[NTLUG:Discuss] Data Storage recommendations wanted.

[Robert Pearson]

On 11/15/06, Kipton Moravec <kip at kdream.com> wrote:
> It is a garage setup to begin with.  He is just starting out on his own
> after doing it for a lawyer in the evenings. Currently he is scanning
> and putting the data on CD. Each of the lawyers clients is on a CD, so a
> lot of space is wasted on many CDs. And they are filed in large CD
> holders in alphabetical order. The current lawyer has about 500 to 700
> CDs so far.
>
> I was under the impression tapes were very unreliable for long term
> storage. The tape material becomes brittle over time and it needs to be
> exercised (wound and rewound) every 6 months. This info may be dated,
> but that is the way it used to be. (I am an old guy.)

I once thought CD/DVD had longer and better archive properties than tape.
Not true. It says here:

Network World's Storage News Alert
IBM expert warns of short life span for burned CDs, 01/10/06
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlstoragealert16241>
Opinions vary on how to preserve data on digital storage media,
such as optical CDs and DVDs. Kurt Gerecke, a physicist and
storage expert at IBM Deutschland, has his own view: If you want
to avoid having to burn new CDs every two years, use magnetic

The real issue is determining how to charge for this so the purchaser
will pay for it and you can make money.
Who controls the source information? Who owns it?
Once the CD/DVD is burned does the source go back to the supplier or
stay with the CD/DVD burner?

> I am guessing the start will be on the order of 1 TB on line. And as the
> business grows the storage will need to grow in increments. I don't see
> a problem with a 10TB storage limit. If he needs more than 10TB get
> another server.

A recommendation would be to make the Storage totally independent of
any servers except the Storage server. And the Storage servers must be
redundant to avoid losing access to the Information. I'm not talking
about "99999" (5 nines) of availability or even "999" (3 nines). I'm
talking about commodity priced hardware is cheap and fails more often
than more costly hardware. Usually you can buy 3-4 commodity priced
servers for the cost of one high quality. So buy at least two for each
Storage node. If you are going to have direct-connected Storage. NAS
begins to look pretty good, price wise, when you start looking at the
cost of recovering 1-10 TB from tape. First you have to fix the
Storage that failed, or server the Storage is connected to that
failed, and then you get to spin tapes for hours and hours and hours.
By the way it comes off the tape faster than it goes on. Keep that in
mind for the Backup window.

> Kip
>
> On Wed, 2006-11-15 at 15:48 -0600, ntlug at thorshammer.org wrote:
> >       Define "business" :) Is it a garage type setup where you need the absolute cheapest solution held together with duct tape or is this something where you are just trying to keep a tight budget but you are expected to deliver to a customer?
> >
> >       Backups to CD/DVD is the cheapest solution but the least reliable for a business. Backup to tape is more reliable way but is more expensive.
> >
> >       As far as storage, you need an estimate of how much you need. Gigs, terabytes, 10s-100s of terabytes? You also need to think about RAID and the storage associated with that. SAN is the first thing that comes to mind but it's costly. There are also NAS and storage servers if you need smaller amounts of storage (less than 10T).
> >
> >       Basically there are pleaty of options for what you need but it's all based on budget.
> >
> > Robert Thompson
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Nov 15, 2006 at 02:59:40PM -0600, Kipton Moravec wrote:
> > > A friend of mine is starting a document scanning and storage business,
> > > and asked me the best way to store the documents. The documents will be
> > > scanned and stored on some type of non-volatile media, and will be
> > > stored for so many days (30, 60 or 90) online.
> > >
> > > Right now he is backing up to CD.  I am recommending to upgrade to DVD.
> > > Is that what you folks recommend?
> > >
> > > For the online data he does not need speed, he just needs tons of cheap
> > > space. What is the cheapest way to store data on line? Just get a bunch
> > > of SATA or IDE hard drives on multiple cheap servers?
> > >
> > > Kip