

Ask HN: Inexpensive large scale (100's of TB) storage options? - websiteguy

Typical solutions for backup, log files, email servers, databases all seem to cost $5K to $8K a TB over a 3 year period, including "support". Anyone with production experience with large scale disk storage that breaks the $1K/TB price point (raid'd)?
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websiteguy
@latch - Yes, we saw it - would be a fun project, but we are software hackers
:-) There are also concerns about heat, vibration, hot swapping, etc. I would
happily spend $78K for that same storage instead of $7.8K if it was reliable
and was shipped as a complete package.

Closest company doing something like this is CORAID, which might be an option,
but they have a number of proprietary interfaces/systems to buy in to.

~~~
staunch
(You don't need to write @latch here. You can reply directly to a thread)

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websiteguy
Thanks for the replies -

Need disk storage, would like to use 7200rpm for real-time access to logs, 15k
for database/email apps

Would be a lot of fun to roll our own, but we are resource constrained, and
while money is not an issue for us, I don't like complicated/expensive
solutions, I like simple/inexpensive

Looking at NetApp for example, but having a hard time accepting the price
point.

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daniel-cussen
Tape is the cheapest.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_tape_data_storage>

Prices don't show here, but in general it's 15 times cheaper and 200 times
less energy to use tape.

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latch
obligatory _have you read about the backblaze pod design?_ comment:

[http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01/petabytes-on-a-
budget-h...](http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01/petabytes-on-a-budget-how-
to-build-cheap-cloud-storage/)

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rudiger
Roll your own JBOD setup?

