500TB fileserver?

[monkeyboy]

We're starting to speculate about the OPs needs here. It may be that as its image data the data never changes and is never deleted, why would you change an MRI image? I'd guess you'd upload a newer one and maintain the old ones too, in this scenario keeping snapshots puts very little demand for space on the system. But better the OP tells us really

The data won't just be MRI scans, but its true that probably most of the primary data is of the sort where it is collected and is usually not changed afterwards. However during the course of analysis probably a fair bit of storage would be used to store intermediates and results. So if the question is: what is the amount of data change vs snapshot intervals, I'd guess that once per week snapshots probably would be infrequent enough to have mostly static captures...

 

[throAU]

thanks for all the thoughtful replies...

re: how much the data costs, etc.
I understand this argument, and yes the data costs $100,000's to $mils to generate, not to mention years or more in time.
Nevertheless the budget is the budget. It is not possible to go to the granting agencies (who themselves are having their
budgets slashed) and ask for more.

Danger, Danger!

I'd still chase quotes for the "Rolls Royce" solutions, so that you can provide them for comparison. Also, if you were to be the one to maintain the storage solution, include estimates (and double your initial estimate) as to the impact on your time to support roll-your-own.

Often, management just simply are not aware of the risks involved and the cost to mitigate.

Whatever you do, ensure that you do a proper risk analysis, identify the possible failure modes, and then outline which failures each solution will protect against and any other pros/cons for each solution. I can't stress enough how much you really don't want to be the fall guy for this... ensure that you present all of the options and if budget is a concern make management eliminate those which are too expensive, with full awareness of any additional risks they are taking on in the process.

 

[dburkland]

Depending on your requirements have you looked at NetApp E-series? As much as I like creating custom solutions using open source gear having support from a major company (Such as NetApp) is a must, especially when things go wrong.