The Costs of Long Term Storage

As I've been thinking about the archive problem, and writing
this now endless series of blog posts, I thought I could put together a
spreadsheet to calculate the TCO of various storage techniques for a set of
data. The more I thought about it the
more I realized that even calculating a first approximation of the TCO to store
data over the long term was never going to get done by deadline. Instead, I've decided to wimp out and keep it
general examining the cost elements leaving actual calculations for later.

First, let's take the NAS with retention enforcement model
like a NetApp filer with SnapLock. Where
a storage manager planning to use this type of solution probably takes into
account the obvious items like a second NAS at another location, replication
software, data center floor space at $300/sq ft., 15% maintenance a year and
power, they may be in for a rude surprise in year 5-7 when their NAS vendor
announces their NAS is end of life.