Questions about placing TASS images into on-line database

[Tass Mailing List <tass@mail.alembic.net>]

Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 09:43:39 -0500
From: Michael Richmond <richmond@stupendous.cis.rit.edu>
To: tass@mail.alembic.net
Cc: mwrsps@rit.edu
Subject: Questions about placing TASS images into on-line database


   I visited Tom recently and acquired copies of all the TASS
images taken over the period 2003-2007.  Some are raw, some are
reduced.  The total volume is about 3 TB.

   I am thinking about reducing the raw images, then placing
all the corrected images into some sort of archive which is
available to users via a web page, with some facility for
searching and displaying the images.  As an enhanced goal,
it might be nice to try to co-add images in some places where
many exist.

   I can handle the correction of the raw images, and probably
the creation of co-added images (if that becomes reasonable).
However, I don't have much experience with such a large data
volume.  Can others on the mailing list help?

   What I'd like to know is:

      - what sort of hardware would you recommend for the job?

      - should I simple purchase a unit which can store all the
             information (like an NAS), or try to build one
             by purchasing separately drives, an enclosure,
             and perhaps a controller card?

      - hardware or software RAID?  I'm leaning towards software,
             but seek the voices of experience

      - any suggestions for the software to connect a database
             to a web browser?  Note that this database
             will be read-only

   Suggestions?  Comments?  Guesses at an overall cost?  I welcome
all input.  If we start to go into really gory details, it might
make sense to take the discussion off the E-mail list and conduct
it via private messages, but let's see if that becomes necessary.

                         Michael