multi hard disk rack, enclosure?

[leSLIe]

I need to move and store lots of data at work, around 5TB, so i´ve been asked to find the best (and cheapest ) solution for that predicament

Tape backup is out of the question, so the budget is telling me to go with the a multi HD solution

well, I´ve thought about buying five 1TB SATA hard drives, and also buy 5 HD enclousures or maybe racks. We don't need to access all the HDs at one time, so RAID is really not needed here.

My question is: Is there something like a multi hard disk enclosure or rack? with RAID or without RAID capabilities? I would like to have all the HDs together, in one little rack or something like that. The alternative would be to buy an enclosure for each hard drive

 

[Adidas4275]

here are some:
http://www.addonics.com/products/raid_tower/raid_tower.asp

it totally depends on the interface... Drobo makes some good NAS's that have the ability to hold acouple drives, but that is only 1000mb/s data stream.....eSATA with a port multiplier seems to be the best idea here if you have a PCIe eSata card that supports a PM, if not that would be something to buy

I like Addonics, I have owned 4 of their products and they are well made and at a good price point

 

[leSLIe]

those RAID towers come with a built-in RAID controller?

 

[goalong]

Just a couple questions to get a better idea of what will be some good options for you.

Will the data grow beyond 5 TB?
What type of data is this?
How large are the files?
How often will the files change if at all?
How will the data get onto the drives?
How often will new data be put onto the drives?
How often will this data be accessed?
Does it have to be super fast or is speed not really a concern?

Do you plan to hang this off of an existing server via some controller card or will it be plugged into the network and attached via a SMB share or iSCSI or something else?

How many other devices/servers/users need to access it
Are you looking to assemble it yourself or do you want something plug-and-play.

Is this data also stored off-line somewhere else in case of disaster or can you loose this data and it won't matter, it's just nice to have it available?

What type of environment is this thing going in?

• Nicely cooled server room
• Closet in the damp basement
• The scary closet of network stuff

 

[leSLIe]

Will the data grow beyond 5 TB?

yep

What type of data is this?

this data is the result of several simulations

How large are the files?

each file is rather large, but no bigger than 0,5GB
a regular batch of data is around 250GB

How often will the files change if at all?

the files will not change, they will be stored for further analysis

How will the data get onto the drives?

the data will be copied from a server to the HDs, using USB or eSATA, i dunno yet

How often will new data be put onto the drives?

once a day

How often will this data be accessed?

very often, that's why we need a fast HD

Does it have to be super fast or is speed not really a concern?

it would be nice to have a fast HD , but SCSI and SSD is kinda pricy right now, maybe later when we have a bigger budget

Do you plan to hang this off of an existing server via some controller card or will it be plugged into the network and attached via a SMB share or iSCSI or something else?

well the cluster (around 100 PCs) copies the data to a server, and then I copy the data from the server to the HDs, right now i´m using an external USB HD, so it's slow. A network solution would be faster, any suggestions?

How many other devices/servers/users need to access it

right now only me, but eventually several PCs at the same time, (around 10-15 PCs)

Are you looking to assemble it yourself or do you want something plug-and-play.

I could assemble it but if there is a good "out of the box" solution, i could take it

Is this data also stored off-line somewhere else in case of disaster or can you loose this data and it won't matter, it's just nice to have it available?

well, a backup of this data would be nice, but not right now

What type of environment is this thing going in?

• Nicely cooled server room
• Closet in the damp basement
• The scary closet of network stuff

Nicely cooled office


One more thing, when this project takes off, we will buy a new server for data analysis, the data from the cluster will be copied directly to this server, and the HDs will be put into this server, so this is kinda like a temporal solution, around 6 months or even one year, until we get our new budget approved