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Making Use of Terabytes of Unused Storage
kernspaltung writes "I manage a network of roughly a hundred Windows boxes, all of them with hard drives of at least 40GB — many have 80GB drives and larger. Other than what's used by the OS, a few applications, and a smattering of small documents, this space is idle. What would be a productive use for these terabytes of wasted space? Does any software exist that would enable pooling this extra space into one or more large virtual networked drives? Something that could offer the fault-tolerance and ease-of-use of ZFS across a network of PCs would be great for small-to-medium organizations."
Exactly. We are just talking about some random IT grunt here who feels important because he's the "administrator" if this little network. In reality, of course no ones knows about this "projekt" and it would never be green-lighted by any decent CEO.
tone DOWn the constant pr ?firm? scriptdead propaganda of the life0cidal glowbull warmongering nazi execrable. let yOUR conscience be yOUR guide. you can be more helpful than you might have imagined. there are still some choices. if they do not suit you, consider the likely results of continuing to follow the corepirate nazi hypenosys story LIEn, whereas anything of relevance is replaced almost instantly with pr ?firm? scriptdead mindphuking propaganda or 'celebrity' trivia 'foam'. meanwhile; don't forget to get a little more oxygen on yOUR brain, & look up in the sky from time to time, starting early in the day. there's lots going on up there.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071229/ap_on_sc/ye_climate_records;_ylt=A0WTcVgednZHP2gB9wms0NUE
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080108/ts_alt_afp/ushealthfrancemortality;_ylt=A9G_RngbRIVHsYAAfCas0NUE
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/opinion/31mon1.html?em&ex=1199336400&en=c4b5414371631707&ei=5087%0A
is it time to get real yet? A LOT of energy is being squandered in attempts to keep US in the dark. in the end (give or take a few 1000 years), the creators will prevail (world without end, etc...), as it has always been. the process of gaining yOUR release from the current hostage situation may not be what you might think it is. butt of course, most of US don't know, or care what a precarious/fatal situation we're in. for example; the insidious attempts by the felonious corepirate nazi execrable to block the suns' light, interfering with a requirement (sunlight) for us to stay healthy/alive. it's likely not good for yOUR health/memories 'else they'd be bragging about it? we're intending for the whoreabully deceptive (they'll do ANYTHING for a bit more monIE/power) felons to give up/fail even further, in attempting to control the 'weather', as well as a # of other things/events.
http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&q=video+cloud+spraying
dictator style micro management has never worked (for very long). it's an illness. tie that with life0cidal aggression & softwar gangster style bullying, & what do we have? a greed/fear/ego based recipe for disaster. meanwhile, you can help to stop the bleeding (loss of life & limb);
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/28/vermont.banning.bush.ap/index.html
the bleeding must be stopped before any healing can begin. jailing a couple of corepirate nazi hired goons would send a clear message to the rest of the world from US. any truthful look at the 'scorecard' would reveal that we are a society in decline/deep doo-doo, despite all of the scriptdead pr ?firm? generated drum beating & flag waving propaganda that we are constantly bombarded with. is it time to get real yet? please consider carefully ALL of yOUR other 'options'. the creators will prevail. as it has always been.
corepirate nazi execrable costs outweigh benefits
(Score:-)mynuts won, the king is a fink)
by ourselves on everyday 24/7
as there are no benefits, just more&more death/debt & disruption. fortunately there's an 'army' of light bringers, coming yOUR way. the little ones/innocents must/will be protected. after the big flash, ALL of yOUR imaginary 'borders' may blur a bit? for each of the creators' innocents harmed in any way, there is a debt that must/will be repaid by you/us, as the perpetrators/minions of unprecedented evile, will not be available. 'vote' with (what's left in) yOUR wallet, & by your behaviors. help bring an end to unprecedented evile's manif
THIS POST UP. numbers continue the hard d8ive to charnel house.
I run a large network with thousands of computers, and I recently noticed that there are thousands of keyboards sitting there unused most of the time. And even when they are being used, typically only one or two keys are being depressed, leaving over 100 keys unpressed. Can anyone smart think of a way to put those hundreds of thousands of underutilized keys to work? It just seems like such a waste.
.sig withheld by request
Hey, all my users have a bunch of disk space available because I make them keep all their stuff on servers that *I* control. How can I make a giant network drive that *I* control and then let my users keep data on it?
:-) This is probably the best idea, but I don't know of any email clients that do it (killer feature request here for Mozilla and Evolution teams). Oh right, the server would need the ability to delete just the attachments after downloading by clients (another feature request for someone).
Well dude, just start by letting users keep their data locally. Remind them that it's not backed up though because they are "stupid users" after all. How about seeing if the email software you use can seamlessly put old mail on the local drive since you automatically delete it after 30,60,90,(whatever) days to keep it from clogging *your* server. No archiving procedure for the user, just have old messages moved to a local folder and still show right there in the mailbox (this is probably a feature request for email software vendors). Or how about if all attachments are stored locally automatically and deleted from "your" servers - this would be great for all those idiots that make 30Meg office documents and send them to everyone in the department
Ask yourself what you want to put on this huge shared resource you want to control, and figure out what you might actually be able to let users handle themselves. OK, I agree that users aren't to be trusted with certain things, but making another big centrally controlled storage device doesn't seem like the right answer.
You said you see ways that the extra storage would benefit your business if it were not in small chunks, and you say that that your business does not use large files. If the end users simply DO NOT use 40 out of 80 gigs, why do they need the extra 4000 gigs shared?
Ever stop to consider why your users have their own computers with their own hard drives? So they don't have to share.
Here's the solution to your non-problem. Leave their computers alone. Computer memory is not a precious resource.