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Your posting doesn't really give much in the way of requirements.

Do you need for all the data to be online at once? If not, consider a small LTO tape autoloader - a 24-slot loader will run you about $13k when loaded with LTO Ultrium 2 media, but you get 4.6 TB of storage, assuming you fill 23 slots with tape (you should always have a cleaning cart in the library to run at regular intervals). If you're really cheap, you can write a set of perl or shell scripts to operate the library with mtx and mt, rather than buying expensive software.

If you absolutely need all the data to be online forever and ever (amen), then you're going to need a fat wallet. An ever-growing homebuilt solution will rapidly become unmaintainable. Consider an off-the-shelf NAS or hardware raid solution. Apple's XServe RAID boxes are surprisingly cheap for fiber-attached hardware RAID - $11k gets you 2.5TB of RAID5 (and that's with 2 drives reserved for hot spares, you could squeeze 3TB out of it with no hot spares, but i don't recommend it.)

If you don't think you'll need to expand forever, you can start looking at homebrew options. A 12-port 3WARE SATA controller with 12 250GB SATA disks should run you less than $3000 and give you 2.5TB of raid5 with one hot spare. (Of course you'll need a system with the case and power supply(supplies) to handle them. Next year, twice the storage might cost the same or less - 400GB SATA drives are already shipping, though still cost more per gig.

Basically, you're not the common man. Like another poster said, you need to consider what the data are worth, and buy your storage accordingly.

-Isaac

• scsicontrol -send scsi commands
  stacker - jukebox control

SCU has I belive all the functionality of scsicontrol and more.

mtx is the the SCSI changer (jukebox) control of which you are speaking.

Linux tape support is good through the SCSI Tape module (nothing for shared bus SCSI, as I recall, though). IDE (ATA) tape drives (such as OnStream's) are supported by the SCSI utilities and tools you already have through the ide_scsi interface.

• scsicontrol: scu, sg-utils
  
• scsiha: scsiadd or rescan-scsi-bus.sh
  
• stacker: mtx or scsi-changer

SCSI HOW-TO: 9.3 Tape driver (st)

I have part of the coursework needed to get an MBA under my belt (hey, it was either minoring in math or minoring in business administration, okay?). Behavioral management theory, psychology of organizations, etc., are fine and dandy, but do not substitute for a knowledge of the market that a product fills, and knowledge of what products the customers need, and knowledge of the technology needed to fill those needs.

Managing people is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for success in the computer business. A knowledge of the business is needed too. Someone selling hammers should know who uses hammers, what they use hammers for, and some basics about how hammers are built. Having quite painfully experienced what happens when a man whose sole claim to success is taking a trash hauling company to a successful IPO takes over a technology company, I know what Cringely was trying to say on a quite, err, personal, level.

--Eric Lee Green BadTux News'n'Views

The anarchists correctly point out that feudalism is the natural consequence of libertarianism (or "anarcho-capitalism", as the anarchists call it). Power ultimately flows from the barrel of a gun, and he with more money can hire more guns. Thus a libertarian "utopia" will invariably degenenerate to a state where the majority of people swear allegience to a liege lord in order to obtain protection from surrounding liege lords -- i.e., feudalism.

The only way to bypass the power of the gun is via consensus. If the majority of the people refuse to participate in a feudal system, a feudal system cannot operate. At one point in time we had a Constitution in this country that provided a mechanism for organizing and obtaining consensus, but over the past two hundred years the mechanisms therein have been corrupted by (tada!) the power of the dollars in the hands of corporate elites to the point where the mechanisms of government are being used to move the United States towards its feudal future.

We are already well on the way to the fate of the Roman Empire.

-- Eric Lee Green BadTux News'n'Views