[gpfsug-discuss] Snapshots for backups

[Skylar Thompson]

On Wed, May 09, 2018 at 04:33:26PM -0400, valdis.kletnieks at vt.edu wrote:
> On Wed, 09 May 2018 15:01:55 -0400, "Marc A Kaplan" said:
> 
> > I see there are also low-power / zero-power disk archive/arrays available.
> >  Any experience with those?
> 
> The last time I looked at those (which was a few years ago) they were competitive
> with tape for power consumption, but not on cost per terabyte - it takes a lot less
> cable and hardware to hook up a dozen tape drives and a robot arm that can
> reach 10,000 volumes than it does to wire up 10,000 disks of which only 500 are
> actually spinning at any given time...


I also wonder what the lifespan of cold-storage hard drives are relative to
tape. With BaFe universal for LTO now, our failure rate for tapes has gone
way down (not that it was very high relative to HDDs anyways).

FWIW, the operating+capital costs we recharge our grants for tape storage
is ~50% of what we recharge them for bulk disk storage.

-- 
-- Skylar Thompson (skylar2 at u.washington.edu)
-- Genome Sciences Department, System Administrator
-- Foege Building S046, (206)-685-7354
-- University of Washington School of Medicine