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From: rmilner@zia.aoc.nrao.edu (Ruth Milner)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans,comp.periphs,comp.periphs.scsi
Subject: disk storage servers
Message-ID: <1991Mar15.231603.21318@nmt.edu>
Date: 15 Mar 91 23:16:03 GMT
Sender: nraoaoc@nmt.edu (NRAO Array Operations Center)
Reply-To: rmilner@zia.aoc.nrao.edu (Ruth Milner)
Organization: National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Socorro NM
Lines: 32

I am trying to find out everything I can about high-speed storage servers. The
requirements I am looking for are:

    1. minimum 20GB disk space
    2. high-speed network interface (HiPPI or Ultranet, not FDDI)
    3. high-bandwidth transfer rates, on the order of 20-30 MBytes/second
    4. potential for sharing between hosts, two or more, whether directly 
       connected or through the network; note that this implies some software 
       support to co-ordinate file access
    5. UNIX support
    6. reasonable pricing (~$3K/GB for total package even at the low end of 
       the potential capacity range)

I am not particularly looking for a hierarchical storage system involving
automated archiving to some sort of tape or optical medium. The main interest
is fast shareble access to large amounts of disk space. 

Point 4 in particular is interesting. Other than the RPC locking daemon, is 
there such a beast in existence? Has anybody written other UNIX software to 
co-ordinate this? Would lockd be adequate for this sort of scenario, particu-
larly if hosts were all directly connected (multi-ported)?

I need: vendor names and telephone numbers, basic description, ballpark pricing
if you know it. 

Please email to me and I will summarize to the lists.

Thank you very much.
-- 
Ruth Milner
Systems Manager                     NRAO/VLA                    Socorro NM
                            rmilner@zia.aoc.nrao.edu