Soren and I are buds so I don't want him to think I'm attacking him and CADEM... :-)
The CS dept network and the CADEM labs are not the same. We each have different classes to cater to and problems to worry about. Being a sys admin for two years I've heard plenty of complaints about BOTH the CS and CADEM setups. If the students think this problem with our file server has caused them problems, it has been literally a 500x worse than us. We can't figure out what the exact source of the problem is, nor the many people who have helped us look into the issue. Besides this problem (and it is a major one that will be solved within a few weeks), I haven't heard of any recent problems (ok, well Windows profiles suck too, but Byron fixed that). I respect the CADEM admins for their work and I believe they have a good setup. But since we have different needs, we do things differently. After a lot of experience we have found that one fileserver is what we need; we could do it with a cluster, but it has overall worked well with the single server (besides this problem we've had for the last 6 months with IO). I think think it's funny how people (users) complain about problems. Until you've been a sys admin over a large network (in our case 200 linux boxes, 150 windows, ~7 - 8 servers) you really don't know about how complicated things get. People come in to the office and complain about our samba setup and I see them post questions to the list a week later because they can't even get two machines to talk together. There is a HUGE difference between admining 5 and 50 computers. Also, I know that as a student you pay for computers to use and those should be maintained well. Just to let you know, we really do care that the boxes and networks are running smoothly. You see, sys admins do care. :-) I'm not trying to bash anyone, just reminding people to have constructive criticism and remember how hard it can be. I don't give OIT as hard of a time as I used to since I've personally had to deal with serious issues. Well, my rant is over. Kudos to the world's sys admins, and good work guys in the CADEM. -Evan P.S. Beware of the L.A.R.T :-) http://bofhcam.org/co-larters/lart-reference/ > So? The same thing happens when a monolithic server fills up. I > guarantee you that all the space that the new CS server has won't last more > than 4 years; they will eventually have to get a new one, or an > additional one. Building a modular system at the beginning forces you > into the plan-for-expansion mindset. If you're starting with 6 NFS > servers, it's easy to design the system to accomodate 8 or 20. However, > if you start with the mindset of having only one server, then try as you > might, there will be some design fallacies that make migrating to 2 or > more difficult, if not impossible. Nobody takes the time to set up a > load-balancing system for just one webserver, and always ends up kicking > themselves when they have to re-design their network when adding the > second server becomes necessary. > > On top of that, there's the financial aspect. A lot of small servers is > almost always cheaper than one big server, and believe it or not, > they're almost always easier to maintain. -- /********************************************************************\ Evan McNabb: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://evan.mcnabbs.org System Administrator, CS Department, BYU GnuPG Fingerprint: 53B5 EDCA 5543 A27A E0E1 2B2F 6776 8F9C 6A35 6EA5 \********************************************************************/
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