Re: Questions about placing TASS images into on-line database

[Tass Mailing List <tass@mail.alembic.net>]

Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 15:53:11 -0600
From: David Dunbar <ddunbar@geocenter.com>
To: Tass Mailing List <tass@mail.alembic.net>
Subject: Re: Questions about placing TASS images into on-line database

On Jan 15, 2008, at 2:45 PM, Tass Mailing List wrote:

>
>  What I'd like to know is:
>
>     - what sort of hardware would you recommend for the job?
>
>     - should I simple purchase a unit which can store all the
>            information (like an NAS), or try to build one
>            by purchasing separately drives, an enclosure,
>            and perhaps a controller card?
>
>     - hardware or software RAID?  I'm leaning towards software,
>            but seek the voices of experience
>
>     - any suggestions for the software to connect a database
>            to a web browser?  Note that this database
>            will be read-only

My experience may not be very applicable to the problem. We have ~60 Tb of disk 
for seismic processing. We have multiple cabinets for the drives. The largest 
single unit is 5.5 Tb. Each unit has its own controllers and are hardware RAID. 
They were purchased as individual units. If something breaks we can make a 
service call as opposed to fixing them ourselves. We also use NAS drives to 
transfer data to and from clients (as opposed to mag tape). The size of the 
files we access are generally large (100s of Gb) and the database is 
distributed in the projects.

We find that access times on the NAS boxes are too slow for saving intermediate 
results. This probably isn't an issue as the file sizes won't be that large. I 
would suggest you put the database on the web access system.

David
David Dunbar <ddunbar@geocenter.com>
All inanimate objects can move just enough to get in your way.