Seriously, this is the way to go:
- Small appliance
- XBMC (the world's best player IMHO)
- Integrated remote
- Quiet
- Plays everything
- Connects to SMB shares
- Can use the local storage if required (I would put all the kids movies locally... cause they are played 24/7!)
- If you get a small add-on card, it will output 1080p natively
DO NOT BUY THE NEW APPLETV:
- only 20 output
- only 3 video formats
- no local storage
- you are locked in to their walled garden
- you will need to recode all your existing content
Can you please explain why you are doing this? What about redundancy for starters... you lose that server and you lose 5,000 VMs!!!??? At least give us an idea of the industry you are in...
This is not going to help you with your 'finding the right document' problem, but it is essential for your remote offices to be able to open (and save) those documents in a reasonable time. It will also have the added benefit of dramatically reducing your WAN traffic (think 50% reduction).
When I initially trialled these, Riverbed was miles ahead of Cisco. That was 2 years ago, but they are still the only one with a remote client and a few other tricks.
Well worth the investigation & money.
Close... DOT is the underlying transfer protocol they are using, but not the whole application that makes up dsync. From what I can tell, dsync takes DOT and adds some throttling algorithms etc. Anyway, DOT looks pretty damn good too.
A group in the Netherlands has already commercialised BitTorrent to manage enterprise patch deployment. The product used to be called BitRain but was renamed to DistriBrute. You can talk directly to one of the developers Leo Blom: lblom AT iteleo.nl He was really helpful last time I talked to him about it.
Also, as one of the other posts pointed out, if you are going to do this within your VPN cloud, you need ot make sure that the VPN tunnels are multi-point (each site can talk directly to the other) or you will not solve your problem (cause all traffic will go via the main hub).
Please MOD this up as I am pretty sure this is exactly what he is after.
http://www.4m88.nl/
Leo Blom
Would you mind sharing what online application you are actually using? How do you deal with travelling users who may/may not have constant Internet access? What about privacy/security? Are the docs encrypted? Is this an inhouse system or provided by a third party (eg Google)? How are business rules enforced?
I would recommend trying a thin client.
You can use either Windows or Linux (keeps everyone happy;) and they are fairly easy to set up such that no changes are written to disk (they have a write cache filter; at least the HP ones do).
Under windows, you can configure a Guest profile that automatically logs in (with a 30 character password), has no privileges and which is presented with a single window only - Firefox. Add NoSCript and AddBlock and you are away. Might also want to run it in Kiosk mode.
The users only need to be taught one thing: if things go bad, turn it off, then turn it back on.
That Paper Disk idea is pretty interesting. I read ages ago that a large Australian government agency (whose data storage goal was LONGEVITY rather than short-term backup) - might have been the Bureau of Statistics - chose to store/archive all of their data onto microfilm...
"Microfilm!?" I hear you say, "But this is 2004!". I was suprised too until I heard their reasoning: the only thing you need to read microfilm is a magnifying glass and a light source.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, makes it virtually future-proof. Try finding a hard-drive for your old 5 1/4 C64 floppy disks (or better yet, those bloody tapes that took 30 minutes only to fail to load)
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously, this is the way to go: ... cause they are played 24/7!)
- Small appliance
- XBMC (the world's best player IMHO)
- Integrated remote
- Quiet
- Plays everything
- Connects to SMB shares
- Can use the local storage if required (I would put all the kids movies locally
- If you get a small add-on card, it will output 1080p natively
DO NOT BUY THE NEW APPLETV:
- only 20 output
- only 3 video formats
- no local storage
- you are locked in to their walled garden
- you will need to recode all your existing content
Can you please explain why you are doing this? What about redundancy for starters ... you lose that server and you lose 5,000 VMs!!!??? At least give us an idea of the industry you are in ...
This is not going to help you with your 'finding the right document' problem, but it is essential for your remote offices to be able to open (and save) those documents in a reasonable time. It will also have the added benefit of dramatically reducing your WAN traffic (think 50% reduction). When I initially trialled these, Riverbed was miles ahead of Cisco. That was 2 years ago, but they are still the only one with a remote client and a few other tricks. Well worth the investigation & money.
Don't believe the hype ... I can sell you my 6 digit thingy for $2.99 ... that is a magnitude better than he is offering!
Close ... DOT is the underlying transfer protocol they are using, but not the whole application that makes up dsync. From what I can tell, dsync takes DOT and adds some throttling algorithms etc. Anyway, DOT looks pretty damn good too.
The program is actually called dsynch ... they just didn't pick an original name. See this link for DOT source and article:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dot-project/
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dga/papers/dsync-usenix2008-abstract.html
I read the abstract and it sounds very interesting. Any idea where to get the source code from???
A group in the Netherlands has already commercialised BitTorrent to manage enterprise patch deployment. The product used to be called BitRain but was renamed to DistriBrute. You can talk directly to one of the developers Leo Blom: lblom AT iteleo.nl He was really helpful last time I talked to him about it. Also, as one of the other posts pointed out, if you are going to do this within your VPN cloud, you need ot make sure that the VPN tunnels are multi-point (each site can talk directly to the other) or you will not solve your problem (cause all traffic will go via the main hub). Please MOD this up as I am pretty sure this is exactly what he is after. http://www.4m88.nl/ Leo Blom
That is unbelievable. PLEASE WATCH THE VIDS!! I am amazed that they can do that with a measly 8-bit machine ... holy cow.
Would you mind sharing what online application you are actually using? How do you deal with travelling users who may/may not have constant Internet access? What about privacy/security? Are the docs encrypted? Is this an inhouse system or provided by a third party (eg Google)? How are business rules enforced?
I would recommend trying a thin client. You can use either Windows or Linux (keeps everyone happy;) and they are fairly easy to set up such that no changes are written to disk (they have a write cache filter; at least the HP ones do). Under windows, you can configure a Guest profile that automatically logs in (with a 30 character password), has no privileges and which is presented with a single window only - Firefox. Add NoSCript and AddBlock and you are away. Might also want to run it in Kiosk mode. The users only need to be taught one thing: if things go bad, turn it off, then turn it back on.
That Paper Disk idea is pretty interesting. I read ages ago that a large Australian government agency (whose data storage goal was LONGEVITY rather than short-term backup) - might have been the Bureau of Statistics - chose to store/archive all of their data onto microfilm ...
"Microfilm!?" I hear you say, "But this is 2004!". I was suprised too until I heard their reasoning: the only thing you need to read microfilm is a magnifying glass and a light source.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, makes it virtually future-proof. Try finding a hard-drive for your old 5 1/4 C64 floppy disks (or better yet, those bloody tapes that took 30 minutes only to fail to load)