I've been put in charge of rolling out a VLE for the Local Authority and we're looking to provide e-portfolio space for upto 12,000 kids.
It's a scary ammount of storage but I have no idea what kind of space we should be looking at per user, I suggested 1GB and got laughed at by my boss, does anyone know if BECTA has guidance on how much space to provide?
Its only 11.718750 terabytes!
They should just supply every kid with two, 512Mb memory sticks.
One so use to store things on, one to mirror every day as their backup.
Would be so much cheaper and easier!
I got laughed at because my boss thought 1GB wasn't enough. He said 10GB but I can't see how each kid would use up 10GB of space.
12TB isn't bad, but 120TB is getting rediculous!
Have a look at the Storage Management section of FITS.
http://www.becta.org.uk/fits_om/docu...management.pdf
But to answer your specific question, what does the system spec your boss handed you say?
I give all of our kids 50mb on our VLE and they never even use that!Originally Posted by indie
Just remember its storage cost plus the cost of a suitable backup system. A suitable backup system for 12TB that can complete in a resonsable time and hold multiple archives is not going to be cheap
Realisitically I don't think we could afford a backup system for that ammount of space. I was just going to build multiple hot spares into the RAID array.
I'm the one doing the spec Geoff, as usual my boss is an untechnical bod.
Why not keep it under 700MB so it can easily be burned to a CD?
but RAID is not backup.
rm -fR * will still delete everything on all disks quicker than you can shout "generic expletive!"
Sounds like a job for the = : * *S A T A B E A S T * * : =
Then you need to do a user analysis. This'll give you the information you need to work out the requirements.I'm the one doing the spec Geoff, as usual my boss is an untechnical bod.
Coping for 12,000 users will always require a substantial investment.
Is one of the project aims that the portforlio is used in preference to normal SMB shares?
I would look at SAN (Storage Area Network) which allows for greater flexibility with storage allocation. If you do find that more storage is require then you can upgrade the san or add more disk to increate the overall storage.
I guess with this you can start off with say giving each user 300-400mb space to see how much they use. If they require more then you can allocate more space and add more disks to san as i said. This will give you the chance to test out how much disk space is actually used rather than assuming how much they are going to use.
SANs (espcially ISCSI) are becomming cheaper and a lot of vendors offers SANs that uses iSCSI i.e. Dell, HP, SimpleSAN etc.
For the backup you can use autoloaders with LTO-3 Tapes which holds about 400Gb uncompressed! don't know how much you get with the compression probably 650Gb or maybe 700Gb.
Have a look at the Dell Autoloader don't know the model but i think it has two magazines each allowing for upto 8 catridges.
The educations discounts brings the prices to a reasonable level,
HTH,
Ashok.
I think you have to. RAID etc... is great for keeping availability due to the redundancy but it does nothing to prevent against data corruption.Realisitically I don't think we could afford a backup system for that ammount of space. I was just going to build multiple hot spares into the RAID array.
If some rogue piece of software or something corrupts a load of their work without a backup you can't recover it.
Ben
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
Reply With Quote