2008/10/15 Toby Bluhm tkb@alltechmedusa.com:
Is there any way you would/could consider a centralized storage solution like netapp or similar? Yes, it could be costly but you *are* currently tossing back and forth up to 160 TB of data on discreet storage. Do you do backups? Do you have 20 server boxes/towers? Or are you using rackmount blade servers? HW raid cards? What size disks?
Sorry for all the prying questions - just that your computing situation intrigues me. I'd understand your reluctance to give out this info.
A centralized storage solution is impossible due to our (awfully) low IT budget. Only important data is backuped (/home and a couple other things), as we can't afford to save several TB. 3 servers are rack ones, others are towers. A bit of history: when I get employed there, we had 400GB, 1 box per user, 100mbps network, local user accounts...we are now at 30+TB, twice more boxes than users... Everytime we had to work on a new satellite, generally a new box came in and was dedicated to store and process data of this new sat. Everytime, it was a noname box, with classical hardware and a 3ware card (sometimes, I even had to use software raid *sigh*). We're always close to full capacity, and work in emergency is my daily companion (as I'm the only IT guy, having to do lots of things others than admin) Disks are, depending on the box, from 200GB to 1TB, 4 up to 24 ones. raid is mostly 5, 10 on a couple others (home server, db server) I know the way it was deployed isn't the best, unfortunately, struggling with low time and budget, it was difficult to do it a different way. I hope I answered to your questions, do not hesitate to ask if you need more details. Regards, Laurent