After a failure to install API database on ptolemy in reasonable amount of time, I have come to conclusion that we might not need full API database (ca. ~1 TB) for now, not at least for production Wikimedia use.
What Wikimedia might need is the Mapnik database (ca. 70GB for rendering) - this is what we have now on Cassini (although outdated - but see neighbouring thread).
Full API database - once *finally* imported - would have been probably more useful for tool developers, hacking properties and some other features of geodata (maybe even history).
However, only Ptolemy (currently WMF production server) has disk space available for the whole API database; I do not see - but I might be wrong - currently use for this database (except for genering mapnik DB out of it) - for the WMF production environment.
So we might have add disk space to Cassini to have space for the full API database, and start importing it there. But... Maybe we could just switch servers? (i.e. current Cassini reconfigure as WMF-production Ptolemy and current Ptolemy reinstall as a toolserver database).
Sure, it will require stopping tools for a while and do some IP (or maybe even rack-juggling) but maybe it's the solution.
We might alternatively give up on full database API altogether and just run Mapnik DB on the Ptolemy as we have.
What do you think?