5 ms·
Not so much the filesystem, more that assuming you have a server with a multitude of our customers HDD's attached as well as one or more tape libraries / drives
by waste_monk 6y ago
Not so much the filesystem, more that assuming you have a server with a multitude of our customers HDD's attached as well as one or more tape libraries / drives, you need to:
* Map 1 to N HDDs to one customer (by USB port ID or perhaps SATA port if you shuck them for performance reasons, maybe a mix of SATA and USB drives) - will need to have some means of clearly indicating ports, or have blinky LEDs next to them and have the server indicate where stuff ought to be plugged in. And handle SATA hot-swap if required.
* Allocate a tape or tapes to them (and if they provide their own tape/s make sure to use specific slot/s in the tape library for that customer) and otherwise handle the tape library logistics. This becomes more complex if you have multiple libraries in play.
* Perform scheduling and ETA estimation to see if you'll actually get their data onto the tape within the deadline (you might offer a turnaround of a day, but offer a premium service to have it done within N hours) and see if it will affect other customers. This may even involve deciding that an existing currently running job is early enough that you might stop it and scratch the tapes, then run the priority job instead.
* Handle predictive maintenance, drive cleaning, etc. for the tape library (and how it will affect customer deadlines / capacity planning)
* Actually copying the data onto the tape/s and verifying the result
* Integrate into a monitoring and notification system so customers are alerted when their order is ready to pick up, talk to customer billing/sales systems, etc.
* Probably a bunch of other stuff I haven't thought of yet
The system would generally have to be resilient enough that it can run unattended overnight / for long periods of time, but flexible enough in scheduling that it can handle sudden rush orders, drives being offline for maintenance, and so on. And ideally could be operated by staff with minimal technical background.
Maybe Iron Mountain or someone like that have this sort of system already, but I am not aware of any commercially or generally available software that could do the job.
- Dylan16807 6y agoYou don't need any of that. A dedicated device could transfer data between a hard drive or two and a single tape drive. You'd have a few of these on a shelf somewhere, doing a couple jobs per day. Easy to use, easy to schedule.