I'll 2nd Zach on this. The storage funding model vs the storage purchase
model are a challenge.
I should also mention often research grant funding can't be used to buy
a storage "service" without additional penalties. So S3 or private
storage cloud are not financially attractive.
We used to have a "pay it forward" model where an investigator would buy
~10 drive batches, which sat on a shelf until we accumulated sufficient
drives to fill a new enclosure. Interim, we would allocate storage from
existing infrastructure to fulfill the order.
A JBOD solution that allows incremental drive expansion is desirable.
chris hunter
yale hpc group
From: Zachary Giles <[email protected]>
To: gpfsug main discussion list <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [gpfsug-discuss] Disabling individual Storage Pools by
themselves? How about GPFS Native Raid?
OK, back on topic:
Honestly, I'm really glad you said that. I have that exact problem
also -- a researcher will be funded for xTB of space, and we are told
by the grants office that if something is purchased on a grant it
belongs to them and it should have a sticker put on it that says
"property of the govt' etc etc.
We decided to (as an institution) put the money forward to purchase a
large system ahead of time, and as grants come in, recover the cost
back into the system by paying off our internal "negative balance". In
this way we can get the benefit of a large storage system like
performance and purchasing price, but provision storage into quotas as
needed. We can even put stickers on a handful of drives in the GSS
tray if that makes them feel happy.
Could they request us to hand over their drives and take them out of
our system? Maybe. if the Grants Office made us do it, sure, I'd drain
some pools off and go hand them over.. but that will never happen
because it's more valuable to them in our cluster than sitting on
their table, and I'm not going to deliver the drives full of their
data. That's their responsibility.
Is it working? Yeah, but, I'm not a grants admin nor an accountant, so
I'll let them figure that out, and they seem to be OK with this model.
And yes, it's not going to work for all institutions unless you can
put the money forward upfront, or do a group purchase at the end of a
year.
So I 100% agree, GNR doesn't really fit the model of purchasing a few
drives at a time, and the grants things is still a problem.
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