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Storage Costs

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Thib Guicherd-Callin edited this page Apr 28, 2024 · 15 revisions

This page is under construction.

Last updated: 2024-04-26

The LOCKSS "bring your own storage" model can make the ongoing procurement costs of a LOCKSS approach, like joining as a node in an existing LOCKSS network or creating a new LOCKSS network, seem difficult to compare to the ongoing subscription costs of other approaches, like cloud storage or digital preservation services that charge a monthly or annual storage fee. This wiki page informally gathers sample pricing information from real-life hardware vendors, and casts them in terms of storage cost per terabyte/gigabyte per year. This is useful to model costs when you are purchasing server and storage hardware to run the LOCKSS software, rather than, say, using on-premise computing and storage from your organizational IT.

Methodology

To evaluate storage costs per terabyte/gigabyte per year, we are taking into consideration:

  • Purchasing server hardware and hard disk drive storage for a 5-year service life with a 5-year warranty,

  • Grouping disks into arrays using software RAID, which reduces the total capacity to a certain usable capacity but adds redundancy and fault tolerance in case of disk failure,

  • Dividing a pre-tax, pre-shipping quote by a vendor on the open market (in US dollars) for one node, by the usable capacity of the disk arrays, by 5 years, to get a cost per terabyte/gigabyte per year.

If the creation of a LOCKSS network is considered, multiplying by the number of nodes desired gives a cost per terabyte/gigabyte per year to keep that many copies in the network.

Examples

Product Disks Disk arrays Usable capacity Price 5-year cost
Thinkmate RAX XS4-11E3 (1U) 4 x 20TB 1 x 4 disks (RAID 5) 60 TB $4,840 16.13$/TB/yr (16.13¢/GB/yr)
Thinkmate RAX QS12-12E7 (2U) 12 x 20TB 1 x 12 disks (RAID 6) 200 TB $10,060 10.06$/TB/yr (10.06¢/GB/yr)
Thinkmate STX-NL QE16-13E3 (3U) 16 x 20TB 2 x 8 disks (RAID 6) 240 TB $12,168 10.14$/TB/yr (10.14¢/GB/yr)
Thinkmate STX-NL QE36-14E3 (4U) 36 x 20TB 3 x 12 disks (RAID 6) 600 TB $22,219 7.40$/TB/yr (7.40¢/GB/yr)
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