Raid on top of NBD works (with caveats), I tried a proof of concept once, RAID5 made out of nbd units.
The configuration needs to be though through carefully so that data is striped across sufficient clients to prevent excessive resource (CPU and network) at the client end.
I did it my building one PC with Linux and "mounting" each of the NBD pieces shared by the enn-user Windows PC's, then simply build RAID over the top of that.
With sufficient planning you can make it quite resilient, just in case a user decides to switch off their PC.
I did find that re-building the stripes when a PC did get turned off, caused the "server" (ie the Linux PC) to be heavily utilised, and this caused the clients that mounted/used the shared-out space from the "server" to receive quite poor performance.
The only way I could think of really making this a serious possibility would be to beef-up the power of the "server" quite significantly and to ensure really fast network connections between it and the nbd hosting machines.
Of all the repsonses that I have read so far I agree with you.
I personally have several relatives that are curious about Linux and/or are dissatissfied with their current MS system. This sounds like a brilliant "extra" to add in to the Cristmas card, which I took to mean (and thought was obvious) was in addition to a more personally thought-out and directed/relevant present.
I don't understand why so many of the other/. replies have made the assumption that the original poster is so ignorant of the feelings of the people, that he cares enough about to send a christmas "something" to.
And I am also VERY interested in other/.'s thoughts on the best distro/approach to the original question, so please speak up:-)
By the way I reckon/. rocks, I have read/. for years, moderated for many many months, and even meta-moderated quite a few times too, I really think/. is great:-))
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Raid on top of NBD works (with caveats), I tried a proof of concept once, RAID5 made out of nbd units. The configuration needs to be though through carefully so that data is striped across sufficient clients to prevent excessive resource (CPU and network) at the client end. I did it my building one PC with Linux and "mounting" each of the NBD pieces shared by the enn-user Windows PC's, then simply build RAID over the top of that. With sufficient planning you can make it quite resilient, just in case a user decides to switch off their PC. I did find that re-building the stripes when a PC did get turned off, caused the "server" (ie the Linux PC) to be heavily utilised, and this caused the clients that mounted/used the shared-out space from the "server" to receive quite poor performance. The only way I could think of really making this a serious possibility would be to beef-up the power of the "server" quite significantly and to ensure really fast network connections between it and the nbd hosting machines.
Of all the repsonses that I have read so far I agree with you.
/. replies have made the assumption that the original poster is so ignorant of the feelings of the people, that he cares enough about to send a christmas "something" to.
/.'s thoughts on the best distro/approach to the original question, so please speak up :-)
/. rocks, I have read /. for years, moderated for many many months, and even meta-moderated quite a few times too, I really think /. is great :-))
I personally have several relatives that are curious about Linux and/or are dissatissfied with their current MS system. This sounds like a brilliant "extra" to add in to the Cristmas card, which I took to mean (and thought was obvious) was in addition to a more personally thought-out and directed/relevant present.
I don't understand why so many of the other
And I am also VERY interested in other
By the way I reckon