't change their cloud models? And you don't even
> have a warranty with the cloud. They won't even guarantee they won't delete
> your data.
>
> As long as you use a common standards based method of storage, you won't
> have any more issues getting it to work than you will getting future
> application servers to work with the cloud. While I'm not a huge fan of NFS
> I've been using it for many years with no problems due to changes in NFS or
> operating systems or hardware. NFS has been available to the public for
> about 20 years. Occasionally you may need to migrate it from one platform or
> one machine to another but you very well need to do that with clouds as
> well. Maybe you are using S3 but for whatever reason Sun gives you a better
> deal with better terms and guarantees for using their cloud. Maybe Amazon
> drops S3. Maybe because S3 moves servers to a country that you are not
> legally allow to have your data in. Yes, you have to plan for migration to
> new platforms but I fail to see how you don't need to do that with the
> cloud. Really any major technological decision should have an exit plan.
> Preservation storage is not different in that and the cloud doesn't change
> that.
>
> Edward
>
>
>>> The power and cooling can be a savings, but in many cases the library or
>>> individual departments don't pay for electricity, so while *someone* pays
>>> the cost, it might not be the individual department. Cooling and
>>> electricity
>>> costs are an actually a great argument for tape for large-scale storage.
>>> Tape might seem old fashioned, but in many applications it by far offers
>>> the
>>> best value of long term storage per GB.
>>>
>>
>>
>> It's true, tape is still an worthwhile option. Alternatives like optical
>> or
>> magneto-optical media just have not kept up.
>>
>> Again, I'm not totally against the cloud and there are some things I think
>>
>>>
>>> it could be very useful for, but the cloud doesn't make up for the lack
>>> of
>>> (or just bad) planning.
>>>
>>
>>
>> Yeah, there's no system good enough to compensate for bad planning and
>> management.
>> --Joe
>>
>
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