Re: Ye Olde optimization/mirror disk space debate

[tb@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG)]

Matt Zimmerman <mdz@debian.org> writes:

> Say I have 6 36GB disks which cost me $100 apiece (USD600 / 216GB USD2.78
> per gigabyte).  Naturally, I put them in a RAID-5 array, for 180GB usable
> space.  Now we're at $3.33/GB, not counting filesystem overhead.  This is a
> realistic server configuration, not the pricewatch.com 180GB special for
> storing Vorbis streams at home.
> 
> "Just drop in a cheap IDE disk" is not a realistic solution for this
> application.

36GB disks?  Why buy 36GB disks when you can buy big ones?  See, the
problem here is that things are in such frequent motion, that what
seemed like a big disk once is now small.  36GB is a tiny disk.

There are plenty of options.  My claim is threefold.

1) The relevant number is how much it costs *us*, provided we do the
   right thing, and make it simple for mirrors to mirror only what
   they wish;

2) Complaining about "hundreds of megabytes" is complaining about
   trivialities.  (I do not dispute that 60GB is worth thinking
   about.)

3) This discussion requires thinking about actual cost, and not a
   vague idea of how it must not be useful and would be "too
   expensive".  We should think what the cost to us actually is, and
   then decide if that's too expensive.