Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] digital storage

From: Mark Jordan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 2009 07:32:47 -0700

----- "Jason Griffey" <[email-masked]> wrote:

> The basic idea of LOCKSS is always what I think of when it comes to
> archival: lots of copies. 

We're starting to use LOCKSS, in the form of a consortial Private LOCKSS Network (PLN), and it is proving to be useful. I'll be presenting on what we're doing at Access next month.

Currently LOCKSS doesn't scale very high. The problem is that you need at least six boxes in your network, and if each site has 5 TB of stuff, then each box needs 30 TB of storage. Since LOCKSS uses 32-bit OpenBSD, and OpenBSD's support for attached storage isn't as good as some other OSs, you're pretty much limited to using local disk. That all said, LOCKSS is actively working to overcome the storage scalability issue, and better support for attached storage is being tested right now.

Mark

Mark Jordan
Head of Library Systems
W.A.C. Bennett Library, Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, British Columbia, V5A 1S6, Canada
Voice: 778.782.5753 / Fax: 778.782.3023
[email-masked]