It sounds like a platform for technical advancement, but not anything with a practical/marketable/legal application in the current vision.
The main uses I can think of would appeal mainly to criminal/terrorist elements.
Ultimately there are two major problems. The first is legal. I can assure you that I, for one, will not volunteer to share out any of my storage to host anonymous encrypted data. Whether or not the files are stored in whole, the law in most places would not take kindly to the pleas of people who willfully signed up to distribute content that is either illegal or copyrighted.
Second, the target demographic is just too small. Most people aren't going to go to this kind of an extreme for security. Precisely because storage is so abundant and reasonably good encryption is so readily available, there is neither the motivation to try to "borrow" storage from a massive peer network nor the perception that additional security in needed.
Third, the weakest component in any security system is attached to the keyboard. I'm in the IT dept of a multi-billion dollar company. I can't get systems administrators and developers to stop writing down passwords, using username=password, shouting passwords across open rooms, and checking 'password never expires'. These are the IT people. By and large, people don't care about security.
Fourth, network infrastructure is still very fragile. The issues with undersea cables illustrates this. Yes, it's getting better, but reliability is not where it needs to be.
Fifth, as an enterprise tool (vs. the massive internet peer network)I'm not going to use this for all of the reasons stated in this thread. Trying to mine unused disk space across distributed systems is just not worth it.
As someone who designs storage systems for a fair sized business, this is an impractical use of resources for a number of reasons.
First, as has been pointed out, you are competing for other resources. Storage on clients is highly variable. Just because somebody has 20GB of free space today doesn't mean he's not going to go out and download download a couple DVD's worth of data. Your system would have to take into account this possibility, and be prepared to cope with a space issue on the disk in real time. This would usually mean self-deleting when free space is too low, since you can't anticipate that there will be enough time to move the data over the network before the disk runs out of space and your clever scheme has now impacted the productivity of someone else.
This is a less likely scenario in a server farm, but still a consideration. Further, in a server environment, you've seriously got to consider the function of each device before you go farming out spare resources. If you've got a web server with highly static data and overall low utilization, then this would actually be a pretty good candidate to participate in a distributed file system. However, a DB server, not so much. Some applications also desire a certain amount of free space on their volumes to ensure optimal efficiency. You certainly don't want to do this on any system wehre disk I/O is a major factor in the performance of an application.
What this really comes down to is a simple cost/benefit analysis. Before you decide if this is a good idea or not, you need to establish that there's actually a value to the business. Answering these questions will help:
Is there a business need to provide additional storage at this time?
What is it?
How much storage do you need?
What is you current overall efficiency on storage today?
Given the technologies available to create a distributed file system, what is a practical amount of usable space you can gain by doing this?
Does this amount meet the stated need?
What is the approximate cost in time and cash spent to implement?
What is the management overhead of such a system in hours over a period of time?
What are the risks of doing this?
Do the risks outweigh the benefits?
What is the cost (upfront and ongoing in cash and labor) of alternative solutions that meet the need (like a new file server)?
Once you answer those questions, you'll have a pretty good idea of whether or not this is something you should even be considering.
As a trend, the problem you describe is exactly why people are so enamored with virtualization. In a server environment, virtualization makes absolute sense. The overall efficiency of virtual servers is an order of magnitude (or more) higher than most physical server farms.
Desktops are a different picture. The same principles apply, and vendors are purshing virtual desktops. The problem is that since the advent of the PC end users have never preferred thin clients. With the majority of PC purchases now being laptops, it's even more so than it was in the past. Users want to have their data close, and to be able to take it with them.
I find it hypocritical and mildly ironic that you use the hyphenate "non-Anglopohone" in criticizing someone else for using unnecessarily complex speech that may not be easily understood by non-native speakers.
And, for the record, the performance monitors on my Windows systems tell me the "percentage utilization" of a given resource, not the "percentage use".
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It sounds like a platform for technical advancement, but not anything with a practical/marketable/legal application in the current vision.
The main uses I can think of would appeal mainly to criminal/terrorist elements.
Ultimately there are two major problems. The first is legal. I can assure you that I, for one, will not volunteer to share out any of my storage to host anonymous encrypted data. Whether or not the files are stored in whole, the law in most places would not take kindly to the pleas of people who willfully signed up to distribute content that is either illegal or copyrighted.
Second, the target demographic is just too small. Most people aren't going to go to this kind of an extreme for security. Precisely because storage is so abundant and reasonably good encryption is so readily available, there is neither the motivation to try to "borrow" storage from a massive peer network nor the perception that additional security in needed.
Third, the weakest component in any security system is attached to the keyboard. I'm in the IT dept of a multi-billion dollar company. I can't get systems administrators and developers to stop writing down passwords, using username=password, shouting passwords across open rooms, and checking 'password never expires'. These are the IT people. By and large, people don't care about security.
Fourth, network infrastructure is still very fragile. The issues with undersea cables illustrates this. Yes, it's getting better, but reliability is not where it needs to be.
Fifth, as an enterprise tool (vs. the massive internet peer network)I'm not going to use this for all of the reasons stated in this thread. Trying to mine unused disk space across distributed systems is just not worth it.
Watched the video. I've got to say, that seems like a terrible, terrible idea. I'm sure you'll make billions.
As someone who designs storage systems for a fair sized business, this is an impractical use of resources for a number of reasons. First, as has been pointed out, you are competing for other resources. Storage on clients is highly variable. Just because somebody has 20GB of free space today doesn't mean he's not going to go out and download download a couple DVD's worth of data. Your system would have to take into account this possibility, and be prepared to cope with a space issue on the disk in real time. This would usually mean self-deleting when free space is too low, since you can't anticipate that there will be enough time to move the data over the network before the disk runs out of space and your clever scheme has now impacted the productivity of someone else. This is a less likely scenario in a server farm, but still a consideration. Further, in a server environment, you've seriously got to consider the function of each device before you go farming out spare resources. If you've got a web server with highly static data and overall low utilization, then this would actually be a pretty good candidate to participate in a distributed file system. However, a DB server, not so much. Some applications also desire a certain amount of free space on their volumes to ensure optimal efficiency. You certainly don't want to do this on any system wehre disk I/O is a major factor in the performance of an application. What this really comes down to is a simple cost/benefit analysis. Before you decide if this is a good idea or not, you need to establish that there's actually a value to the business. Answering these questions will help: Is there a business need to provide additional storage at this time? What is it? How much storage do you need? What is you current overall efficiency on storage today? Given the technologies available to create a distributed file system, what is a practical amount of usable space you can gain by doing this? Does this amount meet the stated need? What is the approximate cost in time and cash spent to implement? What is the management overhead of such a system in hours over a period of time? What are the risks of doing this? Do the risks outweigh the benefits? What is the cost (upfront and ongoing in cash and labor) of alternative solutions that meet the need (like a new file server)? Once you answer those questions, you'll have a pretty good idea of whether or not this is something you should even be considering. As a trend, the problem you describe is exactly why people are so enamored with virtualization. In a server environment, virtualization makes absolute sense. The overall efficiency of virtual servers is an order of magnitude (or more) higher than most physical server farms. Desktops are a different picture. The same principles apply, and vendors are purshing virtual desktops. The problem is that since the advent of the PC end users have never preferred thin clients. With the majority of PC purchases now being laptops, it's even more so than it was in the past. Users want to have their data close, and to be able to take it with them.
I find it hypocritical and mildly ironic that you use the hyphenate "non-Anglopohone" in criticizing someone else for using unnecessarily complex speech that may not be easily understood by non-native speakers. And, for the record, the performance monitors on my Windows systems tell me the "percentage utilization" of a given resource, not the "percentage use".