At many universities around the globe there is need for massive amounts of storage. In general the storage solution has to have the following properties:
- Be fairly safe - some sort of redundancy is needed
- Be fairly fast -we are talking about massive amount of storage so access time is not the priority, but the end user must not fall asleep. Ie transfer speed (read / write) should be equivalent to USB 3 external hard discs.
- Have a life expectancy of at least 3 years. Some discs might need to be swapped but not so the storage integrity is damaged.
- Be fairly scalable - we are basically talking about a huge amount of storage, that can be expanded when need arise
- Be accessible by any computer via standard file access protocols (like SMB).
- Have an extremely low price, at a maximum, equivalent to a USB 3 external hard disc.
The target price formula is simple! The price for 1 TB in the solution must be the same price as an external USB 3, 1 TB disc bought at your local hardware store, per year. Today that is around 800 SEK, €85 or $120. This means the price for 1 TB in the solution can cost no more than $360 when the system is bought i.e. a depreciation period of 3 years.
The reason for the price is simple, when talking to a professor it is hard to explain that our super duper good storage solution costs 10 or even 100 times more when they can go out and by one 1 TB disc at any local hardware store (or actually any larger supermarket).
The expected use case is storage of end user files or other files (like massive data sets collected in a research project) where high speed or redundancy is not top priority. Basically it is a solution that rival an USB 3 external hard disc.
Are there any viable solutions out there? Either something on premise or in the cloud.
