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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 hassist researchers, labs, and departments in ordering the cartridges, to make certain that they get credited appropriately.
The last batch of 100 cartridges that we sent to OURRstore cost $67 each, and cost approximately $135 to ship 100 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 $213.50 for approximately 7.6 TB usable triple redundant storage that should keep data safe for at least 8 years ($28.09 per TB). The less resilient (higher risk) 2 copy option would be a $145.15 one time charge for the same 7.6 TB, minimum 8 year storage ($19.10 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.
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