[QUOTE=TheMawn;378262]Well unless I am missing something, our options are to either get rid of the data or to expand storage capacity. I always think there is no such thing as too much data, but I also like to live in that perfect world where storage space is not an issue. GIMPS and I clearly don't live together in that world.



[snip]

[/QUOTE]

Now let's see I can buy a [URL="http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials/Other+products/4TB+Seagate+Barracuda+ST4000DM000+3.5%22+SATA+III+Hard+Drive+-+HDD+?productId=54551"]4 TB drive[/URL] for about $150.

That's 4 MILLION megabytes of storage.

Let's pretend that each candidate has 4kb of data attached to it, yes I know ludicrously high but go with the flow

Our single hard drive can store data for about 1 thousand million exponents...seriously, data storage space is in any practical sense of the word unlimited. In anybodies world.

[QUOTE=Gordon;378279]Our single hard drive can store data for about 1 thousand million exponents...seriously, data storage space is in any practical sense of the word unlimited. In anybodies world.[/QUOTE]

Thanks for bringing this forward. 8-|

[QUOTE=Gordon;378279]Now let's see I can buy a [url]http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials/Other+products/4TB+Seagate+Barracuda+ST4000DM000+3.5%22+SATA+III+Hard+Drive+-+HDD+?productId=54551[/url]
4 TB drive for about $150.[/QUOTE]
The problem with that, as I understand it is: the server's RAID system uses SCSI. Changing out the whole thing to a different system might be more complex than just plugging in a single new drive.

[QUOTE=Gordon;378279]Now let's see I can buy a [URL="http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials/Other+products/4TB+Seagate+Barracuda+ST4000DM000+3.5%22+SATA+III+Hard+Drive+-+HDD+?productId=54551"]4 TB drive[/URL] for about $150.

That's 4 MILLION megabytes of storage.

Let's pretend that each candidate has 4kb of data attached to it, yes I know ludicrously high but go with the flow

Our single hard drive can store data for about 1 thousand million exponents...seriously, data storage space is in any practical sense of the word unlimited. In anybodies world.[/QUOTE]

I have thought of this, too, believe me. So have others. I've asked in more ways than one about how much data is required per exponent, trying to hint at "do we need more?" There have been direct suggestions by other people to upgrade the storage capacity and the like, also.

Because of all the no-responses, I decided to stop. I figured the powers that be have their reasons for not stepping up the storage.

Case in point:


[QUOTE=Uncwilly;378284]The problem with that, as I understand it is: the server's RAID system uses SCSI. Changing out the whole thing to a different system might be more complex than just plugging in a single new drive.[/QUOTE]


Luckily, I believe we are getting closer to getting something done but it will be difficult.

As always, I am available to help, however limited my capacity to do so!

Friend of mine used to tell a good story about how they got a commercial drive from somewhere and decided to see how long it would last in one of the server racks. I don't know what they were doing exactly, early GPS truck/traffic tracking (READ: a lot of read and writes).

Long story short the drive head melt and smoked in under an hour, I think the actual figure was 20 minutes but you get the point. The duty cycle of a server hard drive is not compatible with a commercial drive.

[QUOTE=Uncwilly;378284]The problem with that, as I understand it is: the server's RAID system uses SCSI. Changing out the whole thing to a different system might be more complex than just plugging in a single new drive.[/QUOTE]

I've seen lots of folks offering to pay for hardware in this thread, so if it's a problem that could be solved by throwing hardware at it, you'd think George/Scott would go for it.

For my part, I've got a pile of older HP hard drives (3.5"), new, in packages, that have been sitting for years. Never did use them, and now all the new HP servers I use are all SFF (2.5" drives) SAS, so I have nowhere to use them.

The drives I have are all Ultra320 SCSI, LFF (3.5) and have SCA connectors (80-pin) for hot-plug backplanes. You can use them with a normal 68-pin SCSI using an adapter that breaks out the data and power. I even have some of those adapters I'd throw in if need... I think I have 4 or maybe more.

4 x 300GB 15K drives, and a 72GB 15K drive, a 144GB 15K drive and another 144GB 10K drive. :)

The 300GB drives are all new, still in the anti-stat bags. The other 3 smaller drives were used for maybe 10-20 hours total before they ended up getting upgraded. Those new drives were stock I kept on hand for hot-swapping failed drives, but the servers themselves got retired before I ever had to dig into the drive stockpile.

I also have a lot of older memory modules for servers... DDR2 mostly. Registered (they were from HP servers after all), and most were never used. They're the ones that came with the server before I yanked them and upgraded with larger modules. I must have something like 100 or more 1GB DDR2 registered DIMMs.

But since I don't know what hardware the Primenet stuff runs on, no idea if any of that would work.

Where I work now, we even have some retired servers... HP Proliant DL360 G5 and DL380G5. They're sitting in our branch server room powered off, taking space. We were looking at recycling them but I'm hanging onto a few for spare parts... I bet if I asked we could sell one for the price of shipping. After all, the alternative we're looking at is to give them away to a recycler who will take them off our hands, no charge to us. :)

Those servers won't take the older 300GB drives I mentioned but I could see what it'd take to fit one out with 8x72GB drives, maybe 8x144GB (I don't remember what all we have on those). 32GB RAM, and I think the max processor specs on any of them is dual X5470 processors.

The key to SQL is more drives, more drives, and more drives. I'd go with 10 x 400GB drives over 1 4TB drive any day if SQL was the application.

Other general notes for SQL would be to make sure data is indexed...check what kind of data gets called for and create indexes to make retrieval quicker. And optimize those indexes at least on some weekly basis. Do backups and make sure transaction logs aren't getting crazy. Do a check every now and then after SQL's been running a while and look at the stats...which sprocs run the most often and how much time is it taking? Optimize the slowest ones to start out, or see if some sprocs are being called excessively when they don't really need to be.

Most of that is just basic SQL optimization and would be true whether it's MSSQL, MySQL or whatever.

[QUOTE=Uncwilly;378284]The problem with that, as I understand it is: the server's RAID system uses SCSI. Changing out the whole thing to a different system might be more complex than just plugging in a single new drive.[/QUOTE]

That may well be true, but my point still stands, there is zero reason for anybody to ever say nowadays "run out of storage"

[QUOTE=Madpoo;378300]I've seen lots of folks offering to pay for hardware in this thread, so if it's a problem that could be solved by throwing hardware at it, you'd think George/Scott would go for it.[/QUOTE]

Calculate the costs to upgrade and put them here for everyone to help pay, we'll make it happen.

[QUOTE=flashjh;378325]Calculate the costs to upgrade and put them here for everyone to help pay, we'll make it happen.[/QUOTE]

[url]http://mersenneforum.org/showpost.php?p=377477&postcount=253[/url]

If we keep waiting until it 'hard' breaks, then we're all up a creek... Let's put something together for the short-term fix and then get a plan for long-term.

With all the experts here, I'm sure it can happen.

What is the current configuration and what does it need to be? For the short-term, I don't even know what the current hardware is right now and what would be an improvement?

[QUOTE=flashjh;378331]If we keep waiting until it 'hard' breaks, then we're all up a creek... Let's put something together for the short-term fix and then get a plan for long-term.[/QUOTE]

Seconded!

It would be a real shame if Mersenne.org Version 6 happened the same way as Version 5....