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The cost to use OURRstore is only the media costs (extremely low compared to other options) plus a small additional amount for shipping cartridges to and from Oklahoma.  All the equipment and management costs are covered by NSF and OU.  All a researcher has to do is make certain that their research project, their lab, their department, or someone has provided cartridges and return shipping materials to the OURRstore team.  The HPC Admins will h

The last batch of 100 cartridges that we sent to OURRstore cost $67 each, and cost approximately $13.50 $135 to ship them via Fedex Ground, fully insured100 cartridges via Fedex Ground, fully insured, to Oklahoma.  USPS Priority Prepaid Forever small boxes to return individual cartridges (the second offsite copy) cost $8.45 currently.  For the recommended 3 copy option  this worked out to a one-time charge of $255 $213.50 for approximately 7.6 TB usable triple redundant storage that should keep data safe for at least 8 years ($33$28.55 09 per TB).  The less resilient (higher risk) 2 copy option would be a $174$145.50 15 one time charge for the same 7.6 TB, minimum 8 year storage ($22$19.96 10 per TB).  These prices are expected to drop over time as we qualify less expensive vendors.  We are also exploring other shipping options.  Due to UAMS procurement policies the cartridges first have to be received at UAMS, then shipped to OURRstore.  Then after filling them with data redundantly, OURRstore ships 1 out of every 2-3 cartridges back to UAMS.  Hence we pay 3 to 4 increments of shipping for every 2 to 3 cartridges, depending on the storage option chosen.  The above numbers reflect all these estimated shipping charges.  

For comparison to other storage options, this works out to $4$3.19 51 per TB per year for triple redundant storage currently, with pricing continually dropping, compared to, for example, Amazon Glacier Deep Archive (their least expensive option) at about $12 per TB per year plus any data egress and networking charges.  (Often the networking and data egress charges are more expensive than the storage costs for Amazon.)  And often cloud storage providers charge extra for keeping data redundantly in multiple storage locations, increasing the cost.  For OURRstore, geographically separated redundancy is included in the costs.  And as media prices drop, and capacities rise, the costs per TB for OURRstore will only go down.

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• Researchers should include the archiving costs in their grant budgets.  Since most grants now require archiving and data sharing plans, this is a reasonable expense to include in a grant budget.  Of course, ongoing grants might not have budgeted for archiving costs, so would need to look for other options.  Pilot research projects also might not have a budget for archiving costs.  Including archiving costs in grant budgets is the preferred funding mechanism, as it does not require UAMS funds.
• Research labs could include costs for archiving in their annual lab budgets.
• Departments might be willing to cover the costs for archiving data as part of their departmental budgets, for example as infrastructure costs (i.e. part of indirects).

Due to the nature of how OURRstore works, the data you archive could end up on any cartridge, or even be spread across multiple cartridges.  Therefore, when you purchase cartridges, you are actually just purchasing an allotment of archival storage storage that is added to your quota, commensurate with the usable capacity of the cartridges, divided by 2 or 3, depending on which storage option that you choose (double or triple redundant).   

Please coordinate with us on the shipping address and the specific model of LTO cartridges allowed.  In fact, we are willing to put together the order for you, which might simplify things for you.  OURRstore will not accept unapproved cartridges, and may not accept cartridges that are not shipped with an appropriately addressed shipping labeladdressed shipping label.  In addition, one has to provide to OURRStore materials for return shipping, including pre-paid shipping labels and arranging for pickup.  Everything has to be exactly right in order to add cartridges to the OURRStore system.  Currently only the following specific models cartridges are allowed:

• IBM 38L7302 [LTO-7, formatted as Type M, 9 TB raw, ~7.6 TB usable]
• IBM 01PL041 [LTO-8, 12 TB raw, ~10.2 TB usable]

We cannot guarantee that your data is stored on the cartridges that you purchase.   Instead, the usable storage capacity of the cartridge cartridges would be added to your quota for you to draw from, and your cartridges would be put into the pool of cartridges that we use for everybody.  If you need tighter controls (i.e. your data and nothing else goes on the cartridges that you purchase), then you would need to used the "complicated" option for archiving data to OURRstore mentioned below (i.e., you would need to get your own OURRstore account and manage your own archiving, shipping and storage instead of using the pooled services that the HPC admins provide).

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