On February 28, 2003 09:29 am, Leyne, Sean (Ext. 225) wrote:

> > I think for much over 1 TB your going beyond the typical PC
> > based server, and your into RAID territory, for 32TB your
> > looking at a super-computer, and the machinery used can be
> > quite different.
>
> You don't need a supercomputer, not even close.
>
> You can get 32TB connected to any PC, you just need to invest in a
> Storage Area Network (SAN) configuration. The SAN would connect to the
> PC via SCSI/Fibre Channel controller and the SAN would appear as a local
> drive(s).
>
> Actually, Compaq has a unit ("StorageWorks modular array 8000/enterprise
> modular array 12000 FC") which supports 9x14 HDs (about 16TB of storage
> @ 147GB HD) for a pretty good price ($111,000 CDN -- $72,000USD) -- no
> drives though, they're extra! But you do get a Compaq Rack (in Opal)
> included in the price ;-)
>

Okay, according to the latest Toronto Computes, a random advert shows a
Seagate Cheetah SCSI 146GB going for ~$1499 CDN so that works out to around
$189,000 CDN for the drives, figuring we can get 147GB drives for the same
price, so we are looking at a SAN worth around $300K CDN ( currently $1 USD =
$1.54 CDN, for those who need things in USD, you do the math). That gives us
half our theoretical 32TB so lets install 2 for $600K CDN.

So the question becomes again, how do you back it up? I doubt you can spring
$3,000,000 for extra SAN arrays, just as backups.

Next question, would a PC be powerful enough to reasonably quickly do queries
on that size of database?