20001220: McIDAS setup at UNCA (cont.)

>From: Leigh Orf <address@hidden>
>Organization: UNCA
>Keywords: 200012121654.eBCGsDo24855 McIDAS-X install

Leigh,

>Thank you for your excellent email. I have just one quick question I
>want to ask. I have decided to get more disk space specifically for
>mcidas data (and later gempak). I want to be able to to GRID decoding,
>too. Can you give me a ballpark estimate of how much disk space would be
>needed to hold say 48 hours of mcidas data with GRID files. Also, how
>much for 48 hours of GEMPAK data. I have asked Alex to go ahead and get
>a 20 GB hard drive. Should that be enough?

20 GB will be plenty for what you outlined.  McIDAS GRID files are real
disk hogs (since they are not compressed).  If you decides to decode
all of the gridded data in the IDD, you would need about 1.5 GB per
day.  Since that number grows as more gridded products get added to the
IDD, I would budget 2 GB for GRID files and then add another GB for
other files (the additional GB is way more than needed, but it gives a
nice, round number).

GEMPAK, on the other hand, requires a lot less disk space for gridded
data since you can store the data in a compressed format.  One of my
long term objectives for McIDAS is to write an ADDE server that would
serve GEMPAK grid files.  This would allows Unidata sites to only
decode into one format and save disk space.  The only problem is that I
really don't know when I will be able to get after this.

>Thanks again for all your help, I look forward to "doing it the right
>way".

This is very good news to me (it makes doing support easier when the
recommended setup is followed as well)!

>Oh, BTW I think the ADDE server/client thing is GREAT...  I have
>not yet set it up but I'm sure it will be much better than NFS.

ADDE actually _is_ better than NFS: it is faster AND you will have a
number of sites you "point" at to get data.  I will be sending an email
to Unidata McIDAS sites asking them if they are willing to act as each
other's "realtime" data backups by allowing other sites to access their
data holdings available through ADDE.  This will make life much better
for those sites that find that they simply can not keep an LDM running
or have only sporadic need for realtime data.

Tom