On 6/13/08 12:25 AM, "Keith Bierman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I could easily imagine providing two tiers of storage for a > university environment ... one which wasn't backed up, and doesn't > come with any serious promises ... which could be pretty inexpensive > and the second tier which has the kind of commitments you suggest are > required. > > Tier 2 should be better than storing things in /tmp, but could > approach consumer pricing ... and still be "good enough" for a lot of > uses. We have provided multiple "tiers" of storage for years. However, this usually didn't involve different "tiers" of hardware. Rather, it represented how we treated the files. We have everything from "staging pools" where everything is transient (no backups, no real SLA, wild west rules) to snapshots, disaster recovery replication and backup. What's really going to change everything is SAMFS. We're able to take advantage of $.60/GB disk on X4500, $5/GB disk on SAN and hundreds of TB of tape "backing store" that also provides real-time backup (our traditional backup windows are untenable). Most importantly, we're not tied to a specific vendor's solutions (though I'm very happy with our closed SAN's capabilities). "ILM" is essentially a necessity. You can't manage storage beyond the "home server" without it. I hope that all storage technologies take a holistic view of the storage management picture. While ZFS goes a long way to eliminating distinctions between volume and filesystem management, it is still a niche player. As much hype as ZFS snapshots get, that's barely tiptoeing into the managed storage envelope. However, I do appreciate the focus on data integrity. Without that at every tier, ILM cannot properly do its job. Charles ----- Charles Soto [EMAIL PROTECTED] Director, Information Technology TEL: 512-740-1888 The University of Texas at Austin FAX: 512-475-9711 College of Communication, CMA 5.150G 1 University Station A0900, Austin, TX 78712 http://communication.utexas.edu/technology/ _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
