Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Campus Technology
Current News
Welcome to Your Weekly Paradigm Shift: Very Large "Free" Web E-Mail Accounts
7/14/2004
Looking at that equation, and assuming everything else remains constant, a 10 or 20 times bigger disk quota implies a proportionately larger I/O load. Is your disk farm ready to handle 10 or 20 times its current I/O load?
Other factors to keep in mind:
- With larger disk quotas, users want and expect larger per message quotas (at 1GB, 10MB/message is no longer a big deal)
- Choice of mailbox format and file system may also become quite important, if you think about performance issues associated with UFS-derived file systems attempting to cope with inserting and deleting inodes in a directory with lots and lots of individual files.You'll also want to think about how you back up and handle restoration of files in large disk array.
- There are network implications to accessing that volume of storage (deployed disk space is an excellent proxy for/correlates strongly with bandwidth requirements-are you ready for the rise of private e-mail music trading, for example?).
But let's assume that you decide that you *do* want to stand up to the "Google challenge," and offer your users not just 1,000MB or 2,000MB, but 5,000MB.
In terms of funding something like a 5GB quota for 20K hypothetical users, the raw disk (assuming you use high-density serial ATA drives) would potentially be quite doable:
(20,000 users)*(5GB/user)
------------------------------------- * 1.25 (RAID overhead, spares, etc.) ==>
(250 GB/drive)*(8:1 oversubscription)
That's roughly 63 drives @ ~$185/drive ==> $11,562 for just the raw disk itself.
Of course, if you're buying five dozen drives at once, you can expect to see a somewhat better price than the typical onesie-twosie price mentioned; that 8:1 oversubscription may be unduly pessimistic, too.
3ware and other vendors offer 8 and 12 port SATA controllers
(see for example http://www.3ware.com/products/serial_ata9000.asp), with street
prices well under $1K/controller. You'd obviously also need systems to hold
and drive the disks, plus a backup solution, but my point is that the raw ingredients
aren't that expensive any more. (And if you don't want to screw around buying
and integrating hardware, doing just a cursory search, I'm seeing 4TB SATA NAS
building blocks with 16 drives from commercial vendors for $13K or so; multiply
as required to get the capacity desired).
Before anyone mentions it, yes, there's no doubt that these boxes aren't the same as the top-of-the-line fiber channel-based boxes that folks would prefer if money was not an issue, but money is an issue at most schools. I think you might be surprised at the capacity and performance you can get from SATA-based storage solutions.
What if you decide not to try to compete with Google?
If you decide not to try to compete with Google, you should expect your users to migrate from your local e-mail accounts to one of the new huge Google accounts, some probably forwarding their institutional accounts to their new accounts in the process, some probably not much caring that they have an institutional e-mail address at all.
Recommended Reading
- IT Trends :: Thursday, August 28, 2008
:::::: CAMPUS WIFI
:: Saint Joseph Builds Out Wireless Network in Multi-year Upgrade
:::::: IT NEWS
:: California Community Colleges Partner with Waterfall Mobile on Statewide Emergency Notification Coverage
:: King's College and ASU Add e2Campus for Improved Emergency Notifications
:: Vista Ramp Up Is Happening Now, Study Says
:: Talisma Launches New Version of CRM with Built-in Application Management
:: Ferrum College Enrolls Juniper Networks To Extend 10 Gigabit Ethernet
:: California Community Colleges Adopt SunGard Banner Software
:: Ball State U Web Sites Now Managed with Sitecore - C-Level View :: August 27, 2008
:::::: EXECUTIVE VIEW
: Let the Games Begin! Google vs. Microsoft
:::::: WORTH NOTING
: California Community Colleges Adopt SunGard Banner Software
: McGill U Library Scanning Rare Books with Kirtas
: Ball State U Web Sites Now Managed with Sitecore
: Report: Green Efforts Improving on Campuses
: Oracle Releases Student Administration Integration Pack - SmartClassroom :: Wednesday, August 27, 2008
:::::: COLLABORATION
: Bringing Composers into Classrooms Through Skype
:::::: NEWS and PRODUCT UPDATES
: Columbia U Going Live on iTunes U
: Tiffin U's New Online College to Use Pearson's eCollege for Course Management
: Luidia Releases eBeam Interact 2.1 for Interactive Whiteboards
: McGill U Library Scanning Rare Books with Kirtas
: Ball State U Web Sites Now Managed with Sitecore - SmartClassroom :: Wednesday, August 27, 2008
:::::: COLLABORATION
: Bringing Composers into Classrooms Through Skype
:::::: NEWS and PRODUCT UPDATES
: Columbia U Going Live on iTunes U
: Tiffin U's New Online College to Use Pearson's eCollege for Course Management
: Luidia Releases eBeam Interact 2.1 for Interactive Whiteboards
: McGill U Library Scanning Rare Books with Kirtas
: Ball State U Web Sites Now Managed with Sitecore - News Update :: Tuesday, August 26, 2008
:::::: NEWS
: Report: Green Efforts Improving on Campuses
: Polytechnic Institute of NYU Deploys Array Networks Equipment for Access Control
: Oracle Releases Student Administration Integration Pack
: Red Hat Hacked, Company Issues Security Advisory
: Sun Open Sources Mobile Toolkit LWUIT
: Vulnerability Management Needed for Security, Study Says
: Microsoft Details SharePoint-SQL 2008 Integration
: Higher Ed Growing into BI, Data Warehousing
: LectureShare Updates Free Course Management System - Campus Security :: August 22, 2008
:::::: CASE STUDY
: Corralling Identity Management
:::::: CAMPUS SECURITY NEWS
: Vulnerability Management Needed for Security, Study Says
: Wayne State Deploys Q1 Labs QRadar to Manage and Secure Network
: KU Medical Center Installs Real-time Beacon System
: Virginia Tech Tries 'Compliance Sheriff' To Improve Web Site Accessibility
: Microsoft, BearingPoint Team Up To Provide Risk-Based Compliance Solution
: Collaboration Key to Security, Microsoft Says
: IBM Unveils New Software Designed To Streamline eDiscovery
: Security Woes Up, as PHP and OSS Make the List
