At ZIB we operate more than one PByte disk space in the central region, where about 700 TB belongs to the central data storage.
If you analyse the development of the capacity of the disk space over time, it looks at first like a success story. Extrapolating the expected future development it can be seen that perpetual growth is not a promising strategy. Place, more importantly the energy consumption, but above all the problem of handling such data amounts set limits here, which require a better data management strategy to a growth rate within reasonable limits.
While increasing the capacity of the disks constantly, what the problems of space required and in a way, the energy consumption is not allowed to rise so dramatically. But the question of how to backup such data sets, is an example of the need for new strategies in dealing with large amounts of data.
The in the image detectable break in the development at 2008 and 2009 is due to just such changes in policy.
At this time we have introduced a Hirarchical Storage Management (HSM) system in the form of SAM-FS in the area of a central data storage.