thoughts on data storage for imaging facility

[Richard Cole]

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As has been already stated, storage space it cheap, data (at least to the
collector) is valuable.  Therefore I built a 20 Tb server around a  2 Sun
Storagtek unit and an inexpensive server.  I have also added a jukebox tape
system for backup and long-term storage.  As a fringe benefit of the server,
it Ghosts all the workstations (>15), which has saved me many of man-hours
getting a system back on-line when a drive dies (they do) on a workstation.
That my 2 ¢

 

 

Cheers

 

Rich

 

 

Richard Cole
Research Scientist V
Director: Advanced Light Microscopy Core Unit
Wadsworth Center

 

Research Assistant Professor
Dept. of Biomedical Sciences
School of Public Health State University of New York


P.O. Box 509 Albany N.Y. 12201-0509
518-474-7048 Phone
518-474-4430 Fax

 

Email  <mailto:[hidden email]> [hidden email]

Website  <http://www.wadsworth.org/cores/alm/index.htm>
www.wadsworth.org/cores/alm/index.htm

 

 



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[Kate Luby-Phelps]

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We have had good success with Buffalo Terastation Pro network attached servers. All our
scopes and the server are connected via gigabit Ethernet. As pointed out in the previous
post, you DEFINITELY don't want to use the USB option. It would be worth investing in a
gigabit switch for your scopes and the server if your LAN is 100 base-T.

We have ten scopes of various types and about 200 users. It takes us about a year to fill a
RAID 5 8T server. Our policy is that users are responsible for their own data so we don't
archive it for them. The server is just for short term backup. We backup nightly using
backup scheduling software that automatically pushes the data to the server. It is easy to
set this up with Comodo Dragon freeware and we have found it to be reliable. For our Linux
machines, we wrote a cron script.

If you are doing high volume, high content screening you will want a more expensive
solution:  a lot more storage and some way to archive, like a tape backup system.

Kate Luby-Phelps