RE: [ProgSoc] Storage Media

[Jedd <jedd@nospam.progsoc.uts.edu.au>]

 Alistair writes :

 ] Yeah.  Each of approximately 22,000 students space on a file server.  I
 ] think not.  The servers are currently replicated, as there are about five
 ] of them.  Can you imagine just how much hard dirve space would be
 ] required?  Then backups as well...?

 Why is it infeasible?  And why the assumption that all 22k students
 need [semi-]permament disk space?  (How much is assumed that
 they need, each, anyways?)

 What does replicated mean in this context ?

 Backups?  You mean like ftoomsh . . ?  ;)
 
 ] It's been said before - I'll mention it.  But I actually think you're
 ] overrating NT's requirements somewhat.  It will run with 64 Mb... it'll
 ] run on 16 if that's all you've got... and while it may not be as fast as
 ] you'd like, it'll do for what it'll have to do.  

 I accept that it'll run.  I was reading an interview with some high-up
 technical manager in MS, from early 1995, recently - and had to
 smile at the requisite number of quotes along the lines of 'it'll
 run in 12Mb, that's the way we designed it, but it'll work much
 better if you've 16Mb, or even 20Mb'.  At that stage, NT was
 said to require a minimum 24Mb.  Anything more, and it'd also
 'fly'.  You can see where I'm going ... :)

 If you install NT4, SP3, the 16 or so post-SP3 patches, and then
 crank up a couple of Office apps, a couple of Netscape windows,
 a telnet client - and then check memory usage, you'll see that
 64Mb isn't enough.  Particularly when you consider NT's abysmal
 virtual memory manager.  (I'm suggesting it's pretty cruddy.)

 I was simply suggesting that for the same price as 64Mb/4gig,
 you could go 128Mb/2gig, and it'd be a better solution.  [nod]

 ] When I arrived at Nursing, it was exclusively Win3x on a NetWare 3.12
 ] server.  And it was amazingly hopelessly slow.  I've been told it's got to
 ] do with running both Netscape and Windows from a server.  Whether that's
 ] true or not... it's always been horribly slow no matter what the PC is.

 I'd suggest that it was due to some other reason.  In a properly
 designed & implemented LAN, Windows 3 (and all apps) run nicely
 off a file server.

 ] Also, it is just one more thing that the network admins have to test,
 ] install and configure.  I think they'll have enough on their plate.  I can
 ] suggest it, of course, but I don't expect that they'll be interested.

 Surely they'll be doing installs (of 95) via something like Ghost.  NT,
 of course, should be installed each time (unattend, etc).  If they're
 doing images with 95, then it's a trivial amount of work to do, and it's
 done once-off only.

 Who's actually doing these installs, anyways, and who's trying to
 persuade them to have them dual-booting with a linux partition?

 Jedd.

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